Minimum Stay Not Honored

[Brian3890]

I have a booking setting that requires all guests to book a minimum of 2 nights. This has been honored for years of managing my listing on Airbnb. I’ve now had 3 separate bookings over the last 2 months that have not honored that minimum. 

Has anyone else experienced this issue lately? Support is hassling me about cancelling and that it will penalize my account for cancelling outside of policy.

[Emiel1]

@Brian3890 

You probaly must have set custom 1 night minimum stay for certain dates or time periods.

For example: i can book in time period  15-19 august a stay for 1 night.

I also see in october a 3 night minmum stay. So check your settings.

[Brian3890]

Thanks @Emiel1 ! On the August front, I think there may be a setting that changed when a guest cancelled and the nights opened back up. I wonder if there’s a glitch in the system there? Or I do use a dynamic pricing tool, which sets minimums based on proximity to the date of booking (ie why you see October at 3 nights minimum). I did double check to ensure the settings in that tool are keeping minimums at 2 nights.

[Shelley159]

Hi @Brian3890 

Yes there have been other hosts mentioning this. It's hard for us to tell what the issue is. A system issue is probably less likely than host error, but as a 3rd party I couldn't say.

It seems to have started after Airbnb changed the way we cutomise minimum stays. Previously you had to create a custom trip length and apply it to dates. That's not something you'd do by accident.

Now you can just click each block on the calendar and edit its own minimum stay there (custom settings) as @Emiel1 says.

Also, if you want to unblock a date now, there's a pop-up asking whether you'd like to reduce the minimum to 1 night to open it.

Could you have done any such override?

Don't cancel as a host unless you absolutely have to.

[Brian3890]

@Shelley159 In this specific instance it feels unlikely, but it could be tied to a cancellation that we had originally had and then someone rebooking close to the same dates and not seeing that unblocking dates allowed for a one night stay. 

[Greystone0]

@Brian3890 @Shelley159 @Emiel1 

sooo - here's something that happened to me:

- awhile back I was making a calendar change and on the right hand side for availability both the minimum and maximum night stay was not what I had for my listing

minimum was "1" 

maximum was "417" or some big number that made no sense (347? 437?) something like that.  It clearly was a number that no host would ever put in this field. This indicated to me that some sort of underlying maintenance was going on. 

I could not make the calendar edit that I wanted to make and I was quickly freaking out about my calendar settings. We absolutely do not want a booking at either setting but mostly it was the 1 night that seemed more likely, we don't do 1 night , ever.

I decided to snooze or pause my listing (whatever they call it here) to just keep anything from happening. I didn't take a screen shot as I should have.

I went back to my calendar some small amount of time later and low-n-behold the calendar settings were just fine and I was able to make the calendar edit that I wanted and nothing bad happened, I unpaused my listing.

SOOOOOO - who knows if this also happened here. Or maybe you have some calendar issues that need to be investigated or both things can be true.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that AIRBNB has made an error, the host has made an error or both.  If AIRBNB has made an error there would be no way to know as you would have to have eyes on the fields in questions at exactly the right time. Which is what my eyes were doing. Otherwise, I never would have known.

Anyhoo, that happened.

Sorry I don't have some sort of more tangible case to help with the issue.