IB HELP!!

[Karl-and-Cindy0]

Hi everyone, I’m not sure what to do… I’m a month and a half in. I didn’t know anything about IB and all of a sudden I got two IB’s.  

the short story is we lost our furnace, won’t be replaced until the 9th. We have a heater but it’s loud.  

I've emailed the person, who is booked for the 2nd,  twice and told them the situation and asked for confirmation that they’re ok with this. I haven’t heard back. This person has no reviews, no profile, no picture and joined in 2016, and 6 people for two nights.  

I’ve read in Airbnb help section that it is ok to cancel a person that you feel sketchy about with no penalty.  However, I’m still losing a booking.   What should I do?  I’m at a loss. 

Thank you, Cindy

[Anonymous]

@Karl-and-Cindy0   What should you do? My suggestions would be:

1. Turn off Instant Book. This is not a good feature for newer hosts. If after more months of experience, you decide it's a good idea to accept bookings without pre-screening, you can still adjust the settings to require positive reviews in order to book. You can also require a profile photo for all bookings, IB or otherwise, but there's no guarantee that it will depict the actual guest.

2. Call Airbnb and ask to activate one of your permitted cancellations on the basis of the guest being unresponsive about a significant change to the amenities. If the other party has decided to move forward with their stay, you can use the Resolutions tool to offer a token rebate (say, 10 or 20% off the room rate) to pre-empt potential complaints.

3. Manually block your calendar for upcoming dates until the new furnace is installed. As shame as it would be to lose out on potential income, right now you only have 3 reviews, so it's more important to deliver the amenities in the best possible condition and build up that firewall of great ratings. 

[Kelcee0]

Sometimes the guest has their Airbnb notifications turned off so they may not have received your messages.  When my guests don't respond I send them a quick text message to let them know they have messages they need to read on our Airbnb thread.  It's worked for me so far. Their phone number should be listed with their booking details.