Instant Book on for season, but booked to far in future, now a problem in future

[Christopher69]

hello, recently got an instant book in a unit we only offer for the season. we had it on by Air's urging . (which is good and bad)

need to decline the booking because we may not be able to provide for the guest as this unti will be likely rented long term (in order to make ends meet, we rent furnished apts to students from sept to may, then as a BnB for summer, as you will see we are in a heavy tourist area)  this was an october booking. we need to cancel- 

i think this happens because you cannot set date for instant book to be on- or off - for set period of time

so to be able to set instant book to run for a period then automatically shut off on a set date...

or if thats possible, hopefully some can lend some advice.

any suggestions? have yet to contact guest because we're not sure what to do..

thanks, chritopher & jenna

[Patricia217]

This is the exact thing that happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. I didn't realize the 3 month booking window had moved and that I had not blocked off the academic year and they had booked instantly mid October. I have since changed my settings to pre-approve (as the guest suggested) to not have it happen again, which I am happier with. I also had to cancel the booking so they could get a full refund. This action, of course, hurts my rating. I'm new to Airbnb this summer so airbnb didn't charge me for cancelling but I didn't like to cancel. The cancellation on my part shows up in the review section, as well. It doesn't make me look good 😞 

(On the other hand, when the guest cancels it does not show up on your review book, as far as I have seen. I may be wrong.)

[Patty-And-Mike0]

We had our Instant Book option turned off as we like to review our guests before approving. At some point, With Airbnb updates, the instant book was turned back on (not by us). We didn't know until we got a message saying someone would be staying the next night. I had replied to them that we would welcome them, but then they said they needed 3 beds with 3 separate rooms and would be arriving by plane at 11:30 pm and would make their way to our home sometime there after. They obviously did not read our listing as we don't have 3 separate rooms. Since we couldn't meet their needs, we had to cancel the reservation. Airbnb "didn't charge" us for the cancelation since it was our first. But, they did remove our "Superhost" status. We contacted them about the error being theirs, and they said they couldn't review our superhost status until October. We loose business by not being a superhost. Now I have had a guest leave and have not received the payout notice from Airbnb yet. They are not easy to contact. I have a phone number, but the hold time is horrible. We were only able to communicate with them once we posted on Twitter and then they contacted us via email.

Quite frustrating.