Suspicious Booking

[Raoul12]

Hi everyone,

The past few months I have been getting some strange and shady booking and would highly appreciate if you could give me your opinion on that.

Basically, it happen under different booking type,

1.- profile existe and has a ton of good comment but the guest is moving every week to a new locations in a différent city and there reason of visit is always a bit strange and difficult to verify.

2.- A guy request a booking for to of his friends who sadly have an account but for some reason they can't book. He has a verified ID and has been on airbnb for a 2 years but has 0 review and no one has a review about him etc..

3.- Extremely recent account, lots of moving around and shady reason to visit my town.

Basically I am worried that those booking are related to prostitution or to porn as a few friend worn me that some people use Airbnb to move around doing there business. Tell me if I am being paranoïd but again this morning someone requested a booking for two friends, he will not be there and apparently they have Credit Card problem and can't book themselve. The guy has no review at all and says that his friends are coming for a conference at the local university. One there is no conférence about the topic he mentioned, 2 his profile is empty of any comments etc..

What do you think? Should I report him?

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

@Raoul12 Definitely flag the profile - lots of red flags: credit card won't work, third party booking etc - decline

[Lesley67]

Not sure about that but I also am having done suspicions about potential guests. They have only just joined up, there is nothing about them on their profile at all and when I ask for some information I just don't hear back from them. 

[Linda108]

@Raoul12  I agree with @Gerry-And-Rashid0.  If you flag them, Air BNB has the ability to do some cross checking.

@Lesley67  Whenever you feel uncomfortable about a booking inquiry and are not able to have meaningful communication, decline the request.  I have hosted many new Air BNB travelers but only because they took the time to respond to my questions.  

[Sylvie217]

Hi I am new at this from this Month. I have 3 booking for May. Can you give me some tips on how to communicate with the guest and check if they are fine. Also I had published my ads and was in the page where we can enter our cancellation policies to make my choice the ads had just been there 2 minutes and someone book for August 2 days. 

I was still trying to fegure out how to block days on the calendar and August was not blocked yet. I wrote to the guest to ask him if he could cancel because I was not sure if my place would be available in August and that I had just posted the ad so I could complet the hosting form with my policies and cleaning fees etc. 

He was very kind and reply that he had try but beacuse I had but a 50% no refund on cancellation I would have to cancel because he did not want to pay for the charge. I did and cancelled but Airbnb showed a page that said that if I cancel often they could make my ad appear less and event block me has a host.

How can we cancel if we are not confortable with a guest without being evaluate has a bad host from Airbnb?

I appreciate your help on that.