Reservation with no previous reviews

[Sara7522]

Hi. I’ve just accepted a reservation from someone with no previous  reviews with ABB and now am getting anxious about it. I’ve hosted once before with no problems (he had previous good reviews). This person says his party will be him, his wife and 2 children of 10 & 3 (I ask for families only). I’ve sent him a message with some info about the house and he hasn’t yet responded so think that is worrying me more. Am I wrong to expect to have communication with someone who’s going to stay and should I worry that he has no reviews (he’s got to start somewhere I thought!).

[Anonymous]

@Sara7522  The quality of communication is a better predictor of how the guest will be than reviews (which are often misleading), but the only chance to take advantage of this is in the request process. After you've accepted the booking, the guests should be expected to answer any time-sensitive questions you have, such as when they'll be arriving. But not everyone feels that it's necessary to reply to a message that's just giving info.

A bigger concern here is that Airbnb's Nondiscrimination policy prohibits discrimination based on your guests' family status. You don't have the right to insist that a group be related to each other or contain children. So your listed occupancy limit should reflect the number of adult guests you can accommodate, and whether they fit your personal definition of "family" should not be relevant to the booking.

[Sara7522]

@Anonymous I didn’t realise that - Thankyou. Will amend for my next booking. There were a couple of questions along with the information. I’ll try something more specific and see what response I get.

[Anonymous]

@Sara7522  When time is running out and guests still haven't responded to questions I need answers to, I switch from asking to telling:  "since I haven't heard back from you about this, here's the decision I've made and the new instructions."

They usually write back a few minutes later.