How long can a pending inquiry go on?

[Bob39]

Yesterday a guest sent me an inquiry, asking me how far my house is from 2 things they want to see. I replied quickly, with the exact distances. The inquiry is for a booking this Sunday, Sept. 18th.

I heard nothing further from the guest, but I did get an email today from Airbnb asking me to pre-approve or decline the booking. I sent a second message to the guest today, asking if they are still interested in making the reservation. But they did not reply to that either.

Since I don't know whether I want to approve or deny this booking request, can I just do nothing? Am I penalized for doing nothing, if the date they inquired about comes and goes? Am I penalized for declining? I only declined one other request this year (my house sleeps 5 and the guest wanted to bring 8, so I declined that).

I am uncertain what to do, as I don't know enough at this point to either approve or deny, and the guest is unresponsive. Any advice you can give will be appreciated.

[Dan-And-Melissa0]

We are new to hosting. Havng said that, we believe you have 24hrs to make a decision. So you need to either pre-approve, or decline.

we have declined a request before because they wanted to violate our house rules. We believe many declines may drop our listing status a bit, but we are not sure. We have also pre-approved questionable guests and they never booked.

i know this ipdoesnt answer you r question but wanted to respond anyway. We figure our place, our rules, our comfort, before anything comes first.  Our reviews are good so far, and that speaks volumes in our opinion.

good luck

[Jillie2]

If you are just not sure if they want to book your unit but you are open to them booking it, I say click pre-approve.

When you pre-approve a guest’s inquiry, you give them permission to automatically confirm a booking for specific dates. The dates won’t be blocked on your calendar, so you can pre-approve multiple guests at one time.

Guests have 24 hours to confirm a booking that has been pre-approved. After 24 hours, the guest can still request to book your listing with the price offered during the pre-approval, unless you remove the pre-approval. You can remove the pre-approval at any time in the message thread.

[Bob39]

Thank you for your reply. I contacted the guest again, and finally they contacted me, saying they already booked something else. The "Pre-approve or decline" button was still there, so I went ahead and did a pre-approval, even though I know they won't book. I did not want to do another decline, since that would count against me if Airbnb keeps track of my declines. So the pre-approval will expire in 24 hours and none of this will count against me?

[Stephanie26]

Just FYI - once you respond to an Inquiry, you are no longer held to any timeline.  Inquiries only require a reply message, not a Decline or Pre-Approve.  I know you still saw this in your pending request list - I have one also that is asking me to do something, but I have already replied and the guest told me she found another place.   Still, it shows I need to do something.  But, I know since it is an inquiry I've already respondeed, so there is no further penalty.

I would like to know how the guest can cancel an inquiry.  I've asked her to do this, but she doesn't know how and I don't know either.

[Sue-and-Patrick0]

We have the same issue of an inquiry pending for more than a month now after we enchanged with the guest and they did not book. Usually, in this case, we pre-approve and the inquiry is closed after 24h of the guest not accepting. The issue in this case is that somebody then booked on the same dates... so we hesitate to preapprove the initial inquiry to close it as we would be risking a double booking in case the initial guest changed his or her mind and finally want to book... the best would then be to decline but I am wondering if it would count as a negative point in my record, although I replied initially within the 24h period...