Penalities for Declining same Day Booking Request?

[Anthony608]

I rarely have open same day booking availability and also have "Advanced Notice" selected on my account.  Still, every so often, I will get late night requests to check in on the same day, often from local accounts with no reviews which is a huge red flag.

Some others have posted that declining these types of requests actually counts as a cancellation and can hurt the host's standing!  is this really true?

[Sarah977]

@Anthony608  I don't understand. How can you have advance notice set, yet also be open to same day bookings? Those things are mutually exclusive.

Aside from that confusing discrepancy, as for declining, if you have advance notice set, a guest can't send a request for a same day booking, because they can't enter blocked dates. They would have to send an inquiry instead, where they would have to enter open dates, but could inquire about any dates they want to. 

But you don't need to decline an inquiry, ever. All you need to do is message back.

And no, declining a request doesn't count as a cancellation. It's just a decline. 

[Anthony608]

@Sarah977- Its a message saying "Soandso wants to book a trip" and then a notice that I have 24 hours to decline, although the clock itself will be set to expire at midnight.  I think it is the same thing as an inquiry, but others on this forum have said they were "charged a decline" when not accepting such bookings.

[Sarah977]

@Anthony608  Well, I've never gotten one of those. I'd like to see a screenshot of how it looks. Or can you link to a thread where you read about this, because I've never seen it mentioned.

If Airbnb is now allowing guests to put in actual requests for unavailable dates, that's really bad.

I've never heard the phrase "charged a decline". That doesn't make sense. Certainly if you decline a request it affects your acceptance rate. 

But if those are actually inquiries, you don't need to decline, just message back saying you don't take same day bookings.