Instant Book feature technical glitch

[Craig178]

Hi,

It has been since October 31st that my listing does not show up in serch at all when the guests filter area listings by selecting the "Instant Book" filter. If the "Instant Book" filter is turned off, my listing shows up right away on top of the list with a message "Rare find, usually booked". The "Instant Book" feature is "turned on" on my booking. Guests should be able to use Instant Book to book my listing, but for the last three weeks they have been sending me requests to book.

Thanks

Craig

[Ethan69]

Guys, long story short. Airbnb canceled twice on my behalf and I found out I couldn't get instant booking by testing it with another account.

My current solution is to use another account to run the same listing for a while and test again. At th same time, you can consider this as a backup account and you want to 'train it up' to superhost, anyways. The tech guys messaging you are going to ask you to wait for days.

Morty

[Edwina-and-Steve0]

Hi,

In the past all of my guests have used instant book. I recently updated the instant book requirements to ensure that my guests had government id. While this is not provided to me, I expect it should be provided to police if there was any malicious damage done to the property or the police were required for any reason. 

Since this guests have been sending reservation requests. Does this mean that they are able to circumvent the government id requirement by not using instant book?

[Marit-Anne0]

@Edwina-and-Steve0 

If potential guests do not meet your requirements, they will not be able to instant book, but they can still send you a booking request.  In your case I suspect that the guests requesting do not meet your requirements.  

[Helen427]

Have others been having problems with lack of Instant Bookings?

This is clearly an ongoing issue that must be resolved.

@Fraser22would you please look into this and come back and reply for us?

 I've had miminal enquiries & even less IB's since the outages/ IT plumbing/ road block connectivity issues between Google, Microsoft & ABB, together with the Truedialog SMS / Txt msg alert data information breach. 

 The later which I would like to know if ABB and it's Community have been impacted with  if ABB are in anyway contracted through them as it appears to be an across the world IT issue.

Thanks in advance

[Jon2951]

...aaaand now I'm depressed. 

We were pulled from Instant Book a few weeks ago and our "good business" tanked. It's basically gone! We still get booking requests but they all seem to be from people who created an account yesterday and live in the same city as our property. (Here in Detroit that means they want to throw a party.)

We did all the same things everyone else has done and got the same answers/results, but we haven't ever cancelled a reservation on our own and the only one ABB cancelled for us was over a month ago.

But we're still not coming up in Instant Book searches.
It sounds like we're doomed. Is that a fair assessment? I'm seeing lots of people in the same situation but I don't see anyone in this thread who has actually got it back.

Has anyone seen their property return in Instant Book Search Results? How long did it ultimately take? Did you have to massage someone's feet to get it fixed? If so, can you post that person's deets?

This is far more catastrophic than one might expect.

[Nadia135]

After years as a Superhost and a 5 star Airbnb Plus property using Instant Book  I learned Airbnb no longer shows my property if the Instant Book filter is on. Multiple inquiries later they’ve told me the following:

“You will need to be active and responsive to your Guest and minimize declined request in order for your account to be refresh and that instant booking option will just go back after.”

Facts: I have never declined a request. I respond to inquiries immediately. I received 3 requests using the booking request for non bookings: 1 asking me if I needed a cleaner, 2 if I could share my hosting experience and 3 for a stay outside my minimum requirements. 

My 5 star reviews reflect my prompt response. Clearly Airbnb’s algorithm has flagged me for these 3 non-bookings. I pre-approved all of them for fear of being dinged for unresponsiveness or non approvals.  I also wonder if the fact I only accept long term rentals (31 days and beyond) is causing the algorithm to flag me as not responsive given I don’t have many requests/bookings? Although I’ve been fully booked last year with multiple months long airbnb bookings. 

Calls to airbnb support have been ineffectual. I get told someone else needs to look at this and resolve it and yet nothing is being done. Thoughts on how to clear my account from this overarching algorithm glitch?

[Nadia135]

I’m wondering if and how long it took you to solve your issue as I’m having the same issue with the difference that I had not cancelled anyone but did respond to 3 non inquiries with pre approvals that expired. 

When I finally elevated this through 2 CS I received the following yesterday from the Airbnb customer service rep who was most helpful and tried his best. He was clearly chagrined at the following response that he received from his technical team. He said he was unable to send me their response in writing but he read it to me. In a nutshell they said they red flag accounts they consider high risk and the instant book feature is toggled off by Airbnb. It will be resumed once the host has more bookings. They do not reveal why the account has been flagged. One can surmise of course that accounts are flagged for declining too many reservations or poor response time. He read with me that I have neither. When I asked him if he could provide me clarity on what made my case high-risk he said the technical team would not divulge that information to him and in fact reprimanded him for giving me the impression that I would have an answer. He was an excellent customer service rep and clearly extremely frustrated at his inability to help as he too was completely mystified as to why my instant book has been toggled off.

This kind of behavior seems extremely suspicious by Airbnb. It makes me wonder if behind the scenes they are  promoting hosts who have shorter stays to increase service fees. Since I only host 31 days day stays,  I believe their overall service fee or an account such as mine might be lower. I can’t think of any other reason they would want to demote a listing such as mine that is not only an Airbnb plus but a super host and a five star review.

i’m wondering how to canvas other Airbnb hosts who are seeing the same thing happened to them. I did a quick search in my neighborhood and noticed one filtering for instant book versus not instant book a dramatic decrease in listings which leads me to believe this is happening to others. How do we promote this post or issue to gather more information across Airbnb hosts?

[Christopher1417]

I'm having this problem as well.  After talking to support they just say "it's a known issue" and close my case.  As an IT professional I can tell you that if there was a bug/glitch/etc it's an extremely easy technical fix.  Since the problem has persisted for so long, I think it's clear that AirBnB is doing something extremely suspicious like you suggest.  Their lack of transparency and their failure to deliver the features they promise on their platform make it clear that they don't really care about hosts.

I think the only thing that can be done is to continuously call them out .

@Brian