Surprise Early Check-in

[Aaron980]

I am having an issue where Airbnb is sending me pending reservations to approve, now I have it set to auto book unless the guests in new on Airbnb or its the day of check-in. Well this week I have been getting a few more pending reservations, ones from guests that do not fit the criteria I listed above and would normally auto approve. Ok, I checkout the guests information and go to approve them, no big deal. For instance, today I got a pending reservation from a returning guest I've rated 5 stars, she says she can't wait to come back, sounds great and I nearly continue to approve. But lucky for me I some how notice the tiny text that's right above the message she sent me, this text is NOT apart of the message. This text read "Emily’s check-in time is: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM" My check-in time is 4:00PM. I did not approve an early check-in, and no one even asked for an early check-in. NO WHERE DOES IT SAY EMILY REQUESTS AN EARLY CHECK-IN. OR EMILY REQUESTS AND ALTERED CHECK-IN OR PLEASE APPROVE THIS ALTERED CHECK-IN TIME. 

Even better, I have a guest that's been at that property for 2 weeks who is checking out that day. MY CHECKOUT TIME IS 11:00AM

So the tiny text at the top is telling me to approve a check-in at 11 when I have a checkout at 11. Airbnb just sent me a request to have a guest check-in at the EXACT same time another guest was checking out. 

No where does it say she's requesting an altered check-in time, it literally doesn't make you aware of this in anyway.

I have been a superhost for 3 years, I keep up on airbnb changes, this was a major change that they did not make me aware of that has already caused major conflicts and needs to be addressed yesterday. 

[Joan2709]

@Aaron980 

Can you post a screen shot of what you are seeing?  

This used to be an issue in the past with Instant Book and the pre-booking message header.

[Aaron980]

Thanks I just posted one. 

[Helen3]

Just point your guests towards your check in times on your listing .

Guests can indicate what time they would like to check in but you only have to honour the check in times on your listing @Aaron980 

[Aaron980]

The issue is the guest in the message is not asking about check in times at all!

[Shelley159]

Hi @Aaron980 

I agree, just confirm in a message to the guest that check-in is from 16h00.

I checked your listings and the check-in time is set at 4pm for both. Any chance the guest may have been in a different time zone at the time of the request? Perhaps the system didn't convert it to local time?

[Aaron980]

we have had them before and this was no issue so I would say no to time zone issues. I have attached a screenshot in a post below this one. 

[Aaron980]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I am sure this is a new feature, theres no way I missed this before. I cant believe Airbnb wouldn't make hosts aware of such changes and I want to try and prevent other hosts from running into the issue. I have attached a screenshot of the only place they show that the guest is trying to check-in early. 

[Shelley159]

It's not new for Airbnb to show the guest's estimated check-in time if they choose to supply it @Aaron980 

What is strange, is that this guest was able to select a time earlier than your listing's check-in time. I'm not sure whether that's due to a time zone issue, or whether there's a general glitch that allows them to select an earlier time.

[Aaron980]

I am 99 percent sure this is a new feature that's giving guests a place to request early check-in. The issue is the way it's presented to us so discretely. And also now, I told the guest that I would have to do my normal 4pm check-in time and she agreed so I accepted, but now her reservation is still set for 11am check-in. All my automatic messages will be sent way too early, the guest will get her code earlier than I would like, also everything the guest and I see is an 11am check-in, what if the guest forgets by that time? Theres no place for me to append the check-in time. 

[Shelley159]

Hi @Aaron980 

I've gone through my past bookings and the indication of check-in time has been there for quite a while - it looks like it's specific to last-minute bookings that come through as requests when you have Instant Book turned on. 

It also looks like the system allows guests to enter any time (which I agree is silly!). Here's one of my bookings from last May with an even more unrealistic time:

I really wouldn't be concerned about it, though. It shouldn't have any impact on scheduled messages, etc. Those work off your listing's time. In the situation above I just mentioned they couldn't check in before 14h00 (which is my check-in time) and they were fine with it. No further issues.

But I agree Airbnb should idealy change the drop-down menu to only show options from check-in time onwards 👍

[Aaron980]

I literally went through a hundred reservations to try and find it again and I have only ran into the 2 this week that are causing the issue, weird. Did you catch yours or did your guest check-in at 10am?

[Shelley159]

In your original post it seemed like you switched to Instant Book with 1 day notice fairly recently @Aaron980 ? 

I think requests inside that notice period are the only ones that ask the guest to specify check-in time. So that would explain why you haven't seen it before.

(I absolutely could not have the guest check in at 10h00 😀 I saw the time and just explained to them in my message that check-in is from 14h00)