My response Rating

[Amanda54]

I started a conversation with some guests who requested my apartment, thinking it was just a room. I even requested that they withdraw their request as they wanted to arrive early whilst there were guests in the property and leave their luggage in the apartment after check-out time. They did not reply when I came back with a suggestion, so now it will affect my response rating. Because of time difference, the request expired.  Is there anything I can do?

Should I just cancel all requests before I get penalized?

Please advise me.

[Cynthia-and-Chris1]

There is no penalty.  You have responded.  Your response rate is fine.

[David126]

If you can not agree in time, just cancel, you can still chat and they can ask to book later if needed.

[Dede0]

@Amanda54 Regardless of what others have said, there *are* implications (possibly including penalties) if you don't approve/decline within 24 hours, even if you have responded to the potential guest. You should always choose Accept/Decline within the 24 hour window (I set an alarm on my phone). If you're still involved in discussions with the guest, go ahead and Decline and explain to them why. They can initiate a new booking request or inquiry if they want.

Personally, I ALWAYS decline potential guests if they haven't gotten back to me within 12-18 hours of their initial contact, or if the back-and-forth goes on that long. In my opinion, those are guests that I simply don't want to have to deal with.

[Hector56]

That's really clear and helpful. I've been with AirBnb several months now and wondering all this time why some of my responses to guests did not count as "responses"! What I particularly dislike is the lack of clarity from Airbnb and the terminological ambiguity of the word "response" .

[Gary111]

I agree entirely with you Hector.  Anyway, I'll start following the advice given above here. It's seem peculiar that Airbnb's system is predicated on an illogical assumption that any enquiry must end up as a Yes or No in 24 hrs, irrespective of any conversation that's going on about optional dates, questions about the house and nearby facilities, etc.  But in future I will click 'decline' if the enquiry isn't clear and sorted same day, and send a message to explain why.   But I can't help thinking that many potential guests would find it odd to be promptly declined whilst in the middle of an online exchange of reasonable questions.  I wish Airbnb staff would read this thread and have a re-think.

[Lois-and-Darryl0 · Accepted solution]

I agree with Dede.  Just two nights ago, I received a Booking Request from a Guest who wanted to bring a dog.  (We're not dog friendly.)  I immediately wrote back and asked a couple questions about the dog, etc., and then wrote again about 10 minutes later.  14 hours later, they wrote and said that they couldn't stay and I asked them to withdraw their Request.  I didn't know that they didn't withdraw (or maybe you can't withdraw a Booking Request???), and EVEN THOUGH I HAD REPLIED QUICKLY, the Booking Request expired and I had not Accepted or Declined.  I immediately received an Airbnb email saying that because I had not responded (and I had) that those dates were now blocked on my calendar, and that the position of my listing might be affected.  So, yes, you do need to Accept or Decline within 24 hours or have those dates blocked on your calendar, at the least.  Good Luck.

[Amanda54]

Thank you so very much for all your help with this. I am slowly but surely learning how to manage all of this and the Community has been most helpful!

Amanda

[Gary111]

Thank you to all above.  I wonder if Airbnb admin bother to read these postings so that they understand how they're failing to make the process and rules clear.  Here's my story:
I've been a host for a week. I've had three enquiries. The first was an instant booking from someone who had not looked at the location and thought our house was 100km from where it is. I responded to them immediately with a message (inside Airbnb site, I don't use email to respond) pointing this out, so they cancelled. The next one was just an enquiry message but they made a similar mistake. I responded to point it out, and pre-approved them anyway as I wasn't sure what to do, but I didn't hear from them again. The third one also hadn't read my listing carefully (including that it's a house not an apartment and we don't allow pets) so when I clarified both those things (again, within hours of the enquiry message) they replied to effect of withdrawing the enquiry. But now the system appears to be telling me I must either pre-approve this enquirer (makes no sense as they've dropped the enquiry), or decline (which presumably hurts my rating when in truth the mistake is from the enquirer and not my fault). My point is that I have responded accurately and very quickly, within hours of each enquiry, but the dashboard shows my response rate as 0%. How can this be? And if I decline these careless enquirers, does that make me look likea villain (maybe penalised?) for seeming to be refusing all bookers? 
Thanks Gary

[Dede0]

@Gary111 In general, declining doesn't affect your status wih AirBnB. Maybe if you decline lots and lots of time, but even then, declining is far less of a ding than not taking action within the 24-hour window. (Or, worst  of all, cancelling a booking.)

[Gary111]

Thanks Dede, that's great advice.  Much appreciated.

[Janine71]

I have been trying to start a new thread by this page does not seem to let me do anything but "reply." 

Sorry if I'm jumping into the wrong conversation, but here goes...

How do I get my Repsonse Rating back up?

I responded within 24 hours to an inquirey from a smoker (I'm a smoke-free property, as clearely listed).  I sent a cheerful and polite reply declining.  They replied back thanking me.  I moved on to the next booking.

I coninued to get airbnb prompts to reply to the nice lady who smokes... (which of course I ignored) Now I think my repsonse rate was impacted.

How do I fix that?  If booked since then, so obviously it's not stopping the train, but still... I work hard to be responsive.

There are plenty of things we cannot control-  this is one of the things we can and I'd like to influence it positively, if possible.

There does not seem to any direct support from airbnb for owners, 

If anyone knows, please advise...

Thanks.

-j

[Gary111]

I definitely sympathise Janine - I've had the same problem. Even worse, Airbnb have now made my place almost invisible. My listing is still there but you will not find it unless you check every single entry for the town where it is.  This is possibly as a result of my response rating being low. And that's despite me actually responding to absolutely every enquiry same day. Eventually I started declining bookings from people who seemed not to have read any of the property particulars, (this was the advice I got from another host on this forum), but perhaps that also affected my rating.  I don't know because Airbnb won't tell you. Airbnb has quite rapidly morphed from the sort of happy club thing it started out as, into a megacorp devoid of human contact and running on computer algorithms that seem to have no sense of what is really happening during an enquiry process.  So I have 5 star reviews from the two sets of guests I actualy hosted this year, and about a dozen declined/cancelled enquiries, all responded to thoroughly and most not completed because the enquiry made no sense. By "made no sense" I mean they wanted to bring pets even though my policy clearly says no pets, they want to be in Dubai even though my house is nowhere near Dubai, they want to bring 10 people even though my house only sleeps 6, etc etc etc.  The to and fro conversations to discuss these points take days, which means you miss this critical 24 hour window to conclude the booking as demanded by Airbnb algorithms. So my response rating is deemed low and my listing has been downgraded to the point of invisibility and I no longer receive any enquiries at all -  zero!
All of which means I'm going to leave Airbnb.  So I doubt I'll be seeng these messages much longer.  I wish you better luck.  kind regards,   Gary.

[Thomas-and-Gloria0]

I agree they should really work on their algorithms, they don't make sense in many cases!

[Catherine-and-Bob0]

Hi Gary,

I absolutely get your frustration.  I've worked hard to respond in a reasonable and timely way - yet my response rate has dropped in the last 24 hours because I've had someone make a pseudo-booking to get access to me to make a hampers sales pitch.  Because I didn't realise there was a pseudo-booking attached and only saw the message in my Inbox, I saw it was a sales pitch not a booking so I moved on to other guest issues and got back to it later.  Big mistake!   As there was a booking attached I've now got a 'fix your performance' note from Airbnb.  Very disheartening as a new host who has genuinely worked hard (as demonstrated by 4 five star reviews on the trot) to communicate well with guests in a respectful, friendly and timely way.  Sheez.  What do you have to do to satisfy Airbnb?  If I wasn't getting good bookings at a slow time of the year I'd probably go elsewhere as well!   Kind regards,  Catherine (South Australia).