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?

[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.

[Ernesto-Jose0]

That's what I'm doing right now, I ask guests to message me if they want to extend but dates appear unavailable. It's the closest thing to automation that we have access to right now unless Airbnb provides this option for hosts.