Guest cancelled and wants to rebook but the dates are blocked for her

[Leilani19]

Hi hosts! I have smart pricing turned on. I had a guest who booked a particularly expensive night, then noticed that other nights weren't so expensive. She inquired about this price difference, and I explained "smart pricing" to her. She didn't reply to me directly but instead chose to cancel her booking.

I followed up on that by messaging her. I said "Smart pricing isn't so smart if it causes me to lose bookings. Sorry to see you go." She then decided to rebook (for the same price that she thought was too high) and is unable to. I can't figure out why the date would be blocked for her. Any advice? Maybe just give it 24 hours? My best guess was that Airbnb is trying to save face in a similar way it does for customers by blocking hosts dates if they don't respond to a request for certain dates or telling a customer certain dates are unavailable. 

[Sarah977]

@Leilani19  Did you by any chance receive a messsage saying the guest wants to cancel and asking you to accept that? If so, that is a really sneaky thing that Airbnb does- it will be registered as a host cancellation and you'll be penalized in several ways, including the dates remaining blocked.

If this isn't what happened, I don't know why it would still be blocked. I assume you tried to manually unblock it?

[Leilani19]

We figured it out. The guest noticed that I was only offering the space for 2 nights or more. She wanted to stay one night only. I am new to this so I quickly realized after 2 1-night bookings that I was losing money, when I could likely get guests who wanted to stay for 2 nights or more. I changed my settings after she booked the first time. When she cancelled her 1 night reservation, it would not let her rebook for one night only. 

[Sarah977]

@Leilani19  Ah, good you figured it out. I actually have a 3 night minimum myself. I just don't want to be bothered to clean the space and deal with new guests for any shorter amount of time. Since I live in a tourist beach town where most of my guests fly in for a holiday, if it loses me any bookings, they would be minimal. Most of my guests book for a week on average, some 10 days to 2 weeks.