Major design flaw regarding the pre-booking message

Answered!
Sean95
Level 10
Toronto, Canada

Major design flaw regarding the pre-booking message

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In the attached screenshots, you will see a huge contradiction. In one of them, there is the false statement, "Pre-booking message: require guests to read and respond to a message BEFORE they confirm their reservation". In the other screenshot, where a friend is going through the steps of booking my listing, you will see that my pre-booking message does not appear anywhere. 

 

What we discovered is that AFTER the property is booked and paid for, the pre-booking message will be automatically sent as a conversation starter.

 

This is a pretty huge design oversight. I've contact AirBnB customer service many times about it, and either the service rep is somehow incapable of understanding the issue OR it gets passed over the the backend personnel, who then give me a canned blame-the-user response that totally misses the point, "the guest should be reading the rules before booking so you shouldn't need to remind them about the rules in the pre-booking message". 

 

OMFG it doesn't matter what the host wants to put in the content of pre-booking message. Don't call it a freaking pre-booking message if it's actually a pose-booking message. Ridiculous.

Top Answer
Jennifer1421
Level 10
Peterborough, Canada

@Sean95 

I've just checked this out using my partner's account for my listing. Here's what I discovered:

 

After I chose "Reserve", the "Rules" page appeared. All the preset rules that I've chosen (no pets, no parties, etc) are listed. The box must be expanded through a "Read More" drop down to see any additional rules that I've added. In my case, I've included a "no 3rd party booking" rule and a couple of other things.

 

The booker must then click "Agree and Continue".

 

They are then presented with the prebooking message, in which I've asked for arrival time (after 3pm) name of second guest (if any) and a **Note:  3rd party bookings violate Airbnb's terms of service. Please abandon this booking now if you will not be staying here personally.

 

You can tell that I have a problem with 3rd party bookings 🙂

 

Anyhow, the booking is not confirmed at this stage, so I guess it is still a PREbooking message that guests are presented with before they confirm the reservation. A "Continue" button must be clicked before the order is processed.

 

I've only just added the 3rd party biz into the prebook message, so I'm hoping that I see a drop in people doing this going forward. Obviously no one expands the "read more rules" part (which seemed to make no difference - or at least didn't discourage ALL third party stuff), so I though I'd try this.

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15 Replies 15
Emilia42
Level 10
Orono, ME

@Anita1001 Airbnb’s wording underneath the text box is very confusing and should be deleted. I can confirm that guests will see your pre-booking message on the same page that they are asked to confirm. Here is a screen shot of the process to book your listing.

 

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