Hi Everybody,
I thought I would post about a recent experience I had from a guest that had inquired about a discount. Now I've read in other posts most hosts don't do discounts due to how competitive Airbnb pricing can be however, this guest had claimed to be a return guest of mine.
Now I would love to give any of my return guests a deal for booking again, and since I'm a new host I definitely could use the long term customers. But I was still a little wary on the discount since she was asking on a very popular holiday weekend. I looked into this guest's profile and found she had only one stay on her profile and it wasn't at my Airbnb. Of course, I assumed either another profile such as a significant other or friend had booked their previous stay, so I asked her for that name which she replied that she's surprising her significant other that had booked before and his name "John, Joe, or Jay." So very vague name and no dates mentioned. Fortunately, I have not had many bookings being this new to hosting so I never had anyone under those names that had booked me.
I was wary of pressing on since I would be embarrassed to question someone so much who said they've stayed with me before but I mentioned I didn't see anyone of that name and asked what dates she stayed. After all this, I was stressed about having her even book since I felt she would be upset from jumping through hoops of questions and if she stayed with no discount she may leave me a bad review for all of this. Come to find out she never got back to me at all. Meaning she lied about being a return guest all to receive an undeserved discount on a holiday weekend. Not only did this stress me out, but I felt very uncomfortable almost booking a guest that was so willing to lie to me just for a possible $20 cheaper stay. Made me question what else she would be willing to lie about if she did stay and something happened. For all the other hosts out there, do you think I should report this profile? And please be warned on this! It will be much harder to prove this person didn't stay with the more reservations you've had.