Burden of declining guests who don't meet Airbnb's requirements and my house rules

[Yan3]

Hello fellow hosts,

I'm still relatively new to hosting.  So far, it's been a good learning experience, but occasionally, I get requests from guests who are not verified,  nor do they meet my house rules.  In such cases, I have to make up sensible reasons to decline their requests, and I have to worry that if I decline too much, my listing will get delisted.  So that's why I feel it's a burden.

I specifically checked off "Require guests to go through verification" and also selected "Guests who meet Airbnb's requirements and are recommended by other hosts" only, which means that the guest can book only if they meet the following criteria:

Confirmed email address
Introductory message
Confirmed phone number
Agree to your House Rules (Not child-friendly, no pets, etc.)
Profile photo
Payment information

Airbnb should automatically block unqualified guests from contacting me.  But still, I am getting requests from people who don't match the criteria.  How is it possible for these requests to come through?

What is your solution to this problem?

Thanks,

Yan

[Gudrun12]

How do you reach out to AirBnb to get help resolving an issue? There are dates blocked in my calender, that should not be. What can I do? Best, G

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

Problem  - they can make a request and block your calendar if they have started the verification process, but not completed it. We have had this twice and it's quite annoying that AirBnB allows technically unverified guests to do this.

[Dede0]

@Gerry-And-Rashid0 Agreed., and more... I was quite surprised and annoyed that a guest who requested a booking had no payment method on file with AirBnB, but the dates remained blocked for 48 hours while they "worked that out".

[Dede0]

@Yan3 Based on your comment that you "selected Guests who meet Airbnb's requirements and are recommended by other hosts", it sounds to me like you have Instant Booking turned on. Turn it off. Whatever you do, turn it *off*. You'll then be able to examine all aspects of each guest in advance,  including asking them additional questions. Instant Booking is a Bad Thing for most hosts; it's more suited for large operations that have many listings and, in effect, operate like hotels.

[Linda900]

Appreciate all the insight from fellow hosts (and a guest or two) here.  I listed my first room in 2013.  I now have two rooms listed all the time and a third (occupied by my roommate) sometimes listed when my roommate travels for extended periods of time.

In the last six months to a year I have noticed a fairly significant overall decline in the quality of the guests making inquiries. They don't seem to read the details of the property/room and then nitpick me to death in the reviews for things that were clearly spelled out.  I had one guest who told me he delisted his property from Airbnb because of this same sort of thing - the time, cost and hassle to maintain the property became higher than the payoff.  

I'm just blowing off a little steam here because I have so enjoyed this experience up until the last half year or so - it is disappointing to see this trend. Like many of you, my pricing is my pricing - I do offer long term discounts but know I am now losing guests to far lower priced, newer listing in the neighborhood.  I've done the math - it's not worth lowering the prices just to fill beds and coupled with the insane expectations of some guests, I've been thinking of making the rooms available on another platform.  

Thanks for listening - interested in hearing if any of you are experiencing some of these same challenges.

[Lucy-and-Loic0]

After reading this thread, I turned off instant-book.  Apparently the safety feature of requiring gov. i.d. is now ONLY available to hosts who accept instant-book.  No instant book, no safety feature!