Why have my reservations dropped off?

[Nancy46]

We've had two great years with our Airbnb listing, with 95% five-star reviews, and glowing comments. We were booked almost continually through last spring and summer, but this year it's dropped off by probably 75%. We show up at #4 in the search for our town, but it's a small town (near a large city) and people might not search for that town. I just lowered the price from what it was last year, but still no response. Has anyone else experienced this? We did lose our Superhost status because I had Autobook turned on and had forgotten to block some time that family would be visiting, so I cancelled their reservation (this was over 4 months before the reservation). I have since learned I should have asked THEM to cancel, and I turned off Autobook. At any rate, does losing Superhost change a property's rankings? I'm mystified ...

[Clare0]

@Nancy46 I think everyone is experiencing some slowdowns.  I compared my March listing views to the same time last year and was short by about 40 views.  Fortunately I still got reservation requests so the actual number of reservations is the same. 

Cancelling a guest's reservation has huge consequences, one of which is the automated  cancellation review . It's possible that guests looking at your listing see this and decide not to book. 

As for asking a guest to cancel, don't know where you got that.  It was your mistake, not the guest's and you should never ask a guest to cancel when they did nothing wrong.  You should know that when a guest cancels, they are not refunded the Airbnb service fee so that would have added insult to injury so to speak.   When this happens, guests complain bitterly to Airbnb (as they should) and that's not good for you since Airbnb asks them for their reservation number. 

Super Host status does improve search rankings so the loss of Super Host status may have caused your listing to slip in the search results.  

All you can do is keep giving great service and over time the consequences of the cancellation will go away.   I'm sure you will recover!

[Ginger3]

Hi Nancy, my requests dropped off around the holidays.  I spent a weekend in January taking new photos and rewriting the narratives in the description.  I also turned on the option for Airbnb to set the price during January and February.  Result? March almost killed me it was so busy at both of my places!  Lesson learned?  Sometimes a site gets "stale".  I used the Airbnb price adjustments until bookings picked up and new reviews came in, then I turned it off.

Hope this helps,

Ginger

[Ines18]

Hi,

I have the same problem. Last year i was booked the whole June back to back, and this year i have only few days booked.

I lowered the price down for 30% and still nothing. Now i am really really confused. And some of the app that are further from downtown, worse location and bigger price, new app with no reviews are getting reservations?. What happened to my airbnb, doesnt my superhost status mean anything? And where is the chat gone for urgent situations and problems? I cant find any other way of comunication with you than this???

Please give me some answers.

Ines

[John-Judy0]

where is/was the chat feature?