I received an interesting enquiry in the early hours of the morning from a person saying they had stayed with us before and would like to stay again, but want a returning guest discount. Even more interesting is the fact that they sent the same content in the message to us on another platform, with the incorrect name for the owner. I happen to know the other owner very well and confirmed with him that he had also got the same message around the same time with the same demand for discount. They must have realised there error with including a name after the Hi in their message as the one we both got through AirBnB simply started with we have stayed with you before and are considering returning. The funny thing is our names are so different that it couldnt be an accident to get them wrong and the fact there was an incorrect name flagged my attention straight away. Whilst we do host first time users, this one has been around for a couple of years and has no reviews on either platform and this in itself makes me suspicious.
I have a record of who we have hosted through both platforms we use as well as the guests that the resort gets directly and books with us, this guest has never stayed with either of us, directly or indirectly, and appears to be trying a new approach (new to us anyway) to get a discount. Given our rates are already a budget rate compared to what they will pay directly through the resort, both of us as owners have sent a message back saying we don't do discounts as our rates are already discounted and recommended they contact the resort reservations team directly to ask for a discount. The response there will be an emphatic no, the rates are the rates and thats it.
Whilst we do have return guests and the rates we offer them are discounted, this is an offer we make to the guests periodically as oposed to an unsolicited demand for a discount. I ould never contact a host asking for a discount even if we had genuinely stayed with the host before.
