Hi All,
I report here a bad experience we had a while back with Instant Booking (September 2018) which is still affecting our business today. Any suggestion is welcome.
From June to August, our property is rented exclusively to a unique group for one week periods (from Saturday to Saturday). This is clearly stated in the listing and guests were asked to verify that they met these (and other) criteria before proceeding with Instant Booking.
In September 2018, a prospective guest proceeded with Instant Booking without verifying the required criteria and without contacting us. We cancelled her booking after 10 minutes and the automated review "The host canceled this reservation 100 days before arrival. This is an automated posting." was posted on our profile. Of course, we published a post explaining the situation.
Nevertheless, since then, our business went down because of AirBnB penalisation for cancelled bookings. Moreover, we were forced to deactivate Instant Booking to avoid similar issues.
Despite all our guest-based reviews are excellent, this one automated posting caused by a situation not dependent on our behaviour as hosts is still affecting our ranking and the requests by guests.
Consider that our facility is only rented during summertime and for weekly periods so we don't have many guests per year. Do you have any suggestions to correct this issue or to improve our situation?
Thanks in advance.
Best wishes,
Matteo