Always close out a guest inquiry properly.

[Rubén16]

Hi all,

I always wondered why my search ranking did move much on airbnb, I done a lot of research updated my listing, my profile, my pictures and much more however doing all that,  my listing still did not move much in the search ranking.

Then one day I was scrolling through my airbnb inbox, and I noticed 4 booking inquiries that I had responded to however to my suprise when I clicked on the word "inquiry" in the in box next to the guest the inquiry was still waiting on a response from me, it said something like "please respond to this guest".

Thereafter I opened the guest inquiry closed it out with a decline "in this situation" I then went back to my inbox and it now showed declined on the guests message.

This is very inportant because the airbnb clock is waiting on a response from the host, after closing out all of my inbox inquiries properly my search ranking improved quite well.

So long story short none of your airbnb inbox messages should say INQUIRY next to them, they should say accepted, declined.....etc. but never inquiry.

Any thoughts?

[Robin4]

@Rubén16

Well they actually do Ruben! When an inquiry comes to you you will first be faced with field which will say 'Pre-approve......Decline'. Sure you can simply respond to and send a message, but the automated system is waiting for a response to the fact that you had an inquiry! It wants to know how are you going to handle the inquiry?

Sure, you can just talk but everytime you go to your messages there will be one that is saying in a large red field........'pre-approve/ decline'

Always best to pre-approve, if the inquiry doesn't go any further over the next 24 hours, the pre-approval will just lapse. At least you have done your bit!

Cheers.......Rob

[Jenny-and-Tom0]

 Thanks.@Rubén16. I noticed this a few years ago as well.  I ended up trying out a bunch of automated messaging tools to help with this and found one that will automatically pre-approve an inquiry after a certain amount of time if I haven't pre-approved or declined them myself.  It's been really helpful because it also guarantees that my response rate is short.  I'm sure there are a few tools out there that will do it but I settled on Superhost Tools and have been really happy with it.

[Amy-and-Brian0]

I don't think what  you say is true about "closing out" by being forced to choose pre-approval or decline.

I have two "pending requests" - one is even labeled "not possible". So why it's still pending? No idea. There's no choice to decline or approve. But it's still a pending inquiry. It can't be closed out by me.

One is an inquiry weeks old that they won't respond back. I'm certainly NOT going to "pre-approve" someone who isn't responsive, but I'm also not going to decline them as the request is for August and they may change their minds. Declining them would be a lousy thing to do for a prospect.

My views skyrocketed yesterday - people were just searching for very specific vacation locations. That might just be what happened to you as well?

[Emilia42]

@Rubén, you do not need to pre approve or decline an INQUIRY. You only need to respond and this will stop the ticking clock if you refresh the page. The only thing that will be affected is your "response time." You only need to accept or approve RESERVATION REQUESTS. If you decline too many requests this will hurt your standing.