Can You Delete Airbnb Messages? The 73 Top Answers

We care about the safety of our hosts and their guests. That’s why we pay attention to how everyone communicates with each other.

We may review, scan, or analyze your messages on Airbnb as we describe in our Privacy Policy. We do this for a number of reasons including:

Identifying risks to our users

Legal Compliance

detection

Enforcing our Terms of Service and Non-Discrimination Policy

Provision of Customer Service

research and analytics

Improve or expand our products and services

Communicating or paying outside of Airbnb can put you at risk, so one of the main reasons we analyze messages is to protect against online fraud. That’s why it’s so important that you only communicate through the Airbnb message thread until you have a confirmed Airbnb reservation.

By communicating and booking directly through Airbnb, you have access to our secure payment platform, 24/7 customer support, Host Guarantee and Host Protection Insurance program.

Sometimes we may block messages from being sent. In certain circumstances, we may also suggest or request that text be removed from messages, e.g. B. when we detect words or numbers that contain contact information, references to other websites, external links, or content that violates our non-discrimination policy.

Security is important, but we also value your privacy. We never screen, scan, or analyze your message communications to send you third-party marketing messages. We do not sell reviews or analysis of these communications.

Hosting starts with a warm welcome, and your first message to your guests sets the tone for your future conversations. Your host inbox makes it easy to connect with guests before, during, and after a trip, and you can contact them by going to your inbox and selecting a message. (Make sure you switch to host mode, since as a guest you have a separate mailbox.) You’re never more than a click or tap away from connecting with them.

You can quickly and easily search your messages for specific words, guest names, or verification codes using the search box at the top of the message threads list. You can also mark individual messages using the icons at the top of the message thread: mark a message as unread, use the star icon to mark it as important, or archive it to keep your inbox clean.

As a host, you’ve faced many challenges, but the most common and recurring problem is when a guest brings an unauthorized guest into your vacation rental. It may seem innocent when Airbnb guests lie about the number of guests to avoid paying, or whatever the reason, remember that this poses a huge problem and risk for hosts.

So the question is, how do you prevent this from happening and how do you get Airbnb guests to lie upfront about the number of guests? Against this background, this article highlights:

Why is it important to be strict?

How bad can it be for hosts to lie about extra guests?

How to stop lying about the number of guests staying at your property?

What do you do if a guest lies because they want to bring additional guests to your property?

Why is it important to be strict?

There’s always a reason your Airbnb is built for a maximum occupancy limit. Some states have strict laws that require you to register everyone staying in your short term rental. Additionally, in the event of an accident or disaster, unauthorized guests could sue if they are injured.

Aside from that, unauthorized guests could cause unnecessary troubles with the neighboring community regarding noise and property damage to invite serious illegal activities. Additionally, no host wants to pay extra bills, resources, cleaning, etc. Enforcing strict rules helps and protects you as a host to avoid additional costs such as legal fees, cleaning, etc. as well as unnecessary hassles that can seriously affect your Airbnb business.

How bad can it be for hosts to lie about extra guests?

No responsible host should ever tolerate Airbnb guests lying about the number of guests as it can seriously hurt your Airbnb business and here’s why:

Cost – Ideally, hosts will charge additional fees for additional guests. However, in some situations, guests lie about the number of guests, and what seemed innocent, a family of three could be a family of five, which would lead to serious financial loss over time.

Damage to your property – The more guests stay at your property, the more amenities are used and more likely to wear out or potentially break, leading to costly repairs resulting in increased downtime for your property.

Unauthorized Parties – Having unauthorized guests means inviting more disrespectful guests to your property, with the possibility of throwing blown out parties or large gatherings that can upset the neighbors, violate house rules and local regulations, and expose your property to further risk and crime, what a indicates disrespect towards the host.

Breaking the Law – In some countries, hosts must collect IDs for all guests within 24 hours and provide the relevant details to authorities, including the police. If guests are found who are not registered, the host faces serious penalties.

Bad Reviews – Not knowing exactly how many people will be staying at your property means you are not preparing adequately and potentially risking guests having a bad experience, leading to negative reviews.

How to stop lying about the number of guests staying at your property?

Before booking

Make sure strict house rules and guest limits are highlighted and clear on listings. Also, emphasize that extra guests and parties shouldn’t discourage guests from the gray area from booking. It’s okay to use strong language to emphasize your rules, such as: B. Describe additional guests as “trespassers” rather than “visitors”. This makes it clear to guests that rebellious behavior will have consequences. Give guests the benefit of the doubt. Don’t immediately assume guests will lie. Also, establish professional and friendly communication by asking Airbnb questions, e.g. B. why they are traveling, how many people will be there and other important details. By doing this, you create trust, which means the guest would be more likely to respect you and your property. Note, potential rebellious guests do not wish to be questioned and would see it as more of an annoyance and would rather go elsewhere. View guest profiles and existing reviews, allowing you to filter out problematic guests in advance. At the time of booking, clearly state your house rules in your listing and ask guests to accept them. This will prevent guests from lying and discourage untrustworthy guests. Thoroughly screen your guests through background checks to verify as the first step that the guests are who they say they are. In addition, there are dedicated and reliable software like Autohost, Checkin and Superhog to efficiently search for bad guests for your vacation rental. Establish a policy for consequences when rules are broken. Also include the consequences, such as: B. Guest cleaning fees or even pets not mentioned at the time of booking to ensure guests don’t break your rules. Gather guest details and encourage guests to identify each when making their booking, creating a list of identifying details for each guest so you can be sure who is staying at your vacation rental. This increases the likelihood that potential criminals or rule violators will cancel to avoid paper trails. Take out suitable holiday home insurance, which will help cover the cost of damage in the worst case.

during booking

Require the guest to check-in using their verified OTA profile to ensure only verified guests can check-in. Additionally, you can use security software like Autohost, Superhog, and Checkin to connect to major OTAs like Airbnb and Vrbo and filter out guests. This documents the identity and the stay of the guest. Upon arrival, repeat the strict house rules and policies. Also, to ensure guests don’t claim they haven’t seen the rules, always make them clear. At the same time, guests who are tempted to break the rules set boundaries that prevent lying, knowing you are a responsible host who will not tolerate disrespectful behavior. Throughout the guest’s stay, he will check in with the guest from time to time to make sure everything is in order. At the same time, maintain good communication and encourage guests to communicate openly, where guests who are tempted to ignore the rules are more likely to comply. Install attendance monitoring devices to track large gatherings triggered by high decibel or carbon dioxide levels. Therefore, the privacy of the guests as well as your property is protected at all times. Let guests know that your property has a security camera or smart doorbell installed that will deter guests who are tempted to break the rules. In the event that the rules are broken, there is evidence of charging additional guests and reporting them to Airbnb. If noise or occupancy levels are exceeded, set up friendly alerts via occupancy monitors that can be integrated into your PMS. This reminds guests of the rules and encourages honesty and compliance.

After booking

It’s important to acknowledge guests for good behavior by following your house rules. Thank the guest for their review and mention that they respected your property. Give a five star rating. If you suspect guests are not respecting your house rules and have lied about the number of guests, be professional and contact them by raising your concerns privately. Also, leave an honest and fair review to warn other Airbnb hosts about the guest’s behavior for future reference.

What do you do if a guest lies because they want to bring additional guests to your property?

1. Submit a change request

If you are in a situation where guests have brought additional guests, submit a change request and include the additional nightly rate for each additional guest staying at your property.

However, please note that submitting a change request is not possible if the number of booked guests maximizes the limited occupancy of the property. The reason for this is that by the time guests check in, the property is already at full capacity.

2. Submit a solution request to Airbnb

If guests refuse to comply with regulations or accept reservation changes, submit a resolution request to Airbnb. Remember that the resolution stays open for 72 hours, giving the host the opportunity to resolve the issue directly with guests.

However, if the resolution between the host and guests is not resolved, you, the host, can return to the Airbnb Listing’s resolution request and involve Airbnb, where Airbnb will then review the request and make the final decision

3. Report the guests to Airbnb

If you have an issue with extra guests staying at your vacation rental, consider reporting them to Airbnb. However, be sure to collect evidence by providing evidence such as screenshots of your surveillance equipment, noise tracker recordings, or even reports from neighbors.

Airbnb then evaluates the evidence and takes necessary action, such as B. charging guests additional fees or penalizing guests by not refunding their deposit.

To encourage honest and impartial reviews, we limit the ability for hosts and guests to edit a review after they’ve written it.

If you submit your review for stays first, you can edit it at any time during the 14-day review period until the other party submits their review. Once both reviews have been submitted or the 14-day review period has expired – whichever comes first – both reviews will be automatically posted and no changes can be made. Learn how reviews for stays work.

Reviews for experiences are written only by guests. You can edit your review within 48 hours of initially submitting it, even if the review has been published. Learn more about how ratings work for experiences.

Most potential guests read bad Airbnb reviews to get a broader view of other guests’ previous experiences with a host or listing. On the other hand, if hosts get too many negative Airbnb reviews, they lose bookings. As a result, many Airbnb hosts live in fear of receiving poor Airbnb reviews.

However, bad reviews are simply a fact of business. Even Superhosts have to deal with complaints and negative feedback from Airbnb hosts from time to time.

But having a few negative Airbnb reviews might not hurt your business as much as you might think. In many cases, you can use negative reviews to your advantage.

Here are the best ways to deal with bad Airbnb reviews and turn the ones you can’t remove into your secret marketing weapon.

4 strategies to deal with bad Airbnb reviews

Regardless of what the negative review says, you must always maintain a professional attitude. To effectively deal with bad Airbnb reviews, use one of the following four strategies:

1. Ask your guest to change the rating

This is the most direct way to turn a bad Airbnb review into a positive one. You can simply ask the guest to change their rating. However, if their stay ended negatively, this probably won’t work. But when there is hope, you must act quickly and think carefully about how you frame your request.

Explain to the guest how important Airbnb reviews are to your business. While the review content isn’t removed when the guest changes the review, at least the higher star rating helps you stay in good standing with Airbnb.

2. Contact Airbnb to request removal

If you got a bad review that clearly violates Airbnb’s content policy, which also governs reviews, you’re in luck! In this case, you can simply contact Airbnb to have it removed.

To do this, however, you must successfully prove your case. Common reasons for removing bad Airbnb reviews include spam, blackmail, incentivized reviews, and reviews that clearly do not reflect the author’s personal experience.

Make sure that you yourself have complied with the Airbnb Terms of Service and only communicate with guests via the Airbnb platform. In this way, in addition to the guest’s evaluation, your own behavior on the platform is not questioned.

3. Delay writing a guest review

Guests have 14 days to leave a review. If you think the guest might have been unhappy with their stay, don’t leave them a guest review right after they check out.

This gives the guest a chance to cool off and perhaps give a less scathing review when they get to it. It also prevents Airbnb from asking the guest to leave a review in return because you’ve already submitted yours.

4. Write a reply to each review you receive

Focusing on responding to every review you receive is a great way to show yourself as a gracious and caring host. Make sure every reply is polite and professional, even on the bad Airbnb reviews. This is how you show your future guests that you are actually a good host.

It also lets guests know that you’re willing to accept criticism and resolve complaints from Airbnb hosts. Be sure to respond to both your good and bad reviews if you want this strategy to be effective.

How to use negative reviews to your advantage

Now that you know how to effectively respond to bad Airbnb reviews, here are some ways you can actually use them to your advantage.

Focus on the positive aspects of your stay

While your guest will likely go into every last detail of the stay that went horribly wrong in their negative review, here’s your chance to disagree with what they’re saying. Tell your side of the story in your review. Try to turn things around by first carefully acknowledging your mistakes. Then use the rest of the review to highlight as many good moments from your experience with the guest.

Leave long replies

If you leave a long reply that focuses only on the positive aspects of your guest’s stay, you can largely hide a particularly negative review. The more you write about the incident, the more it will seem like you made an effort to resolve it and the guest could have been more understanding. Finally, a review that is longer than the guest left looks like a more accurate report of the guest’s stay because your review has more detail.

Share how you would like to make it better

Some guests choose to leave bad Airbnb reviews simply because they want their hosts to do better next time. Show potential guests that you understand by sharing how you resolved the issues mentioned in the review.

Be sure to mention any upgrades or perks you’ve added since the complaining guest’s stay. This helps future guests feel confident about booking, knowing that you take guest feedback seriously.

Show that you have learned from negative Airbnb reviews

Use bad Airbnb reviews to learn what matters most to your guests. Once you’ve made the necessary improvements, announce the updates in your listing description and promote them on social media.

If you’re looking for a good strategy for improving your own reviews, read your competitor’s negative reviews. This way you can identify their weaknesses in order to turn them into your strengths.

Recovering from Bad Airbnb Reviews: Final Steps

Bad Airbnb reviews don’t have to hurt your hosting reputation if you have a plan to bounce back from them. Keep providing your guests with a great experience so you can earn as many glowing Airbnb host reviews as possible.

To save time as a host and ensure guests always know how to check in and out and use your amenities, you can schedule messages to be sent automatically based on triggers such as a new reservation, a check-in, or a check-out will.

The templates can be personalized with shortcodes, which are placeholders that you can select and automatically fill in guest, reservation, and listing details. You can access shortcodes from a drop-down menu when composing a message. You must also add the appropriate information for each shortcode to your listing’s details, otherwise the shortcode will appear as unavailable in the message.

To save time as a host when replying to frequently asked questions or sending general messages, you can create quick reply templates. These templates can be personalized with shortcodes that dynamically fill in guest, reservation, and listing details.

When hosting with a team, team members with guest management permissions share the same quick replies to make sharing best practices easier. Any saved messages you previously created are now available in your team’s shared inbox.

If you want to automatically send these templates based on a triggering event like a new reservation, check-in, or check-out, learn more about scheduled messages.

Everything starts with a message, regardless of whether you have a question about an advertisement or would like to book a stay right away. Getting in touch with a host starts a message thread that you can return to at any time, and once you’ve taken that first step, your inbox will help organize all your communications for all your travels. Just go to your inbox and click on a message thread to read an existing message or send a new one.

The fine print: you must be logged into your Airbnb account to read or send messages, and you can only send 25 messages in a 24-hour period (we don’t think you need to send more than that).

We’d hate to see you leave, but if you’ve decided to leave Airbnb, you have a few choices. You can temporarily deactivate your account to reactivate it later, or you can permanently delete it.

To make a request for either, visit Manage your data in a web browser (not the Airbnb app).

We’d hate to see you leave, but if you’ve decided to leave Airbnb, you have a few choices. You can temporarily deactivate your account to reactivate it later, or you can permanently delete it.

To make a request for either, visit Manage your data in a web browser (not the Airbnb app).

Everything starts with a message, regardless of whether you have a question about an advertisement or would like to book a stay right away. Getting in touch with a host starts a message thread that you can return to at any time, and once you’ve taken that first step, your inbox will help organize all your communications for all your travels. Just go to your inbox and click on a message thread to read an existing message or send a new one.

The fine print: you must be logged into your Airbnb account to read or send messages, and you can only send 25 messages in a 24-hour period (we don’t think you need to send more than that).

Step 7: On the final screen, you can either chat with customer support or click “Call us” to view the Airbnb customer service phone number in your country.

To learn more about these two options, you can read my blog post 4 Ways to Reach Airbnb When You Need It Most.

For one reason or another, you may have more than one Airbnb user account. Unfortunately there is no way to merge or move information or bookings between them.

Our advice? Choose the one you want to use in the future and disable or delete the other. All pending reservations for this account will be cancelled. So wait for them to complete before deleting them.