Airbnb removed special offer option

[Marc162]

In their apparent quest to strip hosts of all control over a booking, Airbnb has now removed the option to answer a booking request with a special offer. 

Now if say a request is for 1 guest, but the guest actually communicates that they are a group of 5 people, then the host will suffer negative consequences. 

The options are:

1. Accept a reservation with a wrong guests count and price and lose earnings

2. Decline and get penalized with a lower acceptance rate

3. Let request expire and suffer a lower response rate

How do you feel about this new "policy"?

[Kenneth12]

@Alon1 : just because I have IB on doesn't mean I don't get RRs from people who are new users or who don't meet my terms;  I recently got a RR from someone who then needed to change dates,   for instance.
I thus not sure I have a change;   I'll check on my next (new) RR,  but existing RRs have Special Offer for me;  and no,  the booking process and options offered in the interface are not uniform,  alas.

[Alon1]

@Kenneth12 

Thanks for reply and for clarifying that you also have RR option with Instant Book.

(As I stated I don't know the process with IB since I've never done it.)

Right now I'm dealing with an RR and I only have option to Accept / Decline.

I don't recall it ever been different. 

But Marc stated that he also had option for Special Offer with an RR.

[Marc162]

@Kenneth12   @Alon1 

Exactly as you have mentioned. 

We are talking about RR when IB is off, and within the 24h response time. Until a few days ago I had the option to respond with Accept/Decline/Special offer (and have used this option recently). 

Since a few days approximately, the special offer disappeared in this case. 

[Alon1]

@Marc162 @Kenneth12 

From your accounts,  I can only adduce that those doing IB have or had a different set of options for an RR. 

[Sandra856]

@Alon1 As I write, I have never used the "speciel offer" option when someone requested for 1 person when they were coming 2. I only sometimes got the instant book option turned on so I have been in this situation many times with people sending requests. If someone instant book for 1 the reservation is confirmed straight a head. A confirmed booking can easily be changed via the change reservation option.

The reason why I didn't use the speciel offer was because I didn't know it was possible to change number of guests. I thought I could use it for giving a discount - not change the number of guests.