@Alexandra316 As a general rule we do not allow same day bookings. We do accept instant booking but require 1 -2 days advanced notice. If someone does request a same day booking and has not met our minimum booking requirements (filled out profile with photo, government ID, recommendations from other hosts and/or guests, and guest trip info) we send them a message either asking them to provide us with some additional info or we send a decline message stating they do not meet our minimum requirements for booking. This has seemed to work without issues until 4 days ago. We had a same day request from a gentleman who had just opened an Airbnb account. His request was only for 1 night, but his inquiry stated, he would be in the area for a while for business. His profile tells nothing about himself. This is all it says, "I love travel. But I don't like to spend for hotels. This is why I'm here." He has a couple of verifications, which is good. His profile picture doesn't show up, but that may be due to Airbnb's recent changes regarding profile pictures. Long story short, my husband asked me to decline the request due to lack of any information, reviews, etc on the gentleman. Tonight I get another request from the same gentleman once again wanting a same day booking after we had already sent him this message regarding same day bookings:
Thank you for attempting to instant book with us at A "Peace of Oz." However, as part of our instant booking process we require a minimum of 1-2 days advanced notice. Other instant booking parameters that must be met before we will consider pre-approving or accepting a booking is that all guests have a properly filled out profile with picture, and/or some reviews from other hosts. Unfortunately, you have not met these pre-approval requirements, so we are going to have to decline your request at this time.
We do hope you find a place that will meet your needs. Sorry it could not be at A "Peace of Oz."
The only thing different with the second request is that he booked for 2 nights instead of 1 and said he was looking for a longer time, if possible maybe 2 weeks or so. Still no change in profile details or host reviews. We know everyone has to start somewhere to get that first review, so we sent him a message reiterating we do not typically accept same day bookings, but that if he could answer some questions, tell us a little about himself and accept our booking terms by signing a hold harmless agreement and providing identification upon arrival we would reconsider his request for the following evening as we were not able to accomodate to the same night booking due to other obligations we had this evening.
This is the response we received back: "Thanks for giving me hard time for this reservation because of my name. I haven't seen any review by any immigrants person already. You guys should have allergy by immigrants. Anyway your house your rules and decision. You don't have to accept but If you did accept I would want to change your mind actually. Thank you!" This was not the responce I was expecting. That is for sure. I was hoping for an understooding of our concerns and that he would gladly provide us info to get to know him, since he was fishing for a potential stay of at least 2 weeks or maybe more. Yes, I could tell by his name and even his broken English that he most likely was originally from another country or that English was not his mother language. This for us is part of the excitement of opening up our home to others, to meet people from other walks of life and different cultures. As I kid my, grandparents always had foreigners in their home and helping on their farm. I have many fond memories of learning about them, their countries and languages and trying to teach them ours.
We are only 6 month into the whole hosting thing so I am sure this is the first of many off flavor experiences we will encounter. Has anyone had a similar experience? How do I respond to this? Or should I? I do feel aweful that he feels we were profiling him. I'm guessing this is something he runs into often, otherwise he would not have said it. I understand he is probalby frustrated, as he is trying to find accomodations. But if he knew he was going to be here for at least 2 weeks why did he not try to secure accomodations sooner?
“It’s not where you go, it’s who you meet along the way.” Wizard of Oz