Is Airbnb’s verification process a verification process at all.

[Raoul27]

I recently had a guest do an Instant Check In on my property. 

Firstly I had Guest requirements set up, so they needed to meet all my requirements beforehand or else Airbnb shouldn’t allow them to book automatically.

I received a notification of the booking confirmation and viewing the guests profile, there was only 1 guest recommendation - Airbnb requirement stated recommendation from other hosts (being the plural - a potential big difference to 1 recommendation only). According to my minimum requirements these guests should not be in my property.

I also never received any answers to my pre qualifying questions - when I called Airbnb customer support, they said that they cannot force guests to answer the questions and if they don’t wish to then they don’t have to. My question  then is why does Airbnb sell your questions as a guest requirement (it is one of the heading under that section), when it is not.

Literally the guest booked and were at the property within a couple of hours, it was all very quick.

Once my meeting finished and I had time to check the profile of the guest, it was an Indian female persons name and surname, but te selfie was of an African male.

On messaging the guest and asking if they had had a chance to answer my questions (along with some other info), I never received a response back. I tried to call and welcome them into the property as well, but no answer.

The next morning after a lot of fishing around and calling, and after no communication with the guest I called again, the guest answered the phone. However it was a females voice, after questioning her, she then explained to me that she is actually a travel agent and provides a certain company  with accommodation - she said the profile pic is of one of the people within the company (not hers).

My Property is the 2nd Property she has booked via Airbnb for this company, hence only the 1 previous recommendation.

Now my concern is what sort of checks is Airbnb doing to actually check guest verification (ID, selfie, etc, is actually not fictitious - as in this case)?

I have heard other stories of people who have used expired drivers licenses as proof of ID, does Airbnb actually verify each of the points properly or can anyone provide any selfie pic they can find on the internet and any picture for the ID ?

How did this woman get away with this and it seems so easily.

She did give me the company representatives name, who I have been in contact with and hopefully I get my property back with no damages.

[Huma0]

@Raoul27frustrating as it seems, it doesn't sound like any of Airbnb's policies have been violated in this case.

- When you check the IB requirement for host recommendations, the guest only needs to have one review to qualify. There is not option to specify that you want, say, a minimum of three from every guest who IBs.

- The guests are sent your questions but no, they don't have to answer them in order to book. Airbnb do sell this to hosts to make it sound like a requirement, but it's really not. Unfortunately, I find a huge percentage of guests answer only some of the questions or, more often than not, none of them at all until you have chased them again. So, if you are letting guests book and check in last minute, this could become a frequent problem.

- Third party bookings are generally not allowed, but it is true that companies can book for employees if they are registered to do so. They should let you know though that is the case and it's pretty poor that your guest is unresponsive, but again, they're not breaking any Airbnb policies by ignoring you.

I wouldn't be very happy with this situation either, but would chalk it up to experience. Personally, I wouldn't let guests IB last minute. I only accept bookings made at least one day in advance so I at leat have a chance to follow up with a guest. If I have a totally non responsive guest or something seems suspicious, I'll call Airbnb and tell them I'm uncomfortable with the booking. You can usually get them to cancel instant bookings without any penalty to you in these circumstances.

[Raoul27]

Thank you Huma.

Can I ask where you have seen that Airbnb only needs one review to qualify. This is the order I followed and was therefor lead to believe that it is more than one >Booking>Guest Requirements>Additional Requirements>Recommended by other HOSTS (with the S we are being led to believe that there is more than one - I assumed there would be a atleast 3 or 4 as that would make logical sense to me.

 I agree with you about the questions, Airbnb are misleading us   By making us believe that they are a requirement to booking when they are not. It is starting to feel (the more I use Airbnb) that they sell a lot of stuff/give the impression on face value, which is different to what the small print actually says and it is becoming more evident that their top priority is the Guests.

Thanks for the info, I will do the same by not allowing Guests to IB last minute.

[Huma0]

@Raoul27I think I saw it when I switchen on IB and went to tick the requirements. It said something about requiring at least one positive review from the guest, because I thought to myself, I would rather they had at least three, and tried to find an option to require more reviews. There was none. The only option given in this area required that the guest had at least ONE positive review.

It is my understanding that they must also have only positive reviews (even if it is just one), so that if a host has given them a thumbs down they can't IB (if the listing they're trying to book requires reviews). 

Yes, you are right, the language is misleading. Airbnb says: "Recommendation from other hosts: You can limit bookings to guests who’ve travelled on Airbnb and received only positive reviews from other hosts." It shoudn't say from other "hosts" plural, but should specifiy that it's from "at least one host" or something similar. However, technically they haven't lied about it. It's also worth noting that this one review can come from a group booking, so the host might never have had any direct dealings with this guest.

Likewise the section about the questions: "First Message: As an Instant Book host, you can write a preset message to your guest with any questions you have about their trip. Guests will see your message and respond while booking. If you're ever uncomfortable with any responses, you can cancel penalty-free."

I also thought this meant they needed to answer them to book, but they don't. I notice now that Airbnb has not listed this under Additional Requirements, but as a separate bullet point, because, as we both now know, it is not actually a requirement at all!

RE the booking notice, these are the options given:

• Advance Notice: To avoid last-minute surprise bookings, set how much notice you need before a guest arrives, and we’ll automatically block days in your calendar.
• Same day (with cut-off time)
• At least 1 day
• At least 3 days
• At least 7 days

I am not sure though if you can select one option for IB guests and a different one for request bookings as I have always had it set at one day's notice even before I used IB.

[Raoul27]

Thanks Huma.

Also can’t see a way to set different options for IB and request bookings, so ABB probably doesn’t offer such option.

[Huma0]

And while we're on the subject of verifications in general, no I don't totally trust Airbnb's system. I'm only supposed to get instant bookings from verified guests, but recently a guest booked and then told me her booking had been cancelled and she had to rebook. I couldn't see any cancellation from my end though. Everything looked fine.

It turns out that she didn't have all the verifications, so Airbnb cancelled the reservation and allowed her to rebook once her verifications were sorted, but why was she allowed to book in the first place then? And why was I kept in the dark about it all? I would  never have known there was an issue with her verifications unless she had told me herself.

[Raoul27]

Now that you mention it, I had a similar instance where I was looking at a guests booking request message and it accepted the booking (when I was almost certain I hadn’t accepted it), it then happened again and I was definitely certain I hadn’t accidentally pushed the accept button as I was being extra cautious due to the previous time it happened. I called Airbnb as the person was definitely not suitable for my property and we managed to get the booking to not go ahead but Airbnb didn’t seem to believe me as apparently the agent hadn’t heard of that happening before.

Seem to be a lot of floors in Airbnb, I hope they can iron the issues out as it has potential to be a great platform otherwise.