Conditional Acceptance of requests

Conditional Acceptance of requests

As many hosts have pointed out it is often vital that a guest understands something in particular about a listing before booking it, and sometimes there may be something slightly different about a certain interaction that needs to be agreed upon.

 

A couple examples:

1) A guest is arriving the same day another guest is checking out and we need them to confirm that they are willing to arrive a little later than we absolutely require in order to make sure the house is ready for them.

2) A guest with a child asks to book our place.  While this fact is apparent to a guest who has looked through our pictures we would like to make sure they are aware that there is beer on tap in our living room and that they are comfortable with that before accepting their request.

 

These scenarios and others would be nicely handled with a feature that allows the conditional acceptance of a request.

Right now I can Accept, Decline or Send Special Offer. I propose another option be added: Accept With Condition.

This would open a dialog that allows me to enter a condition.  The guest receives a message "Confirm Your Stay!  Your host would like to confirm your reservation and wants to make sure you're happy with this arrangement."  The condition entered by the host is displayed with two buttons: "Confirm" and "Cancel Request".

 

Confirm completes the booking, Cancel Request cancels request.

 

When a host sends a conditional acceptance the guest has 24 hours to respond, if they don't their request is cancelled.

3 Comments
CarlandDiane0
Level 10

Awesome idea, though based on my own experience with suggesting small tweaks to Instant Book that would make a huge difference to hosts,, I'm afraid I wouldn't hold my breath.

Caryl0
Level 2

Still learning site. Thank you for above thought.  I'm hoping maybe someone can help; I have a guest who I approved and after it expired they needed to change the date .  Now we can't seem to open for the change opportunity n new dates. 

Helga0
Level 10

I have the case a few times a month: I get a booking by a new guest, who did not write very much, and I'm in doubt, if the photo is current or from a time when the guest was young, slim and beautiful. 

I write to them a short mesage, something like: thanks for booking, please look at the pictures again, specifically if you are tall or not agile etc, low ceiling, strange stairs. If that is ok, I will confirm the booking in 3 hours. If it poses a problem, please cancel now and you will not be charged. 

Most confirm immediately, that they are tiny themselves and climb like monkeys and I confirm. (Both may not be true, but that's their problem then). It's rare that someone cancels after that, but sometimes I confirm before I get the message, that it's fine with them. 

If the picture looks like the person will be unable to live in my place, I write instead, that in 6 hours I'll cancel, but they can recontact me. 

Some of those book again.