@Artemisa2 First of all, go to your booking settings and change the advance notice to 2 days. This will prevent people from being able to book last minute, giving you time to communicate with them before deciding whether to accept their booking or not.
You can't keep declining inquiries and requests, Airbnb will suspend your listing for that if you do it too much.
Do you understand the difference between an Inquiry and a Request? It's important to be aware of, because you handle them differently.
An Inquiry is a way for guests to ask questions. They need to enter dates to send an Inquiry, so they may even enter dates they don't want and ask about other dates. They can ask if you'll accept a last minute booking, or to show up with 10 dogs- they can ask anything, you just say no if it's inappropriate.
The choices on an inquiry are pre-approve, and decline, but simply messaging the guest back within 24 hrs. fulfills your obligation. There is never a need to decline an Inquiry, and you shouldn't.
A Trip or Booking Request is different. The dates entered are the dates that will be booked if you accept the request. When you receive a Request, you should right away look at the guest's profile page to see if they have any reviews and if so, read them. Then you message them back, asking them any questions you may have if they haven't sent an informative message with their request, make sure they have read thoroughly through your listing info, including the house rules, and agree to abide by them. Also confirm that they have entered the correct number of guests on the booking, letting them know that any unregistered guests will be turned away at the door.
If they indicate that they want to break your rules, i.e. want to bring a pet if you don't allow them, exceed you max guest count, ask you right off the bat for a discount, don't answer your questions, communicate in a rude or entitled way, those are all red flags of a guest you don't want.
You can message them back politely, saying that their requirements aren't a good fit for your place, and encourage them to withdraw the request, so they will be free to find a place that's suitable for them.
If they don't withdraw the request, you will have to decline it within 24 hours. If it's a no-brainer to decline them, better to do it sooner than later, so it doesn't block your calendar from other bookings.
If you get requests from guests who have lots of good reviews, communicate well with you, and who you feel good about, then go ahead and click on accept.
Just because a guest is new and has no reviews yet isn't a valid reason to decline- everyone starts out with no reviews, both guests and hosts, so we all need that first review.
The key to getting good guests is communication, and recognizing red flags. I've had several guests who had no reviews yet, and they were lovely guests. Newbies might require a bit more hand-holding, not quite understand how the platform works, may fail to read your info, but you just have to deal with that as it comes up.
