The risk of having a “flexible” check-in time

[Thais66]

I used to set a “flexible” check-in time for my listing as I thought it would make my listing more attractive. This has never been a problem, but my last guests requested to check-in at 12:00am from the day of the booking.

I asked airbnb support team if this was allowed and they confirmed that it is. And as this listing has a “self check-in” process, guests don’t even need to tell me in advance their time of arrival.

As a guest I´ve never thought about this and how easy it is to get an extra night for free.

I just changed my check-in settings and defined a time window to avoid this from happening again, but still wanted to ask other hosts if you think this policy is fare.

[Thais66]

@Robin4 "that any timespan in the listing beyond 24 hours is technically classified as 2 days" not according to airbnb. But thanks anyway

[Alon1]

Thais,

Thank you for this piece of information, though useless in my case.

The points I made were rather that I don't see that you are an experienced host, and that you contemplate changing Check-In time based on one negative experience that you perceive or project is likely to be repeated in future cases. 

As mentioned in 6 years I've never experienced someone trying to take advantage or abuse Check-In time. Nor has another experienced Host on this forum, Robin from Australia.

Still, even if you change from Flexible, sooner or later you are bound to encounter a problem with your Fix timing. -- Such problems are unavoidable when dealing with so many strangers. There is no guarantee of 100% success whichever option we chose. 

Best Wishes.

.

[Anthony608]

I just had this happen, where the guest was arriving at midnight the day of the reservation, essentially staying there an extra night from the previous day.  I advised the guest the keycode for the door wouldn't go active until 9AM and the guest agreed to pay half cost for an extra night to activate the code at midnight so they could come in and spend the night.  They have yet to send the payment, it was a very small amount, so hopefully there will be no issue.

I am seriously thinking of changing my stated check-in time from flexible to 1PM the day of the reservation.  I've only had one other situation where the person arrived at 9AM, and that was actually back-to-back with another guest who hadn't left yet.  In that case, the person just waited downstairs while the other party left and the room was cleaned.  It was a little bit awkward but no problems in the long run.

[Paul154]

@Anthony608 

You can even go one step further. Charge for early check-in. 

It usually prevents early check-in.

No host should be stress out cleaning  a room while a new guest waits. I want no strangers to see me in this situation.