The old wisdom about not needing to Pre-Approve or Decline Inquiries has changed

[Matthew285]

In the past, for new hosts who were worried about maintaining their Response Rate,

experienced hosts told these new hosts that a host did not need to either Pre-Approve or Decline an simple Inquiry (as opposed to a Reservation Request).

In the past merely sending any sort of message back to the guest was enough to fulfill your obligation regarding Inquiries.

This has now changed.

Sometime recently, AirBnb modified its policies so now hosts DO have to either Pre-Approve or Decline Inquiries to maintin their Response Rate.

The new policy is outlined here:

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/430/what-is-response-rate-and-how-is-it-calculated

I have contacted Host support to specifically ask about the policy change, and they did verify that the currently active policy is different than it was in the past.

So the new advice is this: hosts DO have to either Pre-Approve or Decline Inquiries within 24 hours to maintain their Response Rate.

(Just like they have to with actual Booking Requests.)

[Matthew285]

@Cor3 thank you for making scientific observations about how the system is working,

and even more thanks for posting this information here so that we can learn from your experience!

I don't know why the help page about Response Rate was changed to say what it does.

It seems the Response Rate behavior is still following the old model.

I guess the wise thing to do is to be observant of what the timers and buttons are telling us...

[Cor3]

Hi @Matthew285,

Or as they say over here: Historical achievements are no guarantee for future achievements.

So maybe some time in the future, it may work otherwise 😞

This is what I've found/concluded this far. When it changes, I will definitely let you know! 🙂

Ps.

I suppose that Airbnb is having some growing pains. So not all CSO's are fully aware on how the system behaves exactly - or what the help pages are telling us.

On top of that, the system may even behave differently for all of us.

Your message/warning keeps all of us sharp and with the eye at the ball!

That's exactly what we need. So thanks for posting this topic.

[Lizzie]

Hello @Matthew285, @Cor3, @An15, @Rebecca181, @Richard636, @Alexandra316, @Elma0, @Marzena4, @Kelly149, @David126, @Hywel1, @Ria16, @Richard636, @Cor3, @Jessica-and-Henry0, @Linda108, @Sarah977, @Fred13, @Christopher305, @Branka-and-Silvia0, @Oomesh-Kumarsingh0, @Robin4, @Alice-and-Jeff0, @Lilian20

Thank you for your contribution here.

As some of you have noted that your response rate doesn’t seem to be calculated as expected. We asked our team for insight into this and here’s what we found out:

There’s a bug that our team is working on that may be resulting in some inconsistencies in response rate calculation. Be assured that if you respond within 24 hours to a booking inquiry with a message, pre-approval, acceptance, or to decline, your response rate should not be negatively affected.

Thank you for flagging the issue and for your patience as we work to resolve this bug. If you’d like to read more about how your Response Rate is calculated, check out this Help Center article.

We hope this is helpful.

Lizzie

[David126]

Thanks @Lizzie

Really helpful to let people know something is known about and being looked at.

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

@Lizzie - Seriously cannot thank you enough for following up on this!  This is exctly the kind of information that should be in the Airbnb Updates.  

Additionally, I think there really needs to be a place where we can see how certain policies and practices are outlined very, very clearly.  This is not a "help center" item but a transparent place for us to see what constitutes a tick mark in the "completed" action column so we can act appropriately and follow the correct practices.  

[Rebecca181]

@Lizzie Extraordinarily helpful, we are fortunate to have you reviewing our posts and comments and relaying information back and forth betweent the community and AIrbnb. Thank you!

[Lizzie]

Thank you so much @Alice-and-Jeff0, @Rebecca181 and @David126 for your really kind comments. I am so pleased this is helpful to you. 

Thanks again for all your help.

Lizzie

[Crystal3]

Inquiries About Things Out of our control. Do we Decline or Pre-Approve?

Can guests ask questions without making an Inquiry with a specific date(s), blocking that date(s) until the Hosts respond with Pre-approve, Special offer or Decline?

Here are a couple of inquiries we recently had; one mother inquired about having her college-age son stay if he received a local job for the summer. She inquired about a 2 week stay then wrote back about 1 week later to say her son didn’t take the job. So if we Pre-approved those 2 weeks would they be blocked? If they are blocked for a period of time (say 24 hrs) that would stop others from booking while we waited for her response. 

Today we received an inquiry asking if we had a coffee maker in the bedroom?  REALLY? You are going to make your decision on staying in an ABB whether or not they have a coffee maker in the room. Guests like this should seek out hotels. We are Superhosts with 300+ 5-star ratings. Not sure we want to have a guest that is worried about a coffee maker in the room vs our nice Continental breakfast we offer in our dining room (or patio in good weather) with views of the river. So do we “Decline” and get dinged, “Pre-approve” though we don’t want to or let the Inquiry expire and get dinged anyways?

It appears that this new Inquiry system gives the guest all the powers. While the hosts clean the room, shower, toilet and stay up late waiting for the guests to arrive because their plane arrived late or they got lost on their drive.

Would be interested in hearing how other Hosts would deal with these two Inquiries.

[Emilia42]

@Crystal3

I would open the message thread, answer the question, then go back to what I was doing before. No pre-approve or decline required. 

[Sarah977]

@Crystal3  Did you read through the info on this thread? You do not need to either Pre-approve nor Decline an Inquiry, messaging back with 24 hours without clicking on either of the 2 will not affect your Response nor Acceptance rate. Yes, guests must enter dates to send an Inquiry (which is stupid, we all wish they'd change that) .

So for both of those Inquiries, I would have simply answered their question.

An Inquiry doesn't block the dates.

[Trung19]

"If a guest sends you an inquiry—a question, or any kind of message other than a reservation request—via Contact Host, you’ll need to respond to the inquiry within 24 hours to maintain your response rate. If the guest sends you a reservation request, you’ll need to accept or decline within 24 hours to maintain your response rate"

My reading is that an inquiry can be 'responded' by a message while a reservation request need to be 'accept or decline' .

Also check the below post which also confirms that 'sending a message' is a legitimate option to meet the respond time requirement.

https://www.airbnb.com.au/help/article/2410/what-can-i-do-when-i-get-a-booking-enquiry

Hope this helps clarifying the confusion.