Day of arrival and guests haven't responded to give a time of arrival - I'm waiting around. What can I do?

Natalie725
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

Day of arrival and guests haven't responded to give a time of arrival - I'm waiting around. What can I do?

My guests didn't take heed of the pre-booking message asking to give an arrival time upon booking. They then didn't respond to my booking confirmation message, asking them to give an arrival time when they can. Three days before arrival, they also didn't respond to the message - yet again - asking for an arrival time (in this message, I also sent on the link for the check-in guide).

 

It's now 3pm on the day of their arrival and I'm waiting around here. I don't want to harass them but it's stressing me out a bit, not knowing when they're arriving and whether they'll be bad guests because of this. They have no previous reviews and no profile picture, but I accepted their request at the time because their initial message was polite. 

 

What can I do? Worst case scenario, if they don't arrive before 11pm, can I lock the front door and tell them that sorry, but they have to check in tomorrow because the check-in time is over? 

 

Advice is appreciated. Thanks! 

 

 

54 Replies 54
Emilia42
Level 10
Orono, ME

@Natalie725 Did guests ever give you a reason as to why they weren't responding to you and providing their check-in time?

Hi Emilia, so the guest arrived and didn't read any of the directions, so I had to wander the streets and go looking for them. The guest admitted that they didn't read any of my messages (booking confirmation, arrival times, check-in guide, etc). Because he has no previous reviews, I would imagine this all happened because he just has no idea how Airbnb works. They certainly act as though they are in a hotel and are also quite noisy - but this is no surprise to me.... He had only sent one initial short booking message over a month ago and had not replied since then, so I really didn't know what was this guest's plans 😮 

Natalie725
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

I just want to add about this "self check in" issue that some people are clinging to - if you are looking for a private room in somebody else's home, a self check-in wouldn't be top of your list. People who really want to avoid communicating with a host will just pay extra money to book an entire place to themselves.

@Natalie725  There's certainly nothing wrong with the way you choose to check people in. I'm a home-share host myself and don't have self-check-in at all- it wouldn't be practical for my place.

What others were trying to explain, that you think was off-topic, is that even though the way you check guests in hasn't been a problem up to now, many guests simply don't read trhrough all the information in the description, which of course is frustrating for hosts when they have endeavored to make everything clear. And some guests will see "self-check-in" and just assume that means they can show up whenever.

And while it's just common courtesy for guests to let you know when they are arriving, so you don't just end up waiting around for hours, some guests, especially those unfamiliar with Airbnbs, unfortunately, never give a thought to wasting your time.

Right, that's true! Sorry for having a go at you in the earlier comments. These guests are just drives me absolutely nuts right now and I was getting frustrated with the initial person who brought up this self-check in method as the sole issue. The person was phrasing this like I was being some sort of misleading & inexperienced host, when I wasn't asking for an analysis of my own listing but simply how to go about locking a door at 11pm or getting Airbnb involved.

 

To add insult to injury though, Airbnb are now withholding my payment for these guests because of the fact I brought up my concern with Airbnb about their lack of arrival time yesterday. It makes no sense and now I have annoying, loud guests in the house with a suspended payout - as if it was myself who was at fault for their terrible communication skills! 

 

Agh! Bad Airbnb week....

@Natalie725 That's weird . . .  why would Airbnb hold the payment?! Did they give you a reason? How long are these guests staying?

Very odd yeah.. They said it was because I rang and raised a concern about the guest's not giving an arrival time. What's more, is that once the guest finally did get in touch with both myself and the agent, the issue was resolved. So I don't understand why I would get penalised for that whole encounter with a suspended payout? I'm still waiting for the payment and hopefully it will come through today.

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@Natalie725 

 

 

Interesting, You're getting penalised just for asking for their arrival time?

 

Are we hosts even allowed to talk to the guests beyond „yes, sir – yes , ma'am“?

 

Yes it seems that way! Just because I rang Airbnb about the arrival time and also said to them "this isn't a big issue, but if you manage to reach out to them and get a response then cool." Then we all resolved the issue but yet they still decided to hold my money for some odd reason...

Mika8
Level 10
Zürich, Switzerland

 

@Natalie725.. You asked for a "how" - how to approach a no-show or to get a response and other hosts tried to help you, that you could circumvent such situations in future, which you interpreted as a "why" about guests not giving an arrival time ... however, you could never get rid of such ignorant guests totally.

 

You emphasized several times that the reason for having the self-check-in selected is due to the fact of conveniently sending over the check-in instructions. If this is the only reason, you could easily circumvent this by creating an own homepage with the self-in instructions, then you only have to implement the link into your presaved messages.