Need advice.

[Kristine89]

I am new to this Air BNB thing, I'm the point person for a family cottage rental.  I learned how to turn off the INstant Booking because it was making me crazy. However, someone booked (before I had a chance to block the calendar) for July 2019 for one night. I quickly  blocked the rest of 2019 and turned off the Instant Booking function. 

What advice do you have for rolling back (ie cancelling) this one night booking 11 months out? Since I'm new I don't want to screw up our ratings, I was just not as tech saavy as I should have been. 

Many thanks for any advice,

~Kris

[Mika8]

@Kristine89 .. speak with the guest!

Explain it and ask him to cancel .. you could refund him/her the airbnb fees, if he have to pay some (guests should cancel without fees threetimes a year). 

[Carmen627]

I had a situation similar. I have my place listed on Airbnb and HA.  I received and instant booking for a weekend thru HA..once I got home I received an update from Airbnb app and text that I had an instant booking for the same dates. Apparently I was in a no service area and it didn’t go thru right away. 

So I was seriously stressed. I reached out to the person who booked (Airbnb) and told them the situation. Since I didn’t have my calendars linked (long story but I tried). I basically had a double booking. 

Didnt get a response so I called Airbnb. Explained that I was really sorry and I had to cancel even if it meant I had to pay the penalty. Customer support was great. They contacted the person and since the deposit was still pending they were able to cancel them for me without penalty. 

So I suggest reaching out to the guest first. Explain your situation, offer them a discount or another stay. You can send a different date/price over and if they accept that it lets you off the hook for the current day they booked. Otherwise I’d call Airbnb. 

[Sarah977]

@Kristine89  Not sure if you know this, but you can change how far ahead people can book in your Availability settings. Maybe that's what you meant by "blocking the calendar". I only accept bookings 3 months into the future, because who knows what will happen in 3 months time? I think most hosts have a longer availability time, but this is what works for me.