Unfair AirBnB response rating system

[Anonymous]

Turns out I haven't been paying attention and my response rate decreased over the years, in spite of the fact whenever there was a reservation or a question about my apartment, I have ALWAYS answered.

So what am i talking about then? Well the thing is, let me tell you what just happened so you can see it.

A person sent me a reservation request for my flat for 1 person for a few days. The guest also sent me a message "hi we will come)))". I was a bit confused now, because she said "they" will come, so i assumed there are several guests in the discussion right? Also she set the price according to one person too, so to clarifiy this I sent the potential guest a message, "how many are you going to be? Is it just you or someone else as well?".

10 hours have passed, and i got no response. Maybe the guest doesn't even speak english that well, so I translated my question to Russian, because her name was in russian. Hopefully she will understand my question now in case she didn't so far.

14 hours have passed (24 hours in total) and i got no response, except an e-mail from AirBnB that my response rate decreased because i didn't give feedback for the potential guest.

Is this for real? I'm waiting 24 hours for a guest's response for my question because of her reservation and MY reponse rate decreases?

[Sandra126]

Correct. you have 24 hours to accept or decline, even if you are waiting for a response from guests. For enquiries, responding is sufficuent. Requests are essential to accept/decline.

[Sarah977]

@Anonymous Yes, there have been discussions about this before. I can understand that if you're a guest planning a trip, that you need to know whether you have an accepted reservation in a timely fashion, and normally 24 hours would seem adequate. But if there are issues to discuss (like your guest not entering the correct amount of people) and they don't get back to you in time, it becomes a problem. Sometimes it's not even that the guest isn't bothering to respond- it can be a matter of time zone difference, and many guests aren't aware that they need to turn on their Airbnb alerts in their profile settings to receive notification of a message via text or email. So they don't even know there's a message there awaiting response.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Anonymous

your response rate will drop if you don't hit "accept" or "decline" button. It will also drop if you decline. If you decline too many requests your search rank may drop too.

So, in situations like yours you have 2 options:

- accept the reservation for 1 guest and respond in the text " I accepted your reservation for just 1 person. If there are more guests in your group please send me an alteration request.

- decline and write in a text : I have just 24 hours to accept or decline your requests. Since you didn't answer my questions I had to decline. If you are still interested you can send me an INQUIRY by clicking on "contact host" link