I didn't want to share this information with the public because I felt like this kind of bug can be used by hosts to make more money by blocking other host's calendars. I've sent this bug to Airbnb multiple times in the past year and since I haven't seen any progress so I hope that releasing it publicly will attract more attention to get it fixed.
The effects of this bug is simple. Listings can be blocked for a range of dates without sending any notifications to the host and their listing will not show up in search results for 24 hours.
To do this, someone must create a new airbnb account without verifying it whether it's through email, photo id, etc. With this new unverified airbnb account, you can request to book a place with any dates allowed by the listing, but it won't confirm your reservation. Your reservation request won't even be sent to the host. Instead, airbnb has a process where your email, photo id, etc verifications must be complete before it notifies the host that there is a new request. While airbnb is waiting for the verifications to be completed, the listing will not be available for any other guests to book for 24 hours.
In one of the forums I'm in, there are hosts taking advantage of this bug to block other host's calendar so there are less competition in the search results. Someone is also creating a bot that automates the blocking of another host's listings so they don't ever show up in the search results allowing exploiters to decrease supply in the market and increase their own listing prices.
One of my calendar is blocked for Dec 23rd check-in (8 hours from now) and I can't do anything about it because there's no button to decline the guest and contacting Airbnb also requires up to 24 hours for a response. (Airbnb used to allow Community Experts, the 1st person you talk to through their support chat and calls, to cancel the guest, but they've revoked that privilege. Now, they can only forward the ticket to Support Specialists which takes up yo 24 hours for a response who has the permissions to cancel guests.
