Thursday evening 10/19/17 I received a booking request for a three night stay November 3-6. I quickly accepted the reservation and replied with my default new booking message assuming all was normal. A few hours later I got home and opened up airbnb on web browser and noticed the reservation said "Awaiting group payment". It took me a minute to research when I found the new option that guests have to split payments amongst a group, which is a cool feature.
Here's the problem. The guests have 72 hours from booking time to complete the group payment, if not 100% paid after 72 hours the booking will be canceled. There is no fee to the guest for holding my calendar hostage for 72 hours.
For my example, the payment is split among 8 people and currently as i type 24 hours remaining to complete payment. This means that the entire weekend (Saturday and Sunday 10/21 and 10/22) my calendar will show those dates as booked. I would estimate 95% of my bookings are made on either a Saturday or a Sunday. So come Sunday evening if the guest hasnt paid, that reservation cancels and I've missed the opportunity to have those nights booked this weekend. Then I will have to lower the rate as the date gets closer.
I think the group booking option is nice, however, AIRBNB needs to lessen the amount of time that my calendar is blocked off for a non-confirmed reservation. If a guest can't get their group to all pay within 24 hours then they probably won't make it in 72 hours either.
My vote is to lessen the time to 24 hours to complete a group payment to lower the risk of unbooked nights for hosts.
I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts.
Thanks,
Clay