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?