How to pick your booking settings

You can accept guest reservations one of two ways: automatically with Instant Book, or manually by replying to booking requests. Many guests and hosts love the time-saving convenience of Instant Book.

Instant Book allows guests to immediately book any available dates on your calendar. You’ll only receive booking requests for reservations with special circumstances that need your approval, such as stays of longer than 31 nights. 

All guests must agree to your house rules and meet Airbnb’s booking requirements. After you publish your listing, you can add settings that require guests using Instant Book to:

• Have completed a reservation without a bad review or incident reported to Airbnb Support.
• Read and respond to questions in an automated pre-booking message that you create.

When a guest wants to book your place, you’ll receive a reservation request. You’ll have 24 hours to approve or decline the request before it expires. You can set up notifications to make sure you get requests as soon as possible.

When a guest sends a reservation request, the dates are automatically blocked on your calendar to prevent overlap with future requests. Those dates remain blocked if you accept the request or if you let it expire, so it’s important to respond to every request promptly.

Your booking settings will switch to Instant Book after you’ve confirmed 5 reservations. You can update your settings anytime.

Here are some things to consider when picking your booking settings:

Instant Book

• Guests like being able to confirm reservations immediately, which can lead to more bookings.
• Instant Book accepts bookings for you based on the parameters you set.
• You’ll need to keep your calendar up to date and sync it with any other calendars you use.

Reservation requests

• Guests appreciate rapid responses, so it’s best to use this option only if you can respond within 24 hours.
• You want to emphasize special rules or features of your place, such as steep stairs leading to the only entrance.
• You can’t decline requests for reasons that violate Airbnb’s nondiscrimination policy.

Choose the option that’ll help you avoid canceling on guests for preventable reasons, which can result in fees and other consequences.

Information contained in this article may have changed since publication.