Hi,
I’m in an almost similar situation and I emailed Airbnb a couple of days ago regarding my concern, I’m still awaiting a response.
Sometimes you receive an enquiry and you respond, other times a bit of back and forth communication is required in order to make an informed decision to pre-approve or decline. You might not necessarily want to decline at that stage because you are waiting for further information from the potential guest and how quickly the guest responds is totally out of your control. However if you do not respond one way or the other i.e., ‘pre-approve’ or ‘decline’, within 24 hours, you get penalised by those dates the guest has enquired about being blocked in your calendar.
So what options are available to host -
As a host you don’t want to blindly pre-approve so it would appear that in order not be penalised by those dates being automatically blocked in your calendar, you may choose the safest option to decline. However as I understand it, too many declines have a negative impact on your listing ranking/ account; so host is disadvantaged.
You might feel the information you are waiting for is such that you might be willing to take a chance and pre-approve in order not to miss the 24hours response time permitted. The guest then receives confirmation of you pre-approval and a message inviting them to book within 24 hours following which the pre-approval will expire. At this stage other potential guests interested in those same dates can still find your listing and request to book or book instantly as the case may be which is great.
However the issue comes about when the guest does not take advantage of the pre-approval and it expires after 24 hours. The guest can still come back in the future and request a new pre-approval which will be based on your original old terms including rules and prices.
For example, I had an enquiry a couple of weeks ago for ending of July 16. Last week, I received my quarterly gas, water and electric utility bills and having reviewed them it was necessary to increase my Airbnb prices slightly. I would have accepted and honoured any existing bookings at the lower price but I don’t see why I have to give a guest the old lower price which puts me out of pocket just because they made an enquiry in May but have not actually secured the booking; according to the guest, she will book sometime in the middle of July if she decides to stay at mine. If I go into a shop today May 21st I would have to pay the price of an item as seen today, I wouldn’t be able to go back to the same shop a month later and demand to pay the price I saw on the 21st of May if shop has increased the prices since then. I may be able to secure the lower price if I had paid a deposit back in May or if I made an agreement with the shop to pay the same price by a set date following which I would no longer be entitled to the old price. With Airbnb, although the pre- approval has expired without the guest securing the booking, she just has to resent the approval request in July, 2 months after her initial enquiry and Airbnb give her my old rates and terms – It makes no sense whatsoever to me.
Airbnb state in their policy that you can withdraw a pre-approval once it expires; especialy where you have made any changes to you listing in order that guest is bound by any new changes to your terms/ prices etc,. However, Airbnb removed that option to withdraw pre-approvals a few months back but have not reviewed the impact to the host of not being able to withdraw pre-approvals.
Either ways, if you don’t pre-approve, Airbnb block your calendar. If you pre-approve the guest can come back at any time in future and request the same booking if the dates are still available, ignore any new house rules, terms, prices etc. And finally, if you decline, it eventually impacts your account – this is an unreasonable position and Airbnb’s own policy does not even serve its purpose yet Airbnb penalises host who do not choose one of the absurd options.
Apologies for the lengthy post…..
Ama