MISUNDERSTANDING is dangerous particularly for hosts.

[Shaun69]

Hi fellow hosts hope you are all well, yesterday night at 2200 I received a booking for a guest arriving at 1500 today, I am on instant book but thought i had set 1 days notice required before arrival. I was wrong big style!!!!!!!!!! If you go into AVAILABILITY-RESERVATION PREFERENCES-ADVANCE NOTICE you will find a check box that says for instant book hosts: allow guests to send reservation requests without advance notice. I am not sure how this got ticked for my BNBs but it is very misleading. Forget reservation requests if that box is ticked a guest can get a confirmed booking with zero or little notice it seems. Maybe this was my fault and I did tick that box by accident, but you can be sure I have unticked it now and got confirmation that 1 days notice is required for my establishment. May I suggest that you all check that tick box to ensure it is set to your requirements.

Best Regards Shaun.

[Suzanne302]

@Alice & Jeff

The options are 1, 2, 3, or 7. I just set it to a 7 day notice so you can see if it gives you the option to IB for Thursday night...

[Sarah977]

@Shaun69 @Suzanne  There have been a lot of reports lately of experienced hosts finding things checked or unchecked that they're sure they had set to their liking. I'm beginning to think this isn't any kind of a glitch, but that Airbnb is doing this to make it easy for anyone to book anytime, no matter what, banking on hosts not noticing that the setting's been changed. I really wouldn't put anything past them these days in their overarching attempt to get hosts to accept any and all comers.

[Beth80]

I don't know if something has happened when the powers that be automatically changed things recently or what but I've noticed that a few of the extra security measures I had clicked on in the beginning seem to have been deactivated. I've now gone through each of my listing to make sure I'm covered again. The one that really got me was an IB that managed to book despite having no previous reviews. Thankfully they were good guests.

[Huma0]

I don't accept same day check ins and that means that a guest has to book by 3pm (the start of my check in window) the day before at the latest. They cannot book the night before.

[Kelly149]

@Shaun69 the way I've always understood the "1 day notice" parameter is that a guest must book before today ends to arrive for tomorrow. And ABB thinks Today is anything before midnight.

So, my parameter says 2 day notice bc I don't want to wake up to a surprise.

I don't worry about the "guests allowed to send a request" bc that is simply a request and not an IB

[Shaun69]

@Kelly149 Thank you for your reply, I have learnt a great deal from @Alice-and-Jeff0  teach in on this subject, the bottom line is that I do not wish to wake up in the morning to any surprises regarding guests that same day. I think your approach works but maybe because I dont go to bed much before midnight (I am slightly old) then ( one days notice) works for me with check box unticked.

Many regards Shaun.

[Thu5]

I set my booking to require 2 days of notice and it works well to the credit of AirBnB algorithem. However, I still received request to book from guests with less than 2 days notice. Some were considerate provided me with an explanation and with more than 2 hours prior arriving, which were acceptable and quite a scoop for me. But, recently, I received booking requests with simply "Hi" in the message, further question revealed that they wanted to check in within 30 minutes. Another one requested at 9.20pm and wanted to "come over now". I think people began to misterpreted the meaning of Instant Booking. I can decline, of course, but will I be penalissed if I am going to receive more booking request of this nature and have to decline them all?