How to prevent guests pending with their ID to block my calendar ?

[Frank166]

Hi,

when a guest wants to book but has a payment or ID issue, the booking blocks my calendar and I need to hold the room for the guest, which of them often just don't finalize their booking. Often this happens on the same day, meaning I can't sell the room although the guest can't or doesn't care to come up with the missing necessities from their side. 

Question, how do I prevent from finding myself in this trap again and again and losing some hundreds each year because of this ?

Regards,

Frank

[Emiel1]

@Frank166 

You can not prevent this.

Guest are granted 24 hours to complete payment and 12 hours to complete profile (ID verification, especially when you require it in your listing settings).

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Frank166  many hosts asked the same good question but to no avail. Airbnb really shouldn't allow them to block our calendars . I hope someday someone at Airbnb will realize how stupid and harmful this is

[Ricardo85]

@Frank166 

There was a time when it was possible to cancel the reservation request, without penalty, if there was a problem with the payment.

Ricardo

[Frank166]

is there a way inside AirB to start a petition for a change, or can this only be done from external petition platforms ?

[Ann72]

@Frank166  You could try to give feedback - I have seen changes made after enough people weighed in on an issue - https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

[Curtis147]

This has been a problem since at least 2014. I have called many times and customer service is unhelpful, saying "we'll look into this." It's an absurd policy and they could easily fix it. It's obvious to me why they're doing it — they want to bring as many new guests into the platform as possible so they yield to them at the expense of hosts. I don't believe this will ever change. But that won't stop me from calling them every time it does and reminding them how absurd it is.