Lay My Hat

AirBNB used to be our main provider, they have almost disappeared from view this year.

We do not use instant-book.

Does anyone have any evidence that enabling the instant-book increases bookings?

Hasn't made any difference to me - I have gone from about one booking a month to no bookings for several months with AirBNB. I'm not too bothered since Booking.com and friends keep me busy.

Maybe I should remove instant book and see if they send me some guests

Incidentally, what's your property in Gozo? I've been to Malta twice in the last six months, and intend on another trip sometime this year.

We don't do the instant booking & have had 4 good bookings in 3 weeks.

Where there are a lot of properties in an area, IB can help to move your property up the list. As a traveller, with Airbnb I tend to only use instant Book properties. With my own properties I usually respond within 2 hours (unless I am asleep). Personally I have found some hosts can take days and in some cases never respond. So when I am travelling, I filter by IB first to make my choice of accommodation. From the 25 bookings a year via Airbnb, I would estimate 70% are IB. As a safety net, you an adjust the criteria that allows people to book eg review etc.,

I removed the instant booking facility for our B&B in Gironde when I received a booking for a weekend when I was going to be away and had forgotten to cross off the dates from the calendar and got a rap on the knuckles for having to refuse the booking. Since removing the facility, my enquiries have also dropped off. Not sure what to do, but in the first instance I am joining another well know site to try it out and also to offer the B&B to pilgrims on the Chemin de Compostelle where our property lies.

As Ianthy said, if there are a lot of properties around where yours is with availability on the dates searched for, Airbnb will show those with instant booking first, and to show ‘all’ without scrolling a long way down the user needs to tick a box.

Having not asked guests the question, I can’t say for sure that instant booking helps. but I suspect it does.

A step on from this is taking same day reservations, which is quite likely to result in a booking so long as it’s priced well against the competition. I tend to leave this setting ‘off’ but if there’s a night spare and I’m not too busy I’ll switch it on in the morning and wait to see what comes in. Resulting bookings tend to be 1 night, with guests using it like a B&B (it’s set up as self catering) which means they usually don't use the kitchen, and tend to leave early.

To answer my own question, YES!

Not sure if they monitor these groups, but shortly after posting the question and then switching on Instant Book, there was a flurry of bookings 4 in one day (for one property), unheard of for us!

There did not seem to be any change in the sort order of properties, we checked with clean browsers and different devices. It would seem that some people just prefer to hit the 'book' button without any more interaction!

Our calendar went from 'not enough' to 'good' in a few weeks.

I must say I have had an increase since I turned on instant booking. As long as the guest has agreed to the rental contract, which in essence is a vetting form, I've had no issues with using the facility. My property is in the top 4 for the whole of Norfolk because of the superhost status and instant booking. Can only be a good thing.