Hello Everybody.
Although I've been doing rentals through an agency for years, I'm reasonably new to airbnb and find it's a totally different ballgame, including the clients who book through it. Very different to what we've known for years.
I need some guidance or advice from you with more experience please ....
My rental property is a large house which can sleep up to 15 guests. What I'm finding with enquiries through airbnb is that I get booking requests for, say, 1 or 4 or 5 guests, yet I learn afterwards (either just before they check in or on arrival or after they've left) that there are quite a lot more guests than the the numbers booked and paid for. It could be up to 15 (or who knows, even more after I've gone).
Because it's an exclusive rental, and the way the pricing system is set up, it seems that guests have figured out that it's so much cheaper for them to book for 1 or 4 or 8 guests yet bring all 15 along. The price is different depending on the number of guests, so honesty can easily go out the door. And if I point out this fact out to the guests and that only the number of guests booked/paid for can stay over, they get all defensive and some cancel their bookings. They have no problem in telling me that it's cheaper for them to book my house with smaller numbers than they actually bring along.
If I refuse bookings (which I've also done), I get penalized by airbnb. Only as recently as yesterday, I had a booking request from airbnb to increase a particular booking for an extra 5 guests, yet the airbnb request does not charge anything extra, just asks me if I will or will not accept it. So I sent a payment request to the client for the additional 5 guests (calculated on the airbnb rates) and offered a detailed explanation of why I'm charging more - and I'm sure you can imagine the reaction although they have offered to pay the extra. If they don't cancel in the meantime, I shall expect some kind of negativity in a review based upon the fact that they booked at one price yet were charged more for extras. (I believe this was the intention from the start, although most wouldn't bother requesting it through airbnb, they'd just bring the others along anyway).
It's an ideal house for hens/parties and very large families and you'll know what's entailed with those kinds of bookings afterwards. This is a pattern I'm seeing a lot of recently and surely, I'm not the only one? What am I to do? How does everybody else with an exclusive rental property control the booked number of guests from the actuality when they know more are arriving than have been paid for.
I look forward to your feedback and suggestions, thank you.
