@Susan-and-Thomas0
Hi there guys! The procedure for pre-approve is this:
There are three ways a guest can come to you....
1/. They can book immediately via Instant book where the guest likes you listing, sees that it is available for the dates they require, pays and it becomes a confirmed booking. You are sent a notification of the booking and asked to send the guest a welcoming reply.
2/. They can send a reservation request which requires you to either accept or decline, and you have 24 hours to do that. If this is what you receive it means the guest has their credit card out and simply wants to book dependant on your acceptance of their request.
3/. The third option, on your profile is a tab 'Contact Host' and if the guest selects this option they will be requested to select dates that are free on your calendar and send a message to you. The first thing you must do is decide to either pre-approve this guest or decline them. This is why the system requires a response from you, not just a message to the guest.
If you pre-approve the guest, this tells the guest that you are in a position to take their booking should they wish to proceed. It does not committ you to anything! You are still free to take bookings from other enquiries for those dates. It just says..."Hey, I'm available, what do you want to know?" You are not committed to a booking with this guest! You can find out through the subsequent message stream that this guest would be entirely unsuitable to host and you can withdraw the pre-approval and if the guest continues on to send a reservation request, you can decline it and state your reason for declining is, the guest would not be a good fit for your property, and there will be no penalty to you. A pre-approval lasts for 24 hours from the time it was sent to you. If the guest does not proceed to a booking request in that 24 hour period the whole thing just disappears and a message will remain on your messages that the pre-approval against that guests profile has lapsed, but you will still have message contact. You can reactivate it by sending the guest a special offer which the guest would then send a request for another pre-approval. Sometimes it is not possible to proceed to a booking in the 24 hour pre-approval time limit....arrangements may need to be made by the guest in order to confirm a booking....Elderly relative needs to be placed in care...children need to be relocated! There are a number of reasons why 24 hours is not enough time for a guest to get their affairs sorted out. It is sometimes a courtesy to tell the guest through the message stream that the pre-approval is about to lapse and you would be prepared to grant another should they need more time to make a decision!
Now, someone has said over the past few days that the pre-approval time has been extended to 7 days but I have seen nothing official on that as yet and the official rules still state 24 hours as the pre-approval time limit....but be pepared that that may be the case.
There is a requirement with Airbnb that you will respond to a pre-approval request, either yes or no because, if you don't it will affect your response time stats which ultimately will penalise you in search rankings. But removing a pre-approval and declining a booking request following a pre-approval will not penalise you in any way. You have satisfied the system and already stated the reason for declining when you removed the pre-approval.
@Susan-and-Thomas0 I know this is long but what I have said here is important for you to know. You will be much better hosts if you understand fully how to treat guest approaches.....Good luck.
Cheers.....Rob