I have been an AirBNB host for almost a year. I host the guest room in the same apartment that my wife and me live in. Since this is a platform for sharing your personal space with travelers, I need to know more about the guest (i.e. whether they have had favorable reviews from other hosts, have they shared enough details about them for me to be comfortable, whether there is some publicly available information about them from reliable sources, etc). Also, I only want to host for a certain number of days of a month (around 10-12) but without that many bookings, I cannot predict which days to block on my calendar. What if all days of the month are reserved for within a couple of hours when I am not able to access my AirBNB profile when I absolutely did not want this situation to arise. I have been a SuperHost in all the cycles when I have been evaluated and all my responses have been within 24 hours (in fact more than 90% of my responses have been within a few hours). However, by making selection of instant booking as default, it is putting hosts such as myself at a significant disadvantage as potential guests usually will not even get to see my listing as hardly anyone will unselect instant booking. If AirBNB infact wants to promote instant booking, then they should add additional options such as guests who have at least a certain number of ratings, with a certain level of rating, with some public profile, etc so as to make hosts more comfortable.
