How to handle Airbnb approved early check ins. What message do guests see?

[Inna22]

This is very confusing. For a while there was a feature where guests could ask for early check in and request to book came with a condition that I let them in early. I had to deny the entire request. There was no way to say - you can come, just not early. I would message the guest and verbalize that and then accept or not based on our discussion. Now I just got a reservation that just said: check in 11-1. No request, reservation is confirmed. Guest is demanding 11 am check in which is just not physically possible. Previous guest will check out at 11 and we need to clean. I am not saying I have back to back guests these days often, but today it so happened to be the case. First of all, does anyone know if the guest got any kind of pop up or message that this is not guaranteed that I can reference? This guest is pissed and demanding immediate access. Beyond that, how should I deal with this going forward next time it happens? I am sure everyone will be asking for free early check in if it is an option, why not?

[Sarah977]

After explaining that this was Airbnb's doing without your permission and obviously not your check-in window stated in your listing, and sympathizing, as Mark said, if a guest still was expressing anger about something like this, I would tell them I'd be angry, too, but that they should direct their anger at the cause of the discrepancy- Airbnb, not the host, please.

Airbnb absolutely needs to eliminate that "request a different check-in time" or however it reads. Guests don't understand it, and honestly, if a guest wants a different check-in time, all they have to do is message the host to see if it can be accomodated. Guests do this all the time, they don't need some "feature" that leaves hosts bearing the brunt of the guest's anger.

[Kath9]

@Inna22, I just looked at all your listings and there are no check in times listed. Then I looked at my own listing and saw that my check in time had changed to 'flexible'. So as @Pat271 said, definitely a glitch. I also noticed that my nightly price had dropped...! Might be worth going through our listings and checking that everything is as it should be @Sarah977 @Mark116 @Linda108 @Anonymous 

Anyway, maybe explain to your guest that there has been a glitch in the system. Why on earth are they being so unreasonable about this?  It's obvious that they can't check in at 11 when check out time is 11. But then the obvious doesn't seem to come easily to many at the moment.

[Sarah977]

@Kath9  Thanks for the heads-up. Jeez, it gets wearying to constantly check to make sure they haven't changed stuff without our consent. Were you looking on the app or the desktop?

[Kath9]

@Sarah977 I am on my phone at the moment so was looking via the app. But I imagine it would be the same on the desktop.

[Inna22]

@Kath9 it did not even cross my mind to check my listing for check in times! Will do that now

[Sarah977]

@Inna22 @Kath9  Just checked on desktop in Chrome. No check-in times listed. Check-out times 10AM for some, 11AM for others.

Every time I read that hosts had some setting change of it's own accord, I check mine. But it's odd, I've never had any setting change or disappear since I started hosting. I wonder if it happens more on listings where things are changed by the host on a regular basis, like pricing, or availability settings. Aside from changing mylisting wording a bit once in awhile, and upping my room price by about $2/year, I have the same price every day of the year, and haven't messed with any of my original settings. It's just a wild guess on my part as to why some hosts experience this and not others.

[Anonymous]

I know I'm a broken record for you guys sometimes, but you know one thing I often try to remind people about is that the benefits of Instant Book are only as good as this week's software bugs. This one isn't surprising, because there have been hundreds along these lines before. If you want to make sure you're on the same page as your guests about basically anything - including arrival times - you're going to keep IB deactivated. And if you decide that you're fine with a bot mediating your contact with a guest and occasionally upending your settings - well, complain to the developers all you want but I couldn't care less myself.

[Sarah977]

If Airbnb simply took Instant Book off the table entirely, what horrible thing would happen?  Are guests really going to decide never to use Airbnb because they have to spend an extra few minutes actually sending a booking request with a short message? Do hosts really want guests who are that lazy and uncommunicative? I know Airbnb would never release the stats, but I'll bet the vast majority of the bad guest scenarios, the misunderstanding scenarios, the unauthorized extra guests scenarios, are the product of IB reservations. If there was no Instant Book, they probably wouldn't have needed those 1900 employees they just let go in the first place.

I'm quite sure they did market surveys and found out the majority of guests would prefer to IB, at least that's what Airbnb says. Well, I'm sure guests would prefer not to pay any service fees, either, but I don't see them rushing to eliminate that.

I know there are some hosts who actually like IB, but most of them are experienced hosts who know how to spot red flags, what questions to ask of guests, and have a pretty good game plan of how to deal with rule breakers. Seems like the rest of the hosts who use it only do it because they feel pressured into using it.