Reason to Decline Requested Booking

[Debbie96]

Excerpts from a recent request:

                 "Myself and ‘mother in law’ our coming to Oxford to see a performance in the town, which is being managed by my other half/ her son. It is part of the science festival. 

 I am a secondary school teacher in the Yorkshire Dales and Julie is in the catering industry. “

I wrote her back asking if her “other half”was planning to stay as well and that I needed to know the names of all guests.     I charge by the number of people staying.   I’ve had a couple of other bookings where unregistered guests spent the night and I feel helpless  in the moment to confront them on this issue and demand more money for fear of retaliatory reviews or creating unwanted further drama in my own home.

A couple of ‘alarm’ bells were sounded with this request to book:  

1. "Do secondary school teachers really write this way??
2. Would her ‘other half also be staying along with her and her ‘mother-in-law’?    i.e.  where is he staying???

She never responded when I asked her the second question so I’ve declined using the following response inspired by an earlier post I read on here just yesterday:

Dear xxxxx,  Thank you, again, for your interest in staying with us.   Airbnb is different from hotels and is based on trust.   I’m sure you’ll  understand that our home is literally a our sanctuary.   I do everything I can so that everyone — both my family and my guests— feel safe, comfortable and, aware with whom they will be staying.   I haven’t received a reply to my last message so assume you’re don’t want to answer.    I hope you’ll understand this is why I’m declining.  Nonetheless, I do hope you enjoy your stay in Oxford.   With all best wishes, Debbie

Hope someone else finds this post helpful.

[Linda108]

Good for you and for the CC to help you with fashioning a response.  I think that guests are sending the same message to many hosts and there are those who just approve without asking more questions.  😛

[Sarah977]

@Debbie96   Yes, unfortunately, some school teachers these days seem to be terrible spellers (everyone seems to rely on spell check now, which of course doesn't know if you should be using "their", "they're", or "there") and decent grammar is becoming something no one finds important. Maybe she's a math teacher, therefore there's no need for her to be more than passably literate 😞

When one of my daughters was in Grade One, we went on a trip and she had to bring her workbooks with her. She was working on a page of phonetic sounds and the page was dealing with words that had an "sk" sound. There were little line drawings of things with blanks for the kids to write in the word. There was a picture of a rhinoceros with an arrow pointing its horn. The word that was supposed to be filled in was "tusk" ????? When we got back, I pointed out this error to her teacher. The teacher stared at it for a minute, then said "Oh, I always thought it was called a tusk."

This was a standard curriculum workbook that every Canadian 6 year old was using. I told the teacher that she probably had the same workbook when she was 6, and informed her that a tusk refers to an elongated tooth and that a rhinoceros has a horn. Duh.

[Lynette57]

@Debbie96 :- I too have had a similar experience, guest wanted to book my very large 4 bed home for himself , Just 1 person. Immediatley I queried his request for such a large home for 1 person, eventually he replied back in a message there might actually be 8 or 9 people. so I requested he change the request to book to show this. He refused to do that but still tried to book for 1. So my response was:-             "Dear ............... I would thouroughly recommend several smaller apartments or homes in my area that would be far more suited to your request for 1 person, Also would be much cheaper , I would even go as far as to recommend that a hotel would be more suitable for your 1 night stay.

I am very sorry but I feel my home is definitley not suited to your needs."

After sending this reply, ABB marked his request as Home not suitable for needs.

Was a good result without having to decline or have an untruthful guest wreck my home with many additional people doing heavens knows what.

[Debbie96]

Screening guests is particularly important to me because I'm hosting them in my own home which is why Instant booking would never suit.  

[Robb-And-Julia0]

Instant booking does seem to be loaded with potential problems.  We have always been "on the scene", whether we're listing our guest house ( our own home's mirror image ) or one of the two bedrooms that share a bathroom located on our second floor.   I feel purely lucky ( not necessarily 'smart' in any way ) that we've not been cheated out of payments.   Airbnb has sent us a notice, responding to an, "accept," saying that payment hadn't yet cleared.     Isn't that one of the best reasons for working with airbnb?      

          How is it possible that a one-night guest has gotten a host's address and directions if the reservation hasn't been secured by verified payment?       

[Robb-And-Julia0]

I do wonder what to do when an inquiry from a traveler raises legitimate doubt the we can accommodate his or her needs?  For instance: we're located in a rural-suburban area with no regular public transportation.   We don't even have Uber service that's routinely available.    So, when the inquiry asks about such connections, our reply starts with that information and continues with the recommendation that the traveler rent a car.    

              Another example: inquiry asks for assurance that there is no traffic or other noise audible in our guest rooms.  Traveler reports being sensitive to noise to extent that their sleep is disturbed.  While we're in a rural location, we are conveniently located on a two-lane highway that is sometimes used by cars, trucks and motorcycles.  Most folks are not disturbed, but this inquiry does foretell an unhappy guest if the bedroom window is open in fair weather, so highway noise is audible. 

        If there is no response to our honest reply, how to 'decline' because we just can't provide what the traveler needs?   How to prevent damage to our superhost status for declining too many requests to book?

[Sarah977]

@Robb-And-Julia0  If it's an Inquiry, as opposed to a Booking Request, simply answering the guest within 24 hours is sufficient- there is no need to click on either pre-approve or decline. You'll get messages from Airbnb pressuring you to pre-approve, but you can safely ignore those. You won't be penalized in any way and you won't have to decline. The guest doesn't get back to you? No sweat, the Inquiry will just expire in 24 hours.

If it's a Booking Request, that's different, you do have to either Aceept or Decline within 24 hours or take a hit on your response time.

[Debbie96]

Extremely helpful advice -- thank you!

[Mike-And-Helen0]

@Debbie96 sadly too many of my colleagues cannot write properly.

Autocorrect may be a bit of an excuse though.