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Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

I have a property in France and we use a combination of AirBnB and until now, Booking.com; on AirBnB we have it set to instant book— we essentially have a small hotel type property so we don’t go through the that whole “approval” theater. However I agree AirBnB IS annoying because most people trying to book us always want to ask dumb questions like “is your property still available” — well yes, that’s why you can instantly book. If it weren’t available then why would it be bookable? Presumably this is because most AirBnB hosts are non professional and don’t manage their availability calendar correctly (I suppose..)

For us, AirBnB is just another booking source but it’s fairly annoying.. I can definitely agree with you — just on the opposite site of the table (the property owner.)

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It sounds like AirBnB would benefit from a feature where you can personally and automatically contact the booking customer to confirm the reservation. A sort of automatic email with your brand confirming the dates and other information. Or maybe do so by pressing a button. Or maybe just a status on the reservation: "Host has seen reservation and confirmed".

I have never used AirBnB, but I am loathe to rely too much on entirely electronic information, without a real human confirming it. Case in point: several restaurants claimed they'd be open on Christmas day on their websites, so we planned to pick up food for a gathering. When we arrived at the restaurant on the day, they were closed, at a time which was at least 2 hours before their posted closing time (which did include holiday hours). This caused a last-minute scramble to arrange food for people at short notice on Christmas day. If we had tried to reach an actual person on the phone, presumably this mixup would have been avoided.

If my travel arrangements depended upon the availability of an AirBnB, then I'd probably want to confirm with the host too. A major hotel isn't going to lose my reservation, but with AirBnB who knows. Maybe the host will be "out of town" that day and forgot to mark their property unavailable, just like the restaurants that "forget" to mention when they'll be closed.

(Have I mentioned how much I hate hate hate when businesses don't keep to their posted hours?)

'Presumably this is because most AirBnB hosts are non professional and don’t manage their availability calendar correctly (I suppose..)'

Most likely this, in my experience. I sometimes see some listings are crazy low prices (compared to similar properties) and would rather check they haven't made a mistake rather than go through the hassle of booking and being rejected.

As an aside to above, crazy low price doesn't always indicate poor quality on AirBnB - more often it's a switched on owner rather than a fool who thinks people are going to pay high-season prices in low-season.

It's not a dumb question, try to travel with airbnb and you will find that a lot of hosts do not update their calendar, when they get a booking via other avenue. It's especially frustrating, when the host enabled the instant booking.

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