Allow guests to extend stay and ignore preparation time blocks?

[Ernesto-Jose0]

We have set up a 1 day preparation time before and after. So the calendar automatically blocks check-out day to prevent a new guest from checking in the same day.

Sometimes a guest want to extend their stay. If there are no future bookings that would overlap with the guest' desired new dates, we'd be happy to allow guests to extend. But are they even able to request it, or is the calendar automatically blocked for preparation, preventing them from extending?

It would be unfortunate for everyone if the latter is the case, as it means more cleaning for the host, less income, and the guest would need to find another accommodation. I would expect Airbnb's minimum prep days feature to be smart enough to account for this common case, but is it?

[Tara0]

@Ernesto-Jose0 I've had this situation a few times as I also have the 1-day prep thing. Usually I call Customer Service to sort it out, hasn't happened for a few months so I've forgotten what you have to do, sorry! But it is do-able. 

[Ernesto-Jose0]

Are you saying that this feature exists and can enabled to automatically allow the current guest to extend their stay? Or did you have to call Airbnb on every individual booking?

[Shelley159]

No @Ernesto-Jose0, the guest has to ask you whether they can stay another night, and you then need to unblock that night before they're able to extend their booking.

[Ernesto-Jose0]

90% of guests will probably assume the room has been booked by someone else and not bother to ask. This seems like something very trivial to implement. Is this community site monitored by Airbnb? How do we make a feature request?

[Joan2709]

@Ernesto-Jose0 

You are able to extend, but you will have to modify your prep days (remove them) in order to accomodate the request to extend. Hopefully you're not using Instant Book. If you are, be sure to turn off IB, remove the prep days, modify the reservation, have the guest accept ASAP. Then re-establish your prep days.

[Ernesto-Jose0]

My goal is to not have to do all this work manually for every reservation. This type of work is very trivial for computers to implement.

[Joan2709]

@Ernesto-Jose0 

That's my goal too!...I doubt you will need to do this on every reservation.

Unfortunately, this is what you will have to do on Airbnb if you want to extend the stay on Airbnb with prep days on your availability blocking it. Airbnb is actually way ahead of other platforms on this. Vrbo has no "prep" day capability and you need to manually block dates before/after every reservation to allow for cleaning days. 

Or...you can just not accomodate any request to extend and lose the added revenue - up to you.

You can send feedback to Airbnb at:

https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

[Ernesto-Jose0]

I would like to accommodate most requests to extend if possible, or else I wouldn't have asked the question.

The problem I'm referring is not when the guest asks to extend, which is easy to solve, but when a guest simply assumes the room has been booked by someone else and does not bother to ask. That's a potentially a bad silent loss of revenue.

It's unfortunate that Airbnb is currently very restrictive about API, since this type of rule could be implemented easily by client apps.

[Joan2709]

@Ernesto-Jose0 

I haven't found this to be the case. Just had a guest extend today as their daughter was sick. The date was blocked on the calendar, but she still asked if she could extend. I was able to ensure the cleaning schedule would still work for our next guest and then unblock the date, send her a reservation alteration and she accepted it. 

You can always send guests an automated message that if they would like to extend their stay, please contact us and we can see if that is possible. Many Hosts already do this to fill their calendar gaps between bookings and offer a discount to encourage guests to add an extra night. 

Many PMS systems offer gap night messaging and Breezeway does it automatically (all for a fee of course).

[Shelley159]

 @Joan2709 I'm able to simply click a specific  prep day and unblock it, no need to change settings.

[Joan2709]

@Shelley159 

Hmmm...I only have one listing i work with that has prep days and haven't tried to unblock in ahwile? Let me try that! 😊

I think @Ernesto-Jose0 was more concerned about guests not wanting to even ask as they date shows blocked for a prep day, but I haven't found that to be the case?

What has been your experience?

[Shelley159]

I've had a number of people ask over the years @Joan2709 (that's why I'm confident you can just unblock the prep date and send a change request), but of course I wouldn't know if there have been guests who didn't ask because it looked unavailable to them. 

I guess @Ernesto-Jose0 's main concern is that one is sometimes left with 2 open days when you need only one. For example, if one guest checks out Monday and the other arrives Wednesday, both Monday and Tuesday nights are blocked. In this situation it would be good to extend the 1st booking by one day, as @Ernesto-Jose0 says.

This situation should happen seldom enough that you can manually send a pre-written Quick Reply when it is the case.

In the example above I often open the Tuesday night for a one-night booking, as Wednesday should be light cleaning after a single night stay (but whether that's an option will depend on the situation and the listing).

[Joan2709]

@Shelley159 

Yes! You are right! I just checked and you can just simply unblock the prep days:

We have also seen that sometimes there is a two night gap and we have a 3night min stay. We also open up those nights 2 nights (at a higher price) as long as we have don't allow a same day turn and one full day to clean. This mostly happens during busy summer season.

[Ernesto-Jose0]

The idea is not just to unblock prep days for everyone, but to unblock prep days for the current guest only, up to a limit determined by prep settings for the next booking, if it exists. This is basically encoding the fact that the current guest would be comfortable staying in the same room they've already been staying in, with no prep required, but for any other new guest, prep would be required.

For example, the current guest check out Monday,  and the next guest checks in Friday. Current guests' plans changed and would like to stay 3 nights longer, checking out Thursday. With a 1-day prep this would be fine since host would have Thursday night to prep for Friday.

But Monday night is automatically blocked for everyone, including for the current guest. The current guest sees the room is unavailable, doesn't bother to ask and checks out. The host missed out on extra revenue and must incur the expense of prep for any hope to fill those dates, and the guest missed out on the convenience of staying in the same place.

This rule seems very obvious and easy to implement, it could just be as simple as a check box "Allow guests to extend their stay" to remove the manual burden associated with this for both hosts and guests.

If Airbnb opened up their API this would also be very easy to implement by client apps.