Pre-approve or decline

[Carol724]

Why do Airbnb keep sending messages about the same enquiry asking to pre-approve or decline.  The potential guest changed their mind but I kept getting messages over three days!

So how do i neither pre-approve or decline when the enquiry is over?

Eventually I delcined to stop the messages coming.  Probably now this is a black mark for me as a host.

[Sarah977]

@Carol724  You don't need to Pre-approve or Decline an Inquiry (as opposed to a Booking Request). You just need to message the guest back within 24 hours. Ignore the proddings from Airbnb to Pre-approve or Decline, you won't be penalized in any way as long as you have responded to the guest. Whereas you will be penalized for declining too many requests or inquiries (Acceptance rate) or not responding at all (Response rate).

[Carol724]

Thank you. But will they ever stop prodding!! Carol

[Sarah977]

@Carol724  They want to encourage as many bookings as they can, that's why they do that (just like they want you to basically list your room at a loss-"You could get XX more % of bookings if you lowered your price to the cost of a hot dog!") No one is actually looking at your messages with a guest to see that the Inquiry was inappropriate to your listing requirements and offerings, or that the guest wasn't really anywhere ready to commit to a booking, but was just asking some questions. It's just a stupid algorithmic computer bot that sends out those annoying proddings.

If you clear your cache, those messages usually disappear. Also you can go to your dashboard and remove them once they've expired.