New group payment booking option - Fair to hosts?

[Clay0]

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

[Neil23]

Sorry, but that's not true. Homeaway charge the guest a booking fee just like Airbnb, BUT LESS. And the charge to the host for payment processing is about the same. Plus Homeaway don't make the guest pay the full amount at the time of booking. PLUS they have much better cancellation policies available to hosts than the crap Airbnb is now allowing. PLUS they don't block your calendar for 4 days while someone makes up their mind. Airbnb is going down the toilet.

[Todd-And-Tatyana0]

@Clay0 I encourage all of you to take two minutes and use this feedback form to let Airbnb know you're unhappy about this development. 

Don't just vent in the forum guys, take it to the man

[Tom-and-Carina0]

I tried  the link  found the unfair rule. Wow it is bad. And it would not let me give fedback.  ??

[Todd-And-Tatyana0]

You can submit general feedback; it will get routed to the correct place.  In fact, the more people this feedback touches within the organization, the better.  

[Ewa18]

Maybe AirBnB could give us hosts an option to accept or not accept group payment booking options like we have options to accept or not instant booking?

That would make sense to me.

[Trudy18]

I feel waiting for 72 hours for a payment is far too long. I agree that the payment should be there within 24 hours. But I still feel the host who makes the booking should make the payment and get his/her guests/friends/family to pay him or her. To me that is the simplist solution.  Why should I wait for the monies to come to me in several differant amounts, or will AirBnB be taking care of this proceedure? Sounds like too much extra work to me!

[Jill159]

Completely makes sense

Hosts should be able to opt out of this group payment  

J 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Todd-And-Tatyana0

tnx for the idea and link, I sent them feedback

[Juliana67]

I just sent it! Thanks for this link!

[Andrea1063]

OMGosh --- if these people are friends, can they not handle the money end of things on their own? Why muddle things up and hold up a booking for something so ridiculous.

[Flexyrent0]

I definitively agree.

If you are a property manager and work with other channels you will dramatically increase the chanche of overbooking. Expecially in high season or higly requested dates.

Are channel mangers ready to handle this feature?

[Wim6]

yes 4 days is a very long time https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/2034/what-s-group-payment As property manager this is troublesome as it opens the door for last minute loss and double bookings. What happens when a booking for overlapping dates is made via an automatic booking on an other booking channel, during the 4 days of waiting till a payment is made? Technically speaking, there is only a booking confirmed when a payment is made. Airbnb writes: "If we cancel the reservation because they didn’t pay on time, we’ll give back any money they’ve paid so far. Since group payment reservations aren’t confirmed until everyone has paid, your cancellation policy won’t apply if we cancel the pending reservation. " !!! Since group payment reservations aren’t confirmed until everyone has paid !!! I presume legally this applies also to the owners/managers they can cancel an accepted booking REQUEST, without it being CONFIRMED by Airbnb. Does someone knows any Airbnb link that explains cancelling an accepted booking request before payment received? An option would be asking each booking request before accepting if : 1) it is a group payment 2) if it is a pre-funded booking request 3) if not if the credit card limit is sufficient to pay the booking. As in all 3 cases, one can be stuck with a blocked calendar without knowing the booking request will be paid eventually. Last option would be "instant booking" but are these always before fully paid bookings or does the same problems can happen with them ?

[Mary36]

I totally agree .72 hours seems a long time to wait for payment.im experiencing exactly the same delemia at the moment.

[Kate348]

I think 12 hours is plenty. Presumably the group has had a final discussion to confirm the break and with the ease of online payment a group email to confirm booking should result in instant payment - I know that's what most people would do.

[Fred13]

Why not treat it in the same 24-hour timetable as everything else; i.e.  Waiting Payment) ? Sometimes Airbnb appears to not think things through. What would be fun, is that during the 72 hours the host gets a booking from other quarters, and then can BLOCK the days on Airbnb, so by the time the 'group' finally does their thing, they will be unable to book. That will teach them.

Seriously, this will be a mess in my case, everytime we get another article written about us, the place gets booked for a few more months in advance quickly, from different quarters, in a matter of hours/ 1 day. This 72-hour thing will inevitably prove to be a lot of 'fun'.