Requests which make no sense

[Catherine5]

This week I had a request from someone who was not vetted/verified, who booked the only one night free on my calendar towards the end of december (the 21st) but in his message he asked for two rooms (I only have one room listed) for two weeks starting from the 19th!!!
As I am fairly new to Air BnB as a host (2 months) I did not know if a message telling him that his request made no sense and the booking was not possible as it clearly shows on my calendar that I am not free for the two weeks he wanted and also that I only have one room, was enough or if I should press the decline button. I read somewhere on a forum that you should never decline. It affects your statistics and compromising your response rate etc...
In the end I made the 21st unaivalable on my calendar and I declined him but was it the best thing to do? Could I have just turned him down on a response to his message?
Catherine

[Sara2]

I have often declined five different requests on the same night they tend to pop in at once and when you accept one it's polite so say room is not available to the others sounds like you had a computer glitch 

I did not know declining affect rating 

[Helga0]

Catherine, just decline the request on a computer. Then you get the options why you decline and one of them is "the guest asks for other dates in the message". You see, that happens so frequently that airbnb created an extra point for that reason. Write just a short message "Those dates are not available, I don't have two rooms, please enter the dates and number of persons in your search and you will get only offers suitable for your request."