Verified Government Id

[Marleese0]

I recently accepted a booking from a guests who has joined Airbnb with no reviews. I have in my profile must have verified government ID however they have only set up the profile with an email and phone number. How do I get them to complete photo ID validation through Airbnb ? Not comfortable moving ahead without at least this given no reviews. Do I request or does Airbnb initiate ?

please advise

[Patricia55]

@Marleese0 

I've just hit a similar issue myself.  I've always had Government ID as a requirement. I don't use Instant Book.  Just accepted a booking this morning and I can see that the guests have only provided phone number and email address; previously - as far as I recall - such a booking would be "pending" while the guests uploaded government ID.  Now, it just seems to have gone straight through.

When I looked at my profile I saw that the government ID requirement is only available if IB is used!!

[Susan17]

@Patricia55 

All part of the relentless push to force everyone onto IB and increase revenue, Pat. 😞

[Patricia55]

@Susan17 

Tbh, I don't know what's going on (as usual ;))

Got in touch with Airbnb Help via Twitter and this is what they said:

"It doesn't matter if you have instant book or not, if you have that as a requirement for any guest that books with you, the system should be prompting them to add the ID verification."

... yet my Guest Requirements page seems to be saying different!

Currently waiting to hear further from them.

[Patricia55]

@Marleese0 

I forgot to ask you: how did you actually proceed?  I'm currently in discussion with Airbnb Help.

[Patricia55]

@Marleese0 @Susan17 

Aaand, wouldn't you know, I just got this follow-up response:

"Upon further investigation we did discover that the feature for requesting ID's it is only for instant book reservations. We apologize for the confusion. Please let us know if you need further assistance, we're here to help."

So, I've asked why 😕  (godalmighty, I'm fond of a treat ;))

[Michelle-And-Michael0]

Hi @Marleese0  We do have IB on, and require Reviews, Govt ID and profile pic. But that doesn't stop those without them, requesting to book.

When that happens, I usually start by saying something like this..... 'I see you are new to Airbnb, as you don't have any reviews yet. And that is perfectly fine, as we have hosted many first time Airbnb guests before. But, as part of our acceptance criteria, we ask if you could please complete your profile information, for security and identity purposes.... we hope you understand. This will also make your future bookings through Airbnb much more straight forward.'

My experience to date, is that everyone I have asked so far, have been willing and happy to oblige. Oh.... except for one, that didn't get back to me at all. No loss, really! 

Recently I requested a guest to add a profile pic.... and he told me that he had already been prompted by Airbnb to do so. Which was good to know. 

If I were you, I would reach out to the guest.... start a conversation that might tell you a little bit more about them and their reason for their stay, and explain about your acceptance criteria to them. Their response to you will either put your mind at ease, or confirm your worry.

At the same time, you could contact Airbnb and ask them to send a prompt as well.... because without reviews, you don't feel comfortable. 

Best of luck,

Michelle 🙂

[Rich-and-Yan0]

Hi, everyone. We're new to Airbnb and we seem to have learned this lesson the hard way. We do use Instant Book but also ask for government ID, and we use the new feature requiring our guests to have recommendations from other hosts.

Well, on our first day of listing, we got a number of requests, but we were surprised to see that some people without either of those two requirements were allowed to make pending bookings. Meanwhile, other people who had those requirements were writing to us asking why they couldn't book on those dates when they were technically still available. 

You would have thought that Airbnb would have screened those guests out, but this didn't happen. So me, not knowing that this was the wrong thing to do, I simply wrote to each of the guests who didn't have either ID or an Airbnb history (and thus, recommendations from other hosts), explained why I would have to decline their request, and then wished them well in finding a place.

Well, today, the booking requests completely ceased. We weren't sure why, and so we went on to the site and saw that we had suddenly dropped far down on the list. 

Apparently, by declining these guests, even with good reason, we dropped down and almost out of view. As I said, we seem to have learned the hard way.

If someone else has a different take on this, though, we'd love to hear it. Cheers.

[Jamiko0]

I have instabook and government-issued ID as a requirement to stay at my home, but Airbnb continues to allow guests to book who do not have government-issued ID. I then have to waste time communicating with the guest as well as Airbnb to resolve the problem. Is anyone else having this problem?