Fraudulent activity

[Michael10311]

Over the last few days I have had booking requests from people that have had no previous days and are asking me to communicate outside of Airbnb. I have declined all three of these due to the suspicious activity, but I’m afraid it might affect my account. Is there something I could do to prevent this from happening

[Joan2709]

@Michael10311 

Were they booking requests or just inquries?

If an inquiry, no need to decline. Just respond within 24 hrs. Airbnb makes it seem like you have to use the "Decline" button but you don't on inquiries.

[Rebecca]

I was going to ask the same thing @Joan2709! @Michael10311, was it an inquiry? 😊

[Greystone0 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Michael10311  - since you have a new listing you are possibly being targeted.  As you probably know, AIRBNB doesn't allow communication off platform prior to a confirmed reservation. To signal to these 'scammers', you can add some content to your listing, either in the "other things to note" or your "house rules" or both, something like: "requests for off platform communication will be reported to AIRBNB" or some such thing (and link to the policy). 

When we get repeated weirdness along these lines, we put something up front to help it go away. These requests/ interest that go nowhere don't help your listing in the long run, even if it is from bad guests. It looks (to the AI that is running things) like you can't convert lookers into bookers, if that makes sense. So for us, at least, stopping this before it looks like an inquiry that goes nowhere is important to us, if that makes sense.

You can leave this comment up until this type of communication goes away. Just my two cents.

Good luck!

[Mary1523]

There's probably a way to report/decline as a suspicious guest. Airbnb chat support or the help pages might be able to assist. I must admit I haven't had this before so don't know the exact answer.

[Rebecca]

Hi @Michael10311 👋

You got some replies here and I wondered if you could share an update on the situation?