Someone trying to book a month in advance and wants a discount

William33
Level 2
Arvada, CO

Someone trying to book a month in advance and wants a discount

Hi, Only second month in, but trying to learn from you guys this is a great source of info so here are my questions. Booked my first for almost a month and my second for 6 days. Have someone asking to book 4 nights a month out and wants a discount. For some reason he said it was because he is booking Thursday through Sunday and I have no idea what that means and ask him and he ignored the question.

I was under the impression that allowing someone to book a month out and then giving them a discount and they cancel with keep those days blocked if they cancel. Is that true? I asked him to book within a week of his trip and if those days were still available I would consider a discount. Is that approriate for me to do?  (They are for that last 4 days in May.)I am at moderate on cancelations...

I am a total rookie and don't want to miss a good booking. I am just wary of someone whho's first contact is asking for a discount. They seem nice and have both as a host and guest review that are good. I think I am already under pricing the space, but I really would like to hear what you all think? What would you do?

Bill 🙂

 

19 Replies 19
Gerry-And-Rashid0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

My honest opinion is people who ask for a discount are trouble - you know the value of your home/room and stick to it. If it was a long term booking then you might want to consider it, but personally I would turn down this request completely and suggest he/she finds something within their budget range. If you accept them, there is alwasy the uncomfortable feeling that they will be trouble in some way or leave a poor review.

Eileen4
Level 10
Champlain, Canada

Booking ahead isn't anything to worry about. I'm set at six months in advance, but am very mindful of peak periods like the Formula 1 in Montreal, July 1st, Labour Day weekend, etc. I price my place very carefully on those days.

 

If you have your calendar set to 3 months (the minimum, I believe) you shouldn't worry about someone booking that far in advance. In fact, it will help you plan. I would also set your refund policy to strict. Not unless you are okay with people cancelling at the last minute. 

 

I don't give discounts, although I do lower my price when I have mid-week days that are going unfilled. I drop the price the week before and usually do get a booking out of it. 

 

I recently made the mistake of offering a woman a discount on a stay at a second Airbnb I manage for a family member. She was brusque and unappreciative and I could have easily booked someone else for more money. For some reason, discounts seem to either attract the wrong kind of people or make the right kind of people take you and your place for granted. It's human nature I suppose. 

@William33 and @Eileen4 - I agree with everything Eileen said. Our calendar opens up 3 months in advance and starts getting bookings immediately. Why would we need to discount it for requests? I also do as Eileen mentioned and often lower rates for specific days that are either somewhat "isolated" and/or very near, in order to fill them in. For instance, if I have a 2-day gap between other bookings, and it's less than 3 weeks away, I'll usually drop the rate by 10-15%. (I do have a self-imposed minimum beneath which it's just not worth it to me to deal with another guest or clean, so I never lower it below that. If the dates don't book, I enjoy the break...) We also, as Eileen mentioned, pay careful attention to local special events such as Formula-1, SXSW and ACL music festivals, and so on. Those periods get significantly higher rates. (And they always get booked.)

 

We made a last year when someone contacted us about booking almost a year in advance even though our dates were, as always, closed that far out. We agreed w/o doing our homework. As it turned out, the requested dates were for a huge festival. So now that guest (who is probably a totally nice person) has the dates booked at our standard rate instead or 2X or more.

Clare0
Level 10
Templeton, CA

@William33 If you are going to do long term stays (30 days or more) you need to read this help article.  Keep in mind that Airbnb doesn't do credit checks or background checks which normally are part of the vetting process for long term stays.  

 

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/805/what-are-some-things-i-should-consider-before-hosting-long-t...

 

Since California has some pretty strict tenancy laws, I restrict my maximum number of nights to 21. 

Matt26
Level 10
Toronto, Canada

Firstly, I thought I was alone in thinking that guests who ask for a discount are always trouble - because 9/10 they are! Althought I've had some great guests who have negotiated price with me - but I do extra checking on those ones!

 

 @William33 I'm having trouble exactly understanding what you're asking about cancelations... but I think you want to know if you cancel a reservation (or if a guest cancels on you) does it mean that those dates are automatically blocked out of your calendar. The answer to that is no, once you cancel a reservation (or have one canceled on you), you can still make those dates available and accept reservations on those days.

 

I think it's okay to ask the guest to wait for a discount, in case something better comes in. Although I doubt the guest will stick around for that long - generally guests like to get their bookings out of the way and their travel plans firmed up.

 

Good luck and welcome to community!

 

(If you found my response useful, give it a thumbs up!)

@Matt26 If a host declines a reservation request, you are correct in the dates are not blocked and are available to be booked by someone else  However, if a host cancels a confirmed reservation, the dates of that reservation are blocked and are not available to other people .  This is probably what you meant, but I just wanted to clarify.  🙂

@Clare0 yeeeassss that's what I meant.  You're so right, can't believe I got that mixed up.

@Matt26  So easy to do!

@Clare0 and @Matt26 - Here's something that I just noticed when declining a booking, and that I don't recall seeing before. (Although maybe this is a long-standing practice that I just hadn't noticed until now.) Just as I clicked to Decline a booking, I saw, a couple of lines above it, a checkbox labeled something like "Block July xx-xx on your calendar", and the checkbox was checked-off. Ouch. Too late for me to uncheck it. So I went to my calendar and the dates *were* blocked. Fortunately, I was easily able to unblock them, but WTF? Why should AirBnB assume that I want to block dates just because I chose to decline one particular booker's request? (In the case of this person, I declined them for 4 different reasons -- they'd first requested as a different user who had no validated ID, then they switched to another user. That user had a validated ID but has only been on AirBnB for 2 days and has no reviews of any sort.) So, AirBnB wants to almost surreptitiously "punish" me by blocking dates on my calendar that I might not even realize are blocked?

 

AirBnB is like a minefield. I feel so much empathy for less-experienced hosts.

Yes @Dede0  and @Matt26 It is totally illogical to block dates for declining a reservations request.  I noticed it a few weeks ago when Dave and I were doing the exercise for the Reservation Requests / Inquiries help article.  Why would anyone want to block dates? Makes no sense at all. 

@Clare0 There are only two reasons I can think of why AirBnB would elect to block the dates. One is that they (cluelessly) think that they're doing us a favor because they (cluelessly) assume that the only reason we'd decline a booking is because we don't want guests on those dates. (As opposed to the far more likely reason that we simply don't want those *particular* guests on any date.) The second possibility assumes more malicious intent on their part -- they simply want to discourage hosts from declining bookings. Based on other behaviors of late (the heavy push for Instant Booking, the new push -- still in Beta, I think -- for Smart Pricing), I'm actually inclined to put more weight on the second theory.

@Dede0 (ahem) I wouldn't discount your reasoning.  But, sheesh! With all the confusion out there, you wouldn't think they would want to deliberately add it to the mix, unless of course, it's a mistake on Airbnb's part. Maybe I'll bug @airbnbhelp in the morning about it.  I tweet them so often they're now asking "How are you?"  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't "do" discounts except the specificed ones on our listing. If I was going to offer a discount it would more likely be because its short term rather than longer term.

 

If they cancel I believe the dates will become available again. I have had people cancel before but never had a booking in it's place. But it looked like the dates were available on my calendar after they cancelled.

Just chiming in to say that we DO offer a couple of discounts (other than the usual weekly or monthly ones that are possible through standard AirBnB settings). I'll get to those discounts in a bit, but before I do I want to say that we DON'T respond to discount requests from potential guests. Those types of people, as others have said, are usually the kind of guests you don't want.

 

The extra discounts that we DO offer are of two sorts. The first is an offer to immediately departed, excellent guests (after we confirm that they've left us a glowing review) that if they return, they can contact us in advance (before booking) and we'll make them a Special Offer of 10% off. The other is that if we have a single unbooked day between two bookings, we'll offer to let the guests on either side add that day at a drastically reduced rate. (Reason being that our 2-day minimum otherwise leaves tat single day unbookable.) We'll offer it at $25-$30 off our normal rate. So far, we end up booking that orphan day about 25% of the time. (A lot of travelers have flights and plans that they can't modify.)