I'm New and I got my first booking.

[Jamie52]

I just got my first booking on Airbnb.

I only launched my listing a few hours ago.

About one hour later after the listing was launched I got a message saying someone has made a reservation for New Year. I really hadn't yet worked out how to set different prices for custom days, or that the automatic pricing would offer almost exactly the same price as a normal day. I am really not at all happy with the price that has been booked. I didn't even get a chance to evaluate the price before the booking was made, as I seem to be on an automatic acceptance response for reservations.

Basically this means I'm missing out on a lot as my flat is in Edinburgh and the New Year's celebrations are very popular and easily should command a much higher the average rent. Approximately double the usual rent.

As it is my first day you know I really am a complete novice to the system. I really want to cancel the booking as the guest is not prepared to offer a higher price, but it says I will get an automatic review.

Is there really no way out of this as it happened literally one hour after my listing was first published.

Any help would be very kind,

Thank you!

Jamie

[David126]

Take your listing down until you are ready to go live.

Look up the penalties for a host cancelling, my view is that you should put this one down to experience, your issue not the guests.

[Susan151]

It is really important not to list until you have all of the details worked out. This includes price, photos, booking preferences, instant-book specifications or not, house rules, etc. You can snooze the listing until you have this all sorted out, but I think you will not be able to increase the holiday periods that have already been booked. If you do cancel, AirBNB will block the dates and you won't be able to book anyone.

[Linda108]

@Jamie52  Ahhh the price of the learning curve... I bet there isn't a host on this discussion site that hasn't had to learn some lesson and it usually costs money.  I had a similar thing happen when a new large music festival was announced in my area and I didn't have time to adjust my rate.  The guests who got to my listing before I did got the cheapest room in the whole valley!  It is especially important for new hosts to take time to learn about the Air BNB platform before going live.  Good luck!

[Joy34]

I laughed when I read about your predicament because I, too, experienced something very similar. Right when I was pretty brand new to Airbnb and had my prices low to bring in customers and earn reviews, someone booked several months in advance (before I had pricing figured out for later in the year)...for a whole week during the most prime time season in my area...and he got the booking for below rock-bottom prices! I was so mad at myself, but as someone else said, that is the price of the learning curve. Good luck with Airbnb. 🙂

[Jacqulyn0]

Jamie 

I appreciate you are new but unless you have instant book set up on your listing , you have an option to accept or decline, you then have a drop down menu with a list of reasons for declining you could just have declined the booking ( you do not have to tell the guest why you are declining ) and the last option is other, so you could just have ticked that. Then you could reset your price for this time period. Airbnb will never penalise you for decling a reservation just alway make sure you unblock the little box that will come up with a tick on the LHS which says block my calender for these dates as if you don't it will assume you want them blocked to not take a booking and so they will not appear available to guests to book. [ If you accidentally do not to do this then the only way these can be unblocked is to phone Airbnb who will unblock them for you. 

[Jacqulyn0]

Sorry I should have added that they will never penalise you for declining a reservation but it's a big NO NO to  cancel a reservation and you should read up on why. ALso you must respond within 24 hours to every enquiry to keep your stats  up and good , I'm in Glasgow , been hosting 4 months now and just recently become a super host and I have to say I find the help centre has been fab when I have any queries their no is 02033181111. Good. Luck I'm sure you will enjoy it! 

[Al0]

Where does it say that Airbnb will never penalise you for declining? 

[Ken28]

An important clarification:

No penalty for declining a REQUEST or INQUIRY. That's based on personal judgement.

There is a penalty for CANCELLING a booking that's deliberately accepted.

Airbnb was hoping to get more hosts using Instant-Book, so there are special cancellation policies:

Per their own website:

You can cancel instant bookings penalty-free an unlimited number of times if you’re uncomfortable with a reservation or if a guest breaks one of your House Rules. “Penalty-free” means you won’t pay a fee, lose Superhost status (or eligibility for it), or receive any of the other penalties mentioned above.

[Al0]

There's such a thing known as an "acceptance rate" which affects your position in the rankings. So Airbnb WILL penalise you for declining. 

[Ken28]

@Al0

Do you have any documentation that we can read more about this?

[Al0]

Type into a search engine: Airbnb acceptance rate.

[Ken28]

@Al0 

I asked for documentation on "acceptance rate", which I don't readily find on an Airbnb-written article. I see 'Response Rate' - but that's an entirely different issue.

My point - if you have proof of an "acceptance rate", provide it. As of yet, I see no evidence of such a penalty.

[Al0]

The response rate is different to the acceptance rate. The latter is a point of contention in the Airbnb community and you can read about it for yourself by doing a simple google search. You do not have to seek all of your information from me personally.

Airbnb is notoriously secretive about how it ranks its listings. That airbnb records your acceptance rate and contacts you if it falls below a certain level should indicate to you that yes, Airbnb does penalise you for declining. It should come as no surprise that a for-profit company like Airbnb wishes to prioritise the number of bookings achieved and that if you obstruct that by declining too much then they will rank listings with a higher acceptance rate above yours. There's only so many listings they can put on a page, so why not put the ones which accept all the time at the top? If you don't like the concept of Airbnb "penalising" you, then consider them "rewarding" you for having a high acceptance rate. 

[Jon-Mark0]

Hi there. I am not yet a host but am working on a listing and, without first publishing,  am unable to fine-tune it with added cleaning fees, refund policy, etc. The airbnb rep who contacted me to see what was holding up my listing confirmed that I had to publish first. That makes no sense to me. So your problem is exactly what I'm worried about. And even though I have the reps email address, the number she called me on is not accessible. Good luck!