Maximum Length of Stay Not Working

[Justin2035]

The max length of stay is set at 28 days, but I just received a request for 60 days that I had to decline. Upon checking my 4 listings, all are available for monthly stays through the Airbnb App, however, all of them have a maximum length of stay set to 28 nights. I've contacted support and had the issue escalated to engineering, but I've yet to have a good experience with engineering getting to me in a timely manner or solving the issue. Is anyone else having this issue?

[Shelley159]

Yes @Justin2035 it feels wrong to decline.

if you want to avoid this (in other words, you're sure you don't want to exceed the maximum sometimes, or you'll specifically add a rule when you do want a longer stay), you can turn off the slider under the maximum stay setting.

 

[Justin2035]

Thank you! Unfortunately i'm using hostaway, so my settings are limited. I may be able to unmap them and adjust this setting though

[Joan2709]

@Shelley159 

This is only for Instant Book right? We don't use Instant Book and I have never seen this setting before?

[Shelley159]

Yes it will only be for Instant book @Joan2709 

It just prevents people from booking more than the maximum without asking first.

The problem is, if you do allow the requests for longer stays, you may end up declining too often and hurting your listing.

It's better to rather manage varying maximums with rules.

[Elisa]

Hi @Justin2035 😊, 

Thank you for asking this question here.

How are things going now? Have you been able to resolve the issue?

Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need any further help!

[Justin2035]

@Elisa Issue is still unresolved, tried to unmap and adjust the mentioned setting in Airbnb, did not make a difference 

[Justin2035]

Update: Airbnb has made me wait the full 48 hours to have the "engineering team" respond with, its a feature to allow hosts to receive more bookings. Then why measure our rates for declining requests and penalize us for it? Why have a slider in the app to allow or not allow requests for longer stays?

[Joan2709]

@Justin2035 

...and I'll bet it was set to ON as a default.

[Justin2035]

Final update: Airbnb support has closed the case without clarifying why even though I unmapped from hostaway, to move the slider to "don't allow requests for longer stays", it still shows my properties when you search for monthly stays. 

Upon further investigation, it would seem this is true for all the properties in my area. So it would seem this is a shift that was implemented with the most recent update to the app and policies for the US.

Its frustrating and will make it more difficult to maintain superhost for some with properties that can't quite book for rates to discourage long term stays. 

At the very least they should make it possible to markup the rate for long term stays. 

[Joan2709 · Accepted solution]

@Justin2035 

As I thought, Airbnb added this feature and defaulted it to ON 😠.

This is another example of a programming change that Hosts were NOT notified about. Airbnb should default these features to OFF and then notify the Hosting community that if they want to use the new feature to go ahead and turn the slider ON to use the new features.

I doubt what Airbnb told you is correct, even if you are using a PMS. Have you tried moving the slider to OFF in both the App and on a desktop?

I would also contact Hostaway about this as surely there are other Hosts using their PMS that have the same issue. Here is what Hostaway says about this:

Hostaway Support - US: +1-210-622-8536