after nearly an hour on chat with airbnb, still no answers, nothing even close to definitive

after nearly an hour on chat with airbnb, still no answers, nothing even close to definitive

i'm a superhost with instant book. in 2018 i cancelled two reservations. first one, a woman instant booked with a message that she would be bringing her dog. i have a no pet policy. second one, i felt uncomfortable with the guest's review responses. she was also a host and her responses to her guests were very snarky. i hae two listings, so theoretically i had six penalty-free cancellations. well i'm penalized. the message at the bottom is what i get in an email titled, "can you host xxx on xxx dates? the guests in these emails all meet my requirements to instant book and yet i'm having to aaprove them. i've gotten NINE of these from guests who meet my requirements. 

 

after nearly an hour (50 mintues) on chat, i still don't know why this is showing. well, i do know-- they told me: "We do not want you to feel that you are being penalized, but we just wanted to help you in making sure that calendar dates are up to date an is available for booking. " 

 

my calendar is up to date. when i asked how long this would go on for and pointed out that this feels like a penalty, i was told: "I am unable to provide an exact date for that as this is something that is being reviewed further by Airbnb before returning to Instant book. I highly suggest to continue being active and accepting to reservation request as that will help the record of the listing to be in a positive note." 

 

so i asked why i need to show anything if i'm not being penalized and don't their actions define a penalty? i'm beyond frustrated. they're going to elevate me to someone else, but i'm not hopeful. it's so ridiculous that airbnb just lies about their policies and then offers zero communication about them. argh. thanks for reading. 

 

here's the message in the email i get: 

 

Why am I seeing this request?
We sometimes require hosts to accept a reservation request even when they have Instant Book turned on. You’re most likely to see this when you haven’t updated your calendar in a while or you’ve recently canceled a reservation.
30 Replies 30
Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Victoria620   "We're trying to help you by punishing you". Good luck. Next time someone instant books who doesn't meet your requirements, don't just cancel it on your own- their 6 penalty-free cancellations talk is BS. You have to call Airbnb if you get a booking like that and ask them to cancel penalty free showing them that the guest booked disregarding your policies.

@Victoria620 it's apparently a "bug" which is occuring when hosts have too many cancellations, even if they are done by Airbnb through customer service.

 

It happened to me over December & took 2-3 weeks for IB to come back up & has been happening to other hosts (there are plenty of threads out there on the CC). One of the tips is to go in daily and change the price in your calendar. 

 

@Sarah977 it doesn't matter if Airbnb cancels the booking for you. All of my bookings were cancelled by customer service (mostly third party bookings) yet I still got penalised by having instant book removed during the busiest time of the year for me!

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Rachel177 That's terrible. So even though Airbnb's TOS says third party bookings aren't allowed, they punished you for cancelling 3rd party reservations?  WTF is wrong with these people???

@Victoria620 precisely! Such a stupid sytem, you would think that they could distinguish between host cancellations and those done by Airbnb

thank you to you both. 

 @Rachel177, to clarify what you mean, i should go into my calendar and just change the price from, for example, $100/ night to $101/ night? should i change it back to my preferred price? 

 

this bug is unreal. it shut off during a time where my fellow hosts nearby are at 50% booked for the claendar year already and i've barely gotten one booking. we typically get a booking 3-6x/ week and it's been crickets. 

Hi @Victoria620 - yes. I wasn't changing the base price, just the price of a specific day by $1-$2. If you hit save on the altered price, you can always change it back to your preferred price.

Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

@Victoria620@Rachel177  the requirement to update our calendars every single day is quite real.  That is why places like Smartbnb have started introducing special features called HeartBeats.  You can read about it on this link as a concept : http://help.smartbnb.io/seo-for-airbnb-with-heartbeats/how-are-heartbeats-useful

 

But, you don't need to pay for services like SmartBnb to achieve the same thing.  Just do what I do every day and visit your calendar, then "block" and "unblock" a random day.  It refreshes your listing calendar to say "Updated Today" on the calendar when your guests review and it stops the issue you are expriencing with Instant Book going stale.

 

Here is another article describing how this all works, from another persons perspective : https://airhostsforum.com/t/how-i-doubled-my-airbnb-pageview-in-4-weeks/10630

@Ben551 I update my calendar daily. The issue is that hosts are being penalised for cancellations, even when done by an airbnb rep - instant booking is removed, dropping our listings down in the searches. It's been a problem since early December, there are plenty of posts about it on the community centre.

Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

@Rachel177Ah ok, sorry if I misunderstood.  I just picked up on the suggestion above to change a price for a specific day by $1-2 and it sounded like the update calendar thing.  Yeah it doesn't surprise me about the cancellation thing, it's wild and they need to fix it.

correct, @Rachel177. my listing, typically in the top two or three rows, has dropped to nearly the bottom. i had work to find my listing even though i have better overall ratings than the hosts in my area and as a superhost/ IB status. this definitely feels like a penalty for legit cancellations, even when done by airbnb. and yes, my IB problems started late november, early december. 

@Victoria620 I noticed my IB was switched off in mid December. It came back on briefly in early Jan, then disappeared again. It's been back on for the last week, I'm hoping it stays that way. Fingers crossed yours comes back on soon.

Exactly the same thing happened with me. ABB processed the cancellation...then I had weeks of no IB...just came back a week ago...

What a stupid waste of time. My price is the same every day, all year. That I'm supposed to "Update" my calendar every day to stay up in search rankings is an exercise in pointlessness.

Susan17
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

@Victoria620 @Rachel177 @Ben551 @Sarah977

 

This is not a bug, it's a policy that was (as always) stealthily introduced, around September of last year. 

 

Of course it's a penalty, designed to strongly deter IB hosts from cancelling any  bookings, for any  reason. With an IPO on the horizon, Airbnb is ratcheting up the push to coerce/force all  hosts over to IB (the removal of guest profile pics being just one tactic being utilised to achieve that objective), whilst simultaneously moving towards the eventual abolition of the "perks" of IB altogether, such as the 3 penalty-free host cancellations per year. (This has already been reduced to 1 penalty-free cancellation per year in some markets)

 

In typical Airbnb fashion, they've gone way overboard with it though, and have even been suspending IB for hosts whose guests cancelled within the 48hr Grace Period. 

 

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/hidden-fines-for-host-when-guest-uses-48-hour-grace-peri...

 

Comes as no surprise. In an interview with Austin Carr from Fast Company magazine, as far back as March 17th 2014, Chesky and then Global Head of Hospitality, Chip Conley, made their intentions on the future of IB crystal clear - 

"..And in an effort to make an Airbnb listing as easy to book as a hotel room, Chesky and Conley have ramped up “instant booking,” which enables guests to “book someone’s room with the click of a button,” says Chesky. More than 41,000 properties already offer the service, and Chesky’s ultimate goal is to make every listing instantly bookable"