Cancellation when hosting

[Adele37]

Hi, 

After receiving an instant booking, we have had to cancel the reservation due to the length of booking only being 2 days. 

We need a longer booking for the Easter period and have now extended the minumum length on the booking. However, the 2 days that we had to cancel are now blocked out. 

How do we enure these days are available again for booking?

Thanks in advance 

[Gillian19]

@Adele37 You would have to ring Airbnb and see if they will unblock them. No guarantees though as it is your responsibility to ensure your calendar is accurate. 

[Fred13]

   Not to be the bearer of bad news but they will probably not unblock those dates because they are trying to prevent hosts from not honoring their initial agreement with a specific guest or try to 'upgrade' their bookings, either in price or in other ways, minimum stay being a classic example.

   You can always have your own web site or list in another booking site (VRBO, etc) and bypass the block.

[Momi0]

@Adele37  

Unfortunately the chances of you getting it reopened are pretty slim.  As @Fred13  (host) mentioned, this policy is in place to keep hosts from cancelling on guests who do use the IB feature.  Perhaps, it would be a good idea for you to stop using IB or change your length of minimum stays for the entire year or a select number of months, (all of this is done in SETTINGS). - Decide now what is best for you and your listing for 2018.  I am already working on my 2019 calendar 

If you haven't had a chance to review the cancellation policy on Airbnb, you should definitely look that up in the HELP section of your AIrbnb account.   So many hosts make the same mistake over and over because they didnt' read the policies on cancellations.  Your calendar was blocked because you cancelled a perfectly good booking.  

Here's a helpful tip to avoid this happening again.  IF for some reason you find yourself not paying attention to your calendar and its settings again, [and you get another short IB booking], write to the guests IMMEDIATELY asking them if they are possibly interested in a longer stay at a special price, if they say "NO THANKS", then offer to refund them 100% if they would be willing to stay elsewhere and help them find another place for the same price that would want your booking but be honest & up front about why you are asking them this, and then ask Airbnb to help move them.  But you potentially run the risk of Airbnb charging you for that cancellation and thats never a good thing.  You have to decide what you want more, losing an IB, being charged for cancelling it and getting your calendar blocked again or hosting a short term booking.  Seems a bit too stressful to me. 

Unless you fix your settings for each month, Airbnb will continue to block your calendar for each IB booking you cancel.....UNLESS you are cancelling based on "not being comfortable with the guests".  That's a different story.   Good Luck.