When someone first sets up their Airbnb account or installs the app, they are prompted whether they want to receive notifications. People tend to press “no” these days without thinking on apps like this since they don’t want to get inundated with messages from the hundreds of apps they have. With Airbnb, they may not know yet that they really need to enable notifications to receive important information from Airbnb and from the hosts.
However, even after saying “No”, Airbnb users can later go to Account->Notifications to make elections for different types of notifications and notification methods (email, messaging, etc.).
I agree with you that it would be nice if Airbnb would keep notifications enabled for potential, current and past guests, but I can see that they really don’t feel they can do this if the user has explicitly disabled notifications.
I have found that many guests have no idea I have sent them a message, even the post-booking thank you message. They see the message if they happen to stumble upon it while on the Airbnb site or in the app. I know this because they respond with a surprised and/or apologetic tone, sometimes days or weeks later.
One thing I have done to try to prevent this is when I get an Inquiry or Request to Book, I ask the guest a question (how would they like the bed configuration, who is traveling with them, etc.) If they don’t answer the question within 24 hours, I let the request expire, with a message that says something similar to “Your request has expired, as more information is required to complete the booking. Please resubmit your request with the required info. Also, if you haven’t done so, please go to Account->Notifications and enable options to insure that you receive important information from Airbnb and your hosts.”
I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest who didn’t then turn on notifications, and thank me for letting them know. Both the guest and myself can rest a little easier knowing that they won’t miss important messages.
