Melissa,
I know how frustrated you must feel right now as this situation is one of my most stressful aspects of hosting. If you can try to keep the space, room, or house that you use for Airbnb ready all the time. The Boy Scout motto "Be prepared" is one I live by now as I have had some pretty unusual situations arise with regards to lack of communication especially if the Guest is a first time user. I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt up to a certain point. One of my best lines of defense is to always and only communicate with Guests through the Airbnb email platform and then you will always have a record of just what happened. I would also like to strongly recommend that you write clear house rules and then do not break your own house rules. I had a first time user want to stay for a week and yet I could not get her to finish her verification, set up a payment method or respond back to my courteous emails trying to help her. Her first inquiry went 13 hours without a response after letting her know that she had to finish her verification. I called Airbnb and she did not answer their phone call or email. another 8 hours go by, no response and after a 4th email from me I let her know that I was not able to confirm her reservation until she completed her verification, Airbnb calls again and literally walks her through it. Within 3 minutes of being verified she texts me saying "You have to ACCEPT NOW!" and while I am trying to go through the steps of accepting her, sends the same text 2 minutes later. When I try to accept her booking I discover she still hadn't finished the payment verification.........on and on this went for 3 days! Make a very long story short after numerous emails many times waiting for hours after each of her ultimatums I get her booked and what does she do but tell me after I have accepted her booking that she is bringing an additional person! I told her she would have to change her booking at which point she got nasty and so I had Airbnb look at all the emails and the fact that 3 times she had not responded to their emails or phone calls they canceled her booking, telling her why. Of course in her mind, because she did not get what she wanted with little or no effort on her part it was still my fault and her correspondence degenerated from there and I just did not respond to her rants.......very frustrating. I share this incident with you to let you know that staying on the Airbnb platform, not breaking your own rules and have a strict cancellation policy are there for a good reason. If you do these 3 things it will help you immensely so that you are not put in the position of canceling a booking which if at all possible you should never do!
Try not to stress as most Guests are wonderful and some of the newer ones don't really understand how the booking process works. Good, clear communication is the key. You don't ever have to be bullied or pressured into accepting a reservation from someone who is likely to be more trouble than their worth.
Happy Hosting,
Eloise