Responding to a guest booking

Hayley-Nathan-Shelley-An0
Level 1
Invercargill, New Zealand

Responding to a guest booking

Hi there,

I am new to hosting. I have an email from a guest but the booking is nolonger required. I click on the pre approve/decline button which takes me to Air BnB but nothing comes up. I then go into my messages on Air BnB and try to repsond to the guest and nothing happens. Help! I have been talking with the guest via email so this is fine but I need to cancel the booking/decline the booking. 

4 Replies 4
Hilary-And-Ed0
Level 10
Brookline, MA

Hello @Hayley-Nathan-Shelley-An0,

 

If the guest has already booked, do not cancel it.  You will be severely punished (dates blocked, ineligibility for superhost for a year, and sometimes a fine).  Similarly, if you receive a message "guest wishes you to cancel" so no hit accept.  This is the same as you cancelling.   If the guest wishes to cancel, she can do it independently, no problem. 

 

If the booking is still in the inquiry phase (it is a bit unclear from the post), no need to do anything,  The pre-approval will expire after 24 hours, and the guest will no be able to book.  Also, she will only book if the wants to, so she is in control there anyway.

 

If you want to decline a booking because you are uncomfortable with the guest, you can do that with no penalty, as long as you do not decline several inquiries in a row.

 

Keep all messaging on the Airbnb message system always.

Oh thanks so much. Yes the guest had enquired about our place and it wasnt suitable so I wanted to decline the booking. So ok right after 24hrs it sorts itself out! Thanks so much for your speedy help!

And do you generally reply to the guests via the Air BnB page/app, or from the email that came from Air BnB or is either ok? When I tried to reply to the message in my inbox on Air BnB itself it wouldnt let me reply. But I could reply to the email which looks as though that is still linked via Air BnB!

Allison2
Level 10
Traverse City, MI

@Hilary-And-Ed0 Gave a great answer. The reservation statuses can be confusing and like they stated, cancelling/declining an unconfirmed reservation is no problem, but the penalties for cancelling a confirmed one can be pretty steep.  Here's a glossary of those terms - you should see the status on the right side of messages in your Inbox.

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/363/what-does-each-reservation-status-mean