Always trust your instincts - every time we've talked ourselves into something that didn't feel right, it's been a mistake. Get a conversation going with potential guests and listen to your gut.
We don't accept third party bookings, no exceptions, ever. We've learned from experience! At best, it's impossible to communicate with someone if you don't have their contact info (and if something goes wrong at the accommodation how are they supposed to get hold of you?) - it invites a poor review for the host if something doesn't meet expectations and the guest can't reach out to get it dealt with, if someone's booked on their behalf.
At worst, third party bookings are bad guests with no motivation to respect the property, neighbours etc if there's no consequences like a negative review for them, or recourse to use the host guarantee. It's literally against Airbnb's own terms of service to accept third party bookings, and we never allow it.
As a rule of thumb we don't tend to take bookings from people who reach out asking for a discount straight off the bat either; if someone's cut-and-pasting the same message to loads of hosts they never end up booking anyway. We're in the short term let market because we don't want long term guests, so there's no incentive for us to negotiate a low rate for long termers. We've already dropped prices as low as we can in this tough COVID market and we're still getting booked, and have found in the past that people who start out seeking further discounts are actually quite difficult to please and often more trouble than they're worth!
I repeat - always trust your intuition. The stress of hosting bad guests is never worth it.
