Automated Questions for Instant Booking function removed

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

For those of you who relied on the automated questions being prompted to guests who Instant Booked, Airbnb has removed this function.  Therefore, none of your guests are being prompted to respond to, well, anything.  And the space for a "welcome message" in the booking settings section, has a character limit less than a Tweet - so you can't ask them there. 

You could try using the "saved messages" section, which is what we've done.  We've also made our "greeting" say: "Within the next 24 hours you will receive a message that will require your response and attention.  We look forward to hearing from you."   There wasn't even room to tell them to make sure they have message notifications turned on.  

Once again, @Airbnb2 pulls a function and does not communicate it to ANYONE!!!! @Lizzy0 @Quincy0 @Admin0 @anyonewhowilllistentothehostsinanyway

[Lizzie]

Hello @Alice-and-Jeff0,

I hope you are well.

Thanks for highlighting this.  I can understand your frustion to find that this isn't there as expected.

The reason for why this isn't showing anymore could be a number of different things,  such as the team might be working on improvements, but it could actually be that not many hosts were actually using this function. 

Either way, I'm trying to find out a little more about this feature and will let you know when I know more. 

Out of interest, did you find this feature useful to you as a host or do you have an idea of a better way to to ask the questions you need to your guests?

Thanks again for your help with this.

Lizzie

[Kelly149]

@Lizzie this feature would have been more useful if it was programmed to be responded to in order to move forward in the booking. As it was guests were free to ignore it and my guests very often did

[Zacharias0]

agreed! ive declined many requests because they dont answer ANY of my prebook questions and i have only 2. Instead they beat me over the head with a multitude of questions. 

[Ruthie12]

Oh my.  Please bring it back.  It makes me feel so much more comfortable about the booking when I know a bit about the guest.  Most guests who come to our house are attending family/friend events in the area.  It's very helpful to me (and to them) when I know that it's for a wedding, an alumni gathering at the nearby boarding school, etc.  For other guests I've been able to supply information about their particular interest...covered bridges, wolf habitat, a nearby state park etc.  I ask only two very basic questions.....what brings you to the area, and who are you travelling with.

[JJ48]

I found a solution, if you're still having trouble.  I also was unable to edit my welcome message or see the automated questions.  Please see my reply on the original post about the Automated Questions - unless you don't have time then, basically, you can do it in the app!

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

@Lizzie@Admin0- Yes, we found it helpful as it framed the stay and stay type for us.  We knew the best way to approach the guest and their questions.  Without it, we are clueless to why they are coming to stay in our town or why they chose us.  We've headed off so many issues in advance because the guests were asked those automated questions (like those thinking they were going to receive a full, hot American breakfast vs. the continental one we provide or a guest who thinks committing to a time of arrival means a range of time, not a specific appointment time). 

And it's getting harder and harder to get guests to respond to messages we send now.  It frequently takes days and days for them to get back to us - my guess is that they also changed the auto-settings for notifications to be different and guests who only use the app are no longer being prompted that there is a message in their inbox.  I am currently waiting on no less than 10 responses in my inbox right now - some more than 48 hours old - which means when the guest finally gets back to me with answers to these questions, they will no longer be able to cancel penalty-free if the stay is not as they expected.  

Please note that Airbnb has taken away more and more information about the guest from the host.

1. Guests are not required to post a photo (we can request it, but they can still book without it by simply posting a picture of their dog and we get the glorious job of asking them over and over to post something different - just went round and round with someone for 6 emails about this),
2. they are not required to fill out the profile section,
3. they don't even have to post their city as we see more and more "United States" locations (this is big country), and now
4. they don't even have to answer a few questions as a part of the booking process.  
5. Not to mention that they don't have any time constraints put on them to answer back to us. So we have Response times and Response ratings to contend with and yet, we can be held hostage to non-communication for weeks at a time with our only recourse to mark them down for communication in their review which will not ever get them kicked off the platform - slow responses - but it certainly will get any one of us kicked off. 

I agree with @Kelly0 - Answers to the questions should be required as a part of the Instant Book process and if Airbnb doesn't want us asking our own questions, then they need to provide us with a cafeteria of legally-approved-and-worded options we can choose from to get a few small specks of information from people we are opening our doors to and inviting into our homes.  What ever happened to the idea of mutual trust, respect, and communication on this platform?  

[Allison2]

Couldn't agree with you more!

Airbnb is embracing the hotel model, but WE'RE NOT HOTELS.

I've been a SuperHost every quarter for 4 years and the push for Instant Booking, self check-in, flexible cancellation and nearly anonymous guests who can't bother to read or respond to messages is taking its toll on my enjoyment of hosting.

I liked when it actually felt like a community of people who enjoyed traveling in a more personal way. Airbnb has killed the spirit of home stays with an immitation of actual hospitality.

[Anonymous]

bonjour @Allison0, nous avons le même ressenti ici en France, Rbnb a completement perdu son concepte du partage. il est devenu une usine a argent. et ne respecte plus les hotes en leur otant , supprimant de nombreux outils, pour connaitre les invités.

[Rebecca181]

Duplicate entry.

[Alok4]

I agree completely. I have faced this issue in India. One guest books on instant booking just before check in without  photograph and any other information.  Being new on the platform I accepted it.  And I had a very undesirable experience.  This guy was arrested by police in December for call center fraud in the USA.  I strongly feel no booking should go through without proper frontal photograph of the guest and ID verification.

[Alice491]

Hi Lizzie yes we found it useful as we did to see photos of potential guests. My acceptance rate since you removed the photos has gone downhill and I find it unacceptable they can see our photo but we can't see theirs. I also find it unacceptable I am expected to accept guests I cannot see into my home.

[Susan653]

@Lizzie,

I didn't initially  use it, but I enabled it a few months ago, and found that both my booked guests and inquiring potential guests were much more forthcoming about their travel plans than had been the case before. I had it set up so that Instant Booking was contingent on these questions being answered, so yes, I definitely found it helpful.

It's hard to believe that it was so UNhelpful to so many hosts that it needed to be eliminated. Here's hoping this is just a "maintenance/improvements break" thing and it will be back.

[Ben551]

@Lizzie I used the feature and found it incredibly helpful to assist dingbat guests with daft travel plans that didn’t make sense. I always asked “what brings you to Wellington?” and the answers I’ve been getting... you have to see it to believe it.

In fact, let me list some of them:

1. “We are want see dolphins at your place!” ...there aren’t any in Wellington.
2. “We want to see and hug all the sheep!”.... our house is not a farm.
3. ”We are attending a conference in Auckland”.... then why are you booking in Wellington!!
4. ”I can’t wait to see all the Hobbits!!”.... I don’t even!?! How do we...!?
5. ”We love to visit Queenstown!”... it’s a city in a different Island you twit!!
6. “We should be there around midday, we are driving from Brisbane”... oh REALLY!!

....aaand I’ve onky been hosting a couple of months. Seriously, it’s been real helpful to capture this up front with the booking. I could use an automated message of my own, but meh... I don’t know that this level of idiot is going to read and respond in a suitable timeframe to allow me to... correct their thinking...

[Huma0]

@Ben0

OMG.

[Erin205]

Having been to NZ, this is absolutely amazing.