The booking guest never stayed at our property but his 2 friends were wonderful...Should I leave a review?

[Tracy792]

I'm still new to this and have gotten so much good advice from the community.  My guests have so far been the actual people who have booked their stay and the reviews have been excellent from me.  This time however, we got an instant booking from a verified quest who said he was coming with 2 guys from work.  He asked me to pass on the check-in information to one of the guys and gave me his work email address.  He never added the 2 guests to the reservation (I asked them to), and I communicated with the guest via email with no problem.  They have been excellent guests but if I leave a review it will be credited to his (or her) account and all I know is the account name (Jt) with 1 good review.  Should I leave my review for Jt and say he booked but never stayed, and that his group was great?  It seems like that might look like a bad thing and I have nothing negative to report about any of it-the booking or the guests.  Any suggestions would be much appreciated...

[Leanne99 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tracy792 ,

It can be a bit tricky with business bookings.

I have a few regulars inc a work team of engineers and another touring theatre trio who both have bookings made by their office manager (who had never actually been a guest). In theory this isn’t allowed by Airbnb but it’s a common occurrence I imagine.

Just leave an honest factual review.

’JT booked my place for a work trip with two colleagues. JT did not stay however the two work colleagues were great guests who followed the house rules etc...’

Also, as far as communicating with guests by email and off-platform, especially someone who isn’t a registered guest, I always try to duplicate the message through the Airbnb system as well just to keep a record there even if it’s just my end of the conversation.

It’s backup in case of an issue. Essentially just cc’ the message to the original person making the booking.

Happy hosting!

cheers,

Leanne

[Tracy792]

Thank you @Leanne99 

This sounds like the best way to communicate with guests who are not on the listing: I realized that it is worth a big effort to get the adult guests to join the reservation.  Especially in this case of the 3rd party business booking.  

There was also the added effort of cc'ing when one contact was a mobile phone # via text and the other a business email.

[Anonymous]

@Tracy792  The question you have to ask yourself is, how can your review help a future host make an informed decision about the actual account holder?

It's very fortunate that the people who stayed at your place treated it well, bt the person who actually booked the stay sounds pretty dodgy. First he deceived you into taking a third party booking and then he refused to follow your instructions when you asked him to amend it accordingly. So it really would be a disgrace if a future host took a booking from him on your recommendation. 

[Gwen386]

@Tracy792 

I agree with @Anonymous   You would be doing me a disservice as a host by reviewing/rating anyone who wasn’t the actual registered guest who stayed at your place. And absolutely do not correspond with the registered guest off of airbnb’s platform. I was taken aback that you started communicating with the unregistered guest via email.

You were very lucky that nothing bad happened with these guests. 

[Huma0]

@Tracy792 

You can register with Airbnb as a business booker for a company, so there is no reason for the guest to make the booking in a shady way, pretending he is going to stay when he isn't. That is a third party booking and is against Airbnb policy. What it also means is that you are no longer covered by Airbnb should anything go wrong, and there are lots of other possible issues with third party bookings, so you're lucky really that there were no problems with the guests. 

Personally, I don't appreciate guests being deceptive in order to book my listings. Remember also that your review is not appearing on the profile of the people who stayed as they were never on the booking, so it's not going to damage their Airbnb profiles if you just tell the truth.

I'd suggest you just be factual about it.

"X booked for himself and two co-workers. I asked him to add them to the booking, but he never did and X himself never actually stayed, making this a third party booking which I never agreed to. Luckily X's co-workers were excellent guests and didn't cause any problems. However, I cannot comment on whether X would be a good guest as he never stayed and I would have appreciated it if he had been more honest about the booking."

[Sudsrung0]

@Tracy792 

3rd party bookings can land you in a load of trouble, in this case it worked out ok, 

[Helen744]

@Tracy792 i would send a message to say 'please do not review me as you did not stay 'unless one of those who stayed is going to do the review. Otherwie also tell the bookee that third party bookings are not allowed on aAirbnb and in future maybe they could go through 'Airbnb for work' if it still exists. If you do review then state that the guests were good and use their first names because lots of good reviews for people who did not stay is misleading and potentially dangerous for future hosts. H

[Huma0]

@Helen744 

There is still a website for it: https://www.airbnbforwork.com/

I don't know if you have to meet certain criteria to sign up, but it seems like it might be worth doing if booking for colleagues/employees is a regular thing as there are tools to enable the communication (meaning the host doesn't have to go off platform and email non-registered guests etc.)

[Helen744]

@Huma0  If I was continuing to be a host I would have explored that option . Last time I looked it was about having work areas and providing a lockbox and having very good and reliable wifi and a couple of other things . Certainly worth looking at . H

[Huma0]

@Helen744 

I looked at it ages ago, but it seemed to be tailored to non home-stay properties. I don't want a lock box. I am not sure why that's necessary for a work stay anyway? Some of the criteria seemed a bit odd to me considering that I've hosted a lot of guests on work trips, so surely I am offering what they are looking for.

[Helen744]

@Huma0 i am not sure how instant book would go . ? Early on i hosted a lot of third party groups because i di not really know what i was doing but it worked out okay . then that market disappeared overnight because Airbnb coralled it into this area.The options that they offer are more to do with accounting for the firm who uses them , so people can claim or account for fringe benefit taxes etcetera , I think.Some of the workers were a bit rough around the edges and hard on houses . Like wind farm workers from other countrys on work visas , often with little English ,and generally groups. Religous groups. Work pays for them to be together in certain areas for months at a time . I often see newbie hosts say ' I have a booking for a month ' but no details . These can often be these work groups trying to fly under the radar. in other words there are good groups and bad groups .the idea of the lone worker is not so realistic but there must be some . my stumbling block at the time was the internet as it would have been an extra cost at a time when we were not getting enough guests with this so called 'summer release.We only offer pay as you go pocket wifi .To pay for it monthly would not have made sense without guests .no one has ever complained about our wi fi and they all use it but it must be continuous for' airbnb for work'. any way still worth looking into again i would say especially now . All the best H

[Helen744]

offering a lock box can be a very private arrangement and only mean an extra key to access in case of being locked out and workers can be shift workers and come and go very late or ver.y early . Mostly these workers leave at 5 am and are back at four and asleep by 9. H

[Huma0]

@Helen744 

Yes, perhaps now that I am not so inexperienced, I could get my head around it. However, there are a couple of reasons I haven't.

Firstly, I prefer to meet guests and show them around, so I wouldn't normally want to offer a self check in option, but then again, perhaps you could still do that and afterwards have a system where the guests could use a lock box.

Secondly, I was advised by a locksmith that a lock box or digital lock could void my home insurance policy, as here in the UK, insurers are very specific about what kind of lock you have. I don't know if that's true or not. I did some research into it, but it was very confusing with a lot of conflicting information. The only conclusion I came to was that it varies from insurer to insurer, so one must check the fine print...

[Helen744]

@Huma0 I think the lock box thing is only to have one availble ,or its just a spare key after all as far as I can tell , so the guest has access at odd hours . I think you could host any way you generally do . H