Why does Airbnb make you explain why you can’t host when someone books last minute?

[Carmen898]

I’ve had a number of guests book last minute such as with wanting to arrive in minutes or in a couple of hours. I really don’t like that Airbnb says you have to say why you won’t book them and that you owe it to them to provide an explanation. I have my settings that guests can send a request to see if I can or not.

My settings are also so that people can’t instant book unless they have a photo, verified ID and at least a good reference, yet they can still somehow send requests and Airbnb says I still owe them an explanation and some of them try to book last minute too (which sometimes seem to be for hook ups).

AirBnb and guests need to just take no for an answer. I don’t appreciate guilt trips or having to explain anything that’s already in my restrictions.

[Sarah977]

@Carmen898  Set your booking setting to require 1 or two days advance notice. Then you won't have to deal with this anymore.

[Carmen898]

Thanks for the tip! Sometimes I don’t mind doing last minute hosting, but I feel like I shouldn’t be guilt tripped into explaining why and engaging in negotiations or conflict when the answer is no. It’s the same with dating, people should respect your decision bc it’s your house. I am taking a break with air B and B for a while because barely any guests follow the house rules and are blatantly disrespectful (such as throwing my brand new wash cloths in the garbage, using them to clean their purses, drawing on my bed sheets with a hilighter, having a bugar wall, horking in my sink and bath tub, etc). Increasing the price and restrictions has helped a bit, but not much. It’s  also really hard to sleep at night when there’s strangers in your home sleeping in the room next to you. 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Carmen898 

to be honest, I can't immagine renting a room in my own home to a strangers but many people do that. It is so much more stressfull then renting the entire apartment where we don't live. This is not for everyone. You should really think about it, is it something you can or can't handle.

yes, guests are disrespectfull with towels and that's why we buy cheap white towels HÄREN from Ikea and just replace them when they are worn out, stained or torn. We give old towels to our friend who owns grooming salon for dogs  🙂 We also have a note in the bathroom "Please don't throw the towels on the floor or use them to wipe shoes and dirty items, thank you" ... it helps a lot, but of course, not always.

[Sarah977]

@Branka-and-Silvia0  Renting the private room in my home isn't at all stressful for me. But my set-up is different from a lot of people's. My guests don't have to come in the front door- they access their room by going up the outside staircase to the balcony, and their door, as well as my bedroom door are off the balcony. They have their own bathroom. So sometimes I don't even know if the guests are home or not unless they come down to use the kitchen. Almost all of them are quiet, so if they're out past the time I go to bed (doesn't happen often, I'm a night owl) I seldom even hear them come home. And most of my guests are out and about most of the day- otherwise they are up in their room napping or reading, or writing or using their computers.

I do think it would be more stressful if they had to come in the front door and traipse through the living room, etc to get to their room, or if they were sharing a bathroom with me.

[Mike-And-Helen0]

Just say no time to fulfil Covid cleaning protocols.

[Anonymous]

@Carmen898  It's important to make sure that any dates that are visibly open on your calendar are actually bookable within your parameters (minimum stay, etc). My first suggestion echoes @Sarah977 's:  take a close look at the Availability tab of your calendar editor and figure out which settings work best to make sure you never have to decline or cancel on the basis of availability. Another setting you can try is limiting which days of the week are available for check-in. And of course you can increase your Minimum Stay so that check-ins don't happen so frequently.

Even though it feels annoying to have to justify your declines, try too see it from the perspective of guests. It's very frustrating to put as much as hours of effort into finding the best room for your needs and get excited about it, only to be rejected for no reason. This is especially painful for minority guests, who often suspect they're being discriminated against when multiple hosts turn them down. Declining is the right thing to do when the request is genuinely inappropriate, and I don't agree with Airbnb pushing an "acceptance rate" on hosts who get many of these inappropriate requests. But I think it's fair for Airbnb to take measures to discourage preventable declines. 

If the majority of your guests are bad ones, that's a bigger problem, and you'll have to take bolder actions against it. The first thing I'd do is disable Instant Book; as an in-home host it's important to be comfortable with the people in your home, and that may mean screening them for their communication and verifying that their intended use of the flat is suitable. A Minimum Stay is your best filter against hookups. People who plan to stay for at least 3 days tend to be more respectful and tidy. But a Maximum Stay is also useful, since guests staying more than a week start to act more like flatmates and may take too many liberties with your home.

Also, regarding the House Rules - you have a very long list of them, and it's unlikely that any guest will remember all of them. You're probably better off reducing that down to the most important ones, and keeping them concise, unambiguous, and enforceable. If you find that you're having more problems with children and couples, or that the sound of people talking is keeping you up at night, you can also limit your listing to 1 guest at a time. You're in control here - think about the kind of hosting experience you'd most like to have, and reverse-engineer your listing and settings toward that end.

[Carmen898]

Thanks for the advice. I keep the same day booking as an option but only want it as an option for me. I don’t think I should have to justify me declining people on same day booking because they’re asking for a special request and most do so with only a few hours ahead of time. Sometimes I’m not even home. 

Yes the rules are long, but they need to be specific or people will do them and they come from experience. If I do air B and B I need it make it sustainable for my well being as well. 

There are a lot of pros and cons with having 2 guests vs 1 or minimum stays longer than a day, financially and psychologically. I currently have a lovely short term roomate for a couple months instead right now. The thing I like about air B and B though is that I can take days off and have some inner peace and freedom and make money when I want to. So we’ll see how it goes. 

[Kelly149]

but if the real problem is that they've just failed to plan and this is a not so well organized last minute request then you have a very easy tool available to you....

just wait....

you get 24 hours to respond to a request, so if they're asking at 345 for a 4pm check-in then you absolutely don't have to do anything! At midnight the request will show as unavailable and then if you just want to double cover yourself at 9am you can send a message. "Hope your travel thru our area goes well, sorry we didn't get to host you."

if instead they haven't read the listing or haven't created a good profile then the first message says "welcome!! looks like you haven't completed your profile, please lmk when you've done that and I'll reconsider your stay request" or "welcome!! it looks like you have missed some fairly important parts of our listing, please go back and re-read the whole thing - the complete description and house rules would be key, and then re-message and I'll look at your request. thanks!!"

then you wait and if they improve their info and you feel good about it - great! if they don't follow thru then your 'decline' reason becomes 'guest unresponsive'

"A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part"

[Micheala0]

I have instsnt booking on snf sdvsnce notice and airbnb have penilised because some how i still got a booking at 6pm for 7pm and was expected to turn the house round and be ready htye have threatened loss of super host status i dont look at l media every minite i rang at 7 to get airbnb to sought it this came after 3 5 starr reveiews for same period of another guest who scored two and because its priavate and not public feed back is allowed to call me a bitch and get away with a very ovious wrong  review 

[Alex7939]

TAKE OFF INSTANT BOOK! Lol. I can't say it loud enough. I just started hosting a couple months ago and had the same issue. Airbnb makes it sound like you'll loose out without instant book and can say no anytime. But all it did was create last minute headaches for me. I got rid of it and also set my settings so that I have a days notice before being booked and I'm not hurting for stays

[Sarah977]

@Alex7939  I started hosting in 2016 and I have never even tried Instant Book, nor would I. I'm a home-share host and the concept that a total stranger could book a room in my home without me having the opportunity to communicate with them first just isn't part of my world. I would feel the same even if I had a entire place listing.

Also have advance notice set, 3 day minimum, 2 week maximum, and one night blocked between bookings.

I've never fallen for Airbnb's scare tactics and while I very well might get more bookings if I used IB, guests stil manage to find my listing and I have had nothing but lovely guests who were a good fit for me and my place. No damages, no complainers or scammers or refund seekers. Much more interested in quality over quantity and arranging my hosting so it's enjoyable, not some stressful thing.

[Alex7939]

I completely agree with you! To tell you the truth I didn't even know I had it on until it happened. I had only been doing airbnb for a few weeks then and instant book is an automatic setting unless you turn it off. And to top it off I'm sharing my home as a woman and it was a man who booked. I already felt uncomfortable because he wasn't due until the next day. He had time to send a message. I wondered if he didn't want me to have the option of refusing him. I of course did and Airbnb cancelled without penalty. However it also bothered me that Airbnb says you can always cancel an instant book guest and makes it sound easy.  Yet they make you call, sit on hold, then explain yourself. 

[Sarah977]

@Alex7939  As a female home share host, you could state that you only accept women or couples if that makes you feel more comfortable. I accept both, and all my male guests have been total gentlemen, but I'm not some pretty young girl anymore 🙂

It kind of depends on how assertive and self-confident you are- I've read posts by young single female hosts who had male guests coming on to them and they were just totally intimidated and didn't know what to do, thinking they had to be nice and polite and just wriggle away when the guys tried to hug them or something, instead of straight up letting them know that's not appropriate to a host/guest situation. It's one thing for a guy to test the waters and politely invite you out for a drink, but when you decline, he needs to take that as a "not interested", give up on that, and just be a nice, respectful guest. And of course any guest who makes you feel unsafe needs to leave asap.

If you have good intuition and boundaries, which it sounds like you do, you can play it by ear- one male guest invited me out for dinner his first night here, but there was no  sexual innuendo, he was way younger than me, just a nice guy who didn't want to dine out alone in a new place, so I accepted and we had a nice dinner and a chat about the area. 

[Brian2036]

@Alex7939 

I would hope that saying something like, “ We are sorry that we cannot offer you accommodations until tomorrow because of our full compliance with COVID-19 cleaning protocols.” would be a good enough excuse to avoid a penalty from Airbnb for refusing a booking request.