Declining a Request

[Rachelle-And-Joseph0]

Hello everyone,

I received a request to book last night and my lisitng states I need Government ID and reviews etc before instant bookings.  I asked the guests some questions and waited for their reply.  I then get a notification from Airbnb a couple of hours later saying this;

"Michelle’s request expires at 21:35 EDT on 16 Aug. If you don’t accept or decline, 31 Aug-02 Sep will remain blocked."

I was shocked to see this....I thought we had complete control of who we want to accept or decline...so I went searching to see why I received this notice....then I found this on Airbnb's site;

"When you decline a reservation request, you can choose to keep the calendar dates blocked or make them available for someone else to book"

However they don't tell you this as per the message above or how to unblock the dates once you decline the request....I find Airbnb does not give you all information you need to properly make a decision/judgement call....they push you to make an immediate decision.  By the time you do the research to find an answer you receive many notifications from Airbnb that you may be at risk for a penalty....Yikes...why in such a hurry...

Also why doesn't Airbnb send this along with the previous message...I found this to be a little like bullying the host (especially a fairly new host) to book even when you don't feel comfortable and don't want dates blocked....

Not sure if it's just me...being so new to Airbnb but having a lot of issues with the process of what rights we have as hosts and the rules and regulations about the whole thing....the one listed above almost threw me over board to close my account

If anyone know of shortcuts on how to quickly and how to get to know the "Rules" better, I would greatly love to know....as we really enjoy meeting all of our guests and hearing their travel stories....

Thank you for listening

Rachelle

[Sean119]

Bullying is an apt description on how hard ABB pushes IB.  

[Steve143]

Hello @Rachelle-And-Joseph0,

Aye, unfortunately Airbnb doesn't count a message sent in reply to a reservation request or inquiry as a response. So the "response time" clock keeps ticking. They count only an accept/decline for requests or a pre-approve/decline for inquiries as a response and they say that it must be done within 24 hours to be a good response time for your statistics.

Yes, it's pressure when you want to find out if the guest will be a good fit for your listing and there are timezone differences etc. to contend with as well as slow responding guests.

If you have the "Require guests to go through verification" box ticked in your reservation requirements then guests won't be able to complete the reservation after you accept them unless they upload a photo of ID. If they've already done this then the reservation will be confirmed as soon as you accept it. If they haven't, the dates stay blocked for 24hours to allow them to complete the ID upload. Again something that can work against the host if the reservation is for a short time in the future and the guest doesn't complete the upload.

One source of information provided by other hosts from experience is the selection of posts at this link Community-Help-Guides

Steve.

[Rachelle-And-Joseph0 · Accepted solution]

Thank you so much Steve for this explanation....it would be great if all this was stated somewhere that we "newcomers" could see this information instead of us paniking etc....

I appreciate your quick response

Rachelle

[Ange2]

"Aye, unfortunately Airbnb doesn't count a message sent in reply to a reservation request or inquiry as a response"

@Steve143Maybe this rule varies from country to country but in my experience if I reply to an INQUIRY with a response message alone the clock stops ticking and no penalties are applied. It is only when an actual reservation REQUEST is made that I need to accept or decline within 24 hours or be penalized.

[Steve143]

Hello @Ange2,

Good to know from someone who has real world experience of it. Thanks for posting.

I've been a slave to it in the past and always either pre-approved or decllined inquiries immediately on sending a message answering the question. Good to know we can have more time. Makes sense that a message should be sufficient response for an inquiry.

Aye, it could also be that they've changed it and haven't updated the help articles. There are lots of examples of that.

I was just going on the help article what-is-response-rate-and-how-is-it-calculated? that's quoted in reservation inquiry emails.

It says:

Your response rate is the percentage of new enquiries and reservation requests you responded to (by either accepting/pre-approving or declining) within 24 hours in the past 30 days.

Nice to be able to ignore that.

Steve.

[Ange2]

@Steve143    To  be on the safe side  (things sometimes change without notice) when I respond to an enquiry:  I  respond to the guest with a message and after a couple of minutes I refresh the page to make sure the countdown has in fact disappeared so I know I will not be subject to any time-sensitive penalty.

p.s. further down the article or maybe it was a different article, it says:

"To improve response rate and response time, do the following within 24 hours:

• Accept or decline reservation requests
• Pre-approve or decline trip requests
• ***Reply to new messages from guests***

[Steve143]

That's a good trick @Ange2.

Hadn't thought of it.

It's in my arsenal now.

Steve.

[Patricia545]

Thank you for the great clarification s in this post! I am having a similar issue of guests without ID verification submitting requests and am wondering is it better to allow the request to expire or decline ( after I've explained to the potential guest of course) Nobody likes to be declined and I've noticed this causes some confusion when I tell them to resubmit after the I'd process is complete. Thank you!

[Gudrun13]

Hello Patricia,

This has been exactly my experience. At this point I also have not

seen profiles from potential guests and am considering changing

the Instant Booking option and just receive regular requests.

This way I a not under extreme stress to respond within the time limit.

Thank you.

[Sarah977]

@Gudrun13  You still have to respond to an Inquiry or Booking Request within 24 hours. In the case of Inquiries, a simple response, without clicking on Pre-approve or Decline seems to stop the clock from ticking and doesn't affect your response rate. but a Booking Request has to be Approved or Declined within the 24 hours. So if it's a Booking Request, I try to respond ASAP in the case that I have questions before Approving, so that I can approve or decline (which I've thankfully never had to do) within the 24 hour window.

[Gudrun13]

Thank you, Sarah, you are totally right and thanks for

spelling it out so clearly.

[Sophie122]

I recently removed instant booking because I had to decline  (the guest wanted to bring the dog while my policy clearly states no dogs allowed).  Until this year I never had to decline a booking request so I assumed  this was simple because it is stated that you can always decline a booking reservation if you feel uncomfortable with it.  To my surprise I had an choice of several reasons  to pick from to indicate why I declined and AirBnB  blocked the calendar until  the validity of the decline request had been checked.

However, it seems that the above mentioned same rules apply with a Booking Request.

I also feel it is a bit strange that guests have 48 hours to cancel a reservation free of cost without giving a reason and hosts have to always specify why a reservation can not be accepted. 

[Sarah977]

@Sophie122  You are mixing up declines with cancellations. You cannot decline an IB booking, because it is already a confirmed booking. What you are doing with an IB is cancelling it.

With a booking request, you have the option to accept it or decline it. Your calendar isn't blocked for any period of time when you decline it.

[Sophie122]

I am definitely not mixing up declining cancellations and requests. I think you misunderstood.