Hello,
I am very new to this starting in January. I have my 3rd booking considering a reservation who is a young man attending his college graduation at the local university with his family. He started off asking to negotiate/discount the pricing for this huge weekend in our area that I am already booked for. I told him our house has been reserved since the Fall for that date. When I told him that was not available, he insisted he could see it was available on the site. I further explained that it has been rented for this weekend for several months. (People book a year in advance for Graduation weekend).
Now he has since come back after a day or two but wanting to rent the house for different dates--the following Sunday-Tuesday. I agreed, and we would need 4 hours in between the first party checking out at noon (booked through a different site) and him checking in to insure it is cleaned and linens changed etc (it is a big old house) and he wanted it an hour earlier. So I then agreed to make it available at 3pm instead of 4pm however I now am realizing that this is not in the Airbnb choices. He and I have only discussed by Airbnb correspondence in regard to the check-in time. Could he show up wanting to check in at the Airbnb check-in times? How do I manage that?
Then he again wanted to try to negotiate the pricing through emails, but I asked him to please go ahead and book through Airbnb.
Next he is now accusing me of changing the prices for the dates he wanted saying they were originally "300" per night and now they are "497" per night. The Sunday night price, which is quite a bit higher than the weekday price, has NOT changed, but I did reduce the Monday and Tuesday night pricing according to the Airbnb price tips by $6 along with other weekdays. So I'm not even sure what he was looking at previously, or even if he was just looking at Monday and Tuesday which were actually higher than they are now? Or if he's just being difficult to get lower pricing? It ends up being $12 less for him, but I am not even sure what he's referring to with the $497. I am not sure what to do. He has not yet reserved and I am just getting a really bad vibe about him. Although I'm new to Airbnb, I am a hotelier so am not totally new to guests acting badly. Should I just close out those dates and go with my intuition telling him the house is no longer available?
Also from what I can see he has no reviews but is just "verified." I am concerned this is just a bad review waiting to happen for my home.
My 2 questions are:
Should I close out the dates and not allow him to book it if I have a bad feeling about the situation?
Is it possible he could show up at the regular check-in time and insist on checking in because I have only arranged that by Airbnb email?
Thank you for any insight!
Maggie
