Pre-approving Airbnb inquiries

With Airbnb pre-approvals, you can permit guests to automatically confirm a reservation by pre-approving their inquiries.
You can pre-approve an inquiry through the Guesty Inbox or the reservation page.

How it works

The Pre-approval feature allows you to send your guest an invitation to book at your property.
Airbnb's pre-approvals allow you to send as many offers as you can to different potential guests (these requests won't block the relevant dates on the listing's calendar).
Then, the guest who accepts the offer first within 24 hours is the one who will be approved and confirmed to book at the property.

  1. The process starts when a guest clicks the Contact Host on your Airbnb listing's page, and sends you a message.
  2. Once a guest sends you an inquiry, you'll be able to invite them to complete the reservation.
  3. The guest has 24 hours to accept or decline the pre-approval reservation.
    1. During these 24 hours, the listing's calendar will still be marked as "Available" for the selected dates, but you can block "Instant Book" for other potential guests.
    2. If the guest does not reply to pre-approvals within 24 hours, the reservation request will automatically expire.

Important:

When a guest inquires about a specific property, but does not confirm/approve it, the data will still be kept in Guesty.

If the same guest sends another inquiry for the property (even months or years after the initial inquiry), the system won’t update the financial data, since it still presents the old details from the initial inquiry the guest made or submitted. In this case, the new inquiry is associated with the old one (in the same thread, generated in Guesty), and might cause a discrepancy in the pricing.

If the same guest sends an inquiry for a different property, then it will open a brand new conversation with data from this new inquiry.

 

Before you begin

Below are some important things to know before setting up pre-approval inquiries:

  • Pre-approving Airbnb inquiries allow guests to confirm the reservation within 24 hours
  • Multiple guests can be pre-approved for the same dates
  • The inquiry's dates won't be blocked on the calendar
  • The inquiry might be automatically declined by the system if one or some of the requested nights become unavailable
  • The reservation's parameters (e.g., the length of stay, number of guests, etc.) are already defined by the guest when they send you their inquiry
    Pre-approvals can only be sent for the date range of the guest's inquiry, and you won't be able to suggest a different price.
  • You can withdraw the pre-approval in Airbnb
  • Pre-approving a reservation will override Advance Notice
    In this case, the guest will be able to confirm the reservation during the "Advance Notice" period that was set.
  • Only inquiries with a message attached to it will be displayed in Guesty
    An inquiry from Airbnb will only be pulled into Guesty if there is a message attached to it. Otherwise, the inquiry won't be received in Guesty.
  • You can update a listing's pre-booking message in Airbnb
    1. To do this, you'll need to change your listing's sync settings in Airbnb to "Only sync pricing and availability". This will allow you to make specific changes in Airbnb that can't be completed in Guesty. 
    2. Update the pre-booking message in Airbnb.
  • Some additional fees will be part of the "Nightly rate" pricing in the Airbnb invoice breakdown:
    1. When a pre-approval transitions to a "confirmed reservation", the only fee that will be displayed on the Airbnb invoice breakdown is the cleaning fee.
    2. If the reservation has any other additional fees (e.g., resort fee, management fee, linen fee, etc.) it will be part of the nightly rate, and won’t be shown in the breakdown to the guest.

Tip:

To maintain Superhost status or Airbnb response rate requirements, set up Auto Response to reply to the guest within 24 hours.

 

Setting up pre-approval inquiries via the Inbox

Follow the instructions below to pre-approve an inquiry in the Inbox.

Pro users Lite users

Step by step:

  1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
  2. In the top navigation bar, click the Inbox icon.
  3. In the lefthand menu, click Guests Inbox.
  4. Click the relevant message thread on the left side.
  5. From the vertical toolbar on the right side, click the Reservation icon.
  6. Click Pre-approve in the toolbar.

 

Setting up pre-approval inquiries via the reservation

Follow the instructions below to pre-approve an inquiry through a specific reservation.

Pro users Lite users

Step by step:

  1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
  2. In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and select Operations mode.
  3. Click Reservations.
  4. Click the relevant reservation.
  5. Click Pre-approve in the "Summary" section.
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