reservations have decreased drastically

[Stephanie26]

I have been a host for 3 years.  Although I live in a climate where you could assume we have a 'low season', because it is a major metropolitan city surrounded by mountains, people come here throgh the winter for many reasons - family, skiing, conferences, even just cheaper travel since it is the low travel seasons.  For the first two years I was booked for every available date even through the winter.  In 3 years, I have rarely received a review less than 5 stars, and am a Superhost.  

A couple of months ago there was discussion in the news about stricter regulations coming to my city, so to preempt having to cancel reservations in a panic, I blocked the first three months of the year just so I could have time to observe what was going on.  I thought this a sign of being respectful of guests and the possibility of derailing their plans, rather than being more concerned about losing revenue for the first quarter.

Very soon after, I noticed I did not receive any new reservation requests.  I thought it was just a annomaly, so I didn't think about it much.  Now that two months have gone by, I realized I am only booked for half of November and barely anything in December.  Last week I got comfortable that nothing drastic with the rules in my city was going to happen soon, so I opened up the calendar, except for 3 weeks at the end of Dec/beginning of Jan when I will be away. 

I came on the boards here and see comments about how your posting may fall down in search results if you block too much time on your calendar.  Here I thought I was doing the right thing, but now I've lost a signficant amount of income.  Is there a way to resolve this?

[Sabine42]

i'm dealing with the same issue. last year nov/dec were great, steadily booked, this year my december is wide open. this is our prime season, i'm keeping my listing 'updated', change little things here and there, update prices etc only to find out my listing can be found amidst the obscure on page 17 or so. i have great reviews, great rating, superhost, what gives? is it worth it contacting Airbnb about this? suggestions welcome

[Sara2]

S@sabine I too have no guests November and December and rang ABB they suggested delete app and reinstall but it made no difference

[HannahyMartín0]

same issue I am having. Last year I was very busy during high season and showed up near the top of the list, but now my listing is rarely seen and my bookings are down. Very odd.

[Yudith-And-Peter0]

Travelers rather travel to Europe. It's cheaper than in the US. Inflation and the EURO is below the us dollar. Or so I've been told.

[Silvia247]

Hi I'm experiencing the same issue here in New York.  It's true since the announcement of stricter regulations applying to home sharing, it has decreased drastically. 

[Stephanie26]

Hi Silvia, I agree things may have change in cities where stricter regulation has been imposed - although I doubt airbnb manages anything on that front.  The regulation changes have not been imposed here, so I'm asking about the situation where a host has blocked a large amount of time on their calendar (the reason I did it was to preempt the risk of having regulations come down which might prevent me from using this service, but I was just giving that as backgroud - it really doesn't have anything to do with what happened).  Then I even has opened up most of that time.  The timing was identical - as soon as I blocked the 3 months, reservations stopped coming in.  I'm trying to find out if that was the reason and, if so, how I can rectify it.

[Sabine42]

sorry Stephanie, i just went on my own rant and didn't offer any help. I don't think there's anything you can do other than updating your listing, some new photos, maybe adjust your price. anytime you 'update' your listing it's supposed to 'awaken the robots' (read that on someone's post) and you get bumped up on the search. since airbnb punishes hosts who decline often, cancel a reservation etc. i think it's entirely possible you got punished for blocking out a large chunk of time. another option is other booking sites in addition to airbnb, that's what i'll do next. good luck!

[Stephanie26]

haha, no worries.   Throughout the past 3 years, I've often gone months without touching my listing - I was getting reservations at the price I advertised for every spot I had open.  I obviously logged in every couple of days to either read about who is coming next, answer questions, send check-in instructions.    Good advice to use other sites.  Between cleaning, greeting guests, answering messages, taking care of issues while they are here, arranging for a cleaner when I can't be here to clean between guests, and working full time outside my house, I have trouble keeping up as it is - I can't imagine also having to sync reservations on two different systems to make sure there were no conflicts!  But, it's a good suggestion.  Thanks for your reply!

[Marit-Anne0]

@Stephanie26

It seems the reservation draught is global - maybe airbnb is going out of fashion ?

[Stephanie26]

Hi Marit,

I once spent two months working in Stavanger, so I was curious where Troms was.  That looks amazing!  I may have a chance to go to Sweden this year, and wanted to go way up north to have a chance to see the Northern Lights.  I've also wanted to get out to Svaalbard

It's still pretty big here, so I really think it was the blocking of my calendar.  It is such a shame airbnb discourages people from taking vacation, where they will likely stay in an airbnb!

[Yudith-And-Peter0]

Travel to Europe is cheaper now with the us dollar above the EURO and the us inflation. Or so I've been told.

[Louise102]

I have blocked for many months at a time because my parents come to visit us, it has never changed the bookings. I don't think that's it. Airbnb is doing a huge push for new hosts and they are getting them. That is bound to take business away. There is only so much business and we now have to share with a huge new group of hosts. 

[Wilson7]

I'm a superhost in Toronto renting a couch for a very affordable price and I have been booked solid for the last 6 months.  

I noticed I have had no bookings whatsoever for 2017.  I toggled the instantbook feature to On and then turned it off and Airbnb asks why I am turning it back to the option where travelers would have to request.  It also said that listings that are not instant book will not have priority on the listings. 

I wonder if this is the case and if it would drastically affect bookings as everyone has been experiencing.  I wonder if having instant book toggled on satisfies Airbnb's "discrimination policy" since it allows anyone to book so long as they meet Airbnb's basic requirements.  

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

Two answers: 

One, IB hosts now appear in the first search listings, no matter how many positive reviews you have. So if you don;t have IB switched on you are automatically at at disadvantage.

Two - huge increase in number of hosts.

We turned on IB to see if it made any difference, as a trial, as we were looking quiet for next year. However, all of our guests have put through reservation requests rather than use IB as they wanted to ask questions. I think IB works better for entire homes rather than shared spaces. Change your photos, change your text, on a regular basis and at least it means you alwasy jump up the search criteria - but with IB now the revenue generator for AirBnB they will alwasy get the first look in.