Provide contact information before the reservation gets confirmed, Airbnb is blocking my messages

[Leonardo570]

There is a potential Guest that requires to visit the house in order to confirm whether they will make the reservation via Airbnb.

I tried to provide the location of the house and a phone number, also the street address.

Airbnb is blocking all numbers as it thinks I'm trying to connect with the user to possibly arrange something outside the platform, but the truth is the potential Guest wants to visit the house first.

And we are Okay with that, but can't provide the details as Airbnb is removing the numbers from my message.

I can try using words instead of numbers, but it looks suspicious and I'm afraid Airbnb will think I am actually trying to bypass the system, which is not the case.

Any ideas? Thanks

[Sarah977]

@Leonardo570  There is no reason to let a prospective guest pre-view your place, and it isn't advisable. More often than not, the reason the guest wants to do this is exactly because they want to try to convince you to let them book off-platform. There are also scammers and thieves who want to do this to scope out your place and what's in it, and come back to rob you later. A guest should be able to determine if they want to book your place by looking at your photos, reading your listing description, and asking you any further questions they may have. 

Guests don't "require" a previewing- if they are concerned about making sure it's what they want because they are looking for a long-term booking, you can suggest that they book for a night or two and then decide if they want to book for longer.

And I've read posts here from hosts who said they let people preview the place a few times, and would never do it again- it was just a waste of their time- they spent half an hour showing the people around, after waiting for them 20 minutes past the agreed meeting time, and they never booked anyway.

[Leonardo570]

Thanks for providing your point of view and advise. Sounds reasonable 

[Lisa723]

@Leonardo570 Airbnb really doesn't want you to communicate off-platform and will go to great lengths to prevent it before you have a confirmed booking. If you really want to do this you could advise them to book, whereupon you will have phone numbers, then cancel within 48 hours if they don't approve the preview. You could also do things like spell out a phone number. However, as @Sarah977 advised, I personally wouldn't have much interest in helping a guest to preview.

Of note: I recently got an inquiry from a guest who included their phone number. Airbnb not only blocked the number, but actually flagged the inquiry to me as "suspicious" due to this, and popped up a dialog box inviting me to report the guest to them for attempting to communicate off-platform.  (I didn't.)

[Robert4657]

I have a related problem--I have multiple listings and often the customer inquires then wants to see another room type and AirBnb blocks me from sending the link to the new room to the customer to review. The answer from AirBnb was 1) Have the customer book the first room so then you can send the link and then they can cancel the first room and book the second room OR 2) ask the customer to send their email written with spaces between their name and the @ sign and the mail .com. Crazy response