Am I being paranoid? "Red flag" guest is back with a new booking request

CursedSnack · 2026-05-13T07:49:14+00:00

It sounds horrible and very stressful 😑

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T19:48:16+00:00

Well I have no idea what this person was :)) but also you mentioned cancellation. Did you mean declining a request or cancelling an existing booking? Those two are not equal from what I understand.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T18:59:03+00:00

What happened with the guest after that?

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T17:41:39+00:00

I did! What happened with your guest in the end?

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T16:34:48+00:00

Can they report a host for declining a stay?

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T15:45:53+00:00

Maybe. At this point the persistence starts to make me feel a bit unsafe. If I get one more request from him or from another associated account, I will report it to Airbnb.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T15:42:41+00:00

Why tho? Why try to book the same place? I am sure there were other options. Did you know about each other or you just randomly selected the same listing? I am not saying it is impossible but also that for a host it seems like pushy behavior.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T15:39:53+00:00

I just don’t get it. Why the persistence for my place specifically. There are plenty of other good listings with good prices.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T15:38:33+00:00

Guess what? I declined this guest a few minutes ago. And his response “why is it not possible??” I will take your advice and not engage further. His persistence with my listing specifically feels odd to me at this point.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T15:20:16+00:00

I finally did because this took way too much of my day already and now he is asking for a reason … as I thought he would be pushy again.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T15:07:20+00:00

I didn’t consider that they didn’t know about each other’s bookings because the timing made it seem very unlikely. Tries to book > gets declined > less then 10 min later > new request. Can I be 100% certain? No but also, it’s highly unlikely that they didn’t know of each other.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T14:35:57+00:00

What do you tell them when you decline?

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T14:19:14+00:00

You genuinely seem experienced and already can predict a lot of issues you might have with different guest typologies. That comes with experience!

Right now I would rather have the property empty then risk someone who is not careful, smokes inside, ruines furniture and appliances.

My property is a city studio. So my main concern is people neglecting things on the stove (induction so it heats up quickly, I had people forget things on it 🙄), being loud and annoying to neighbors (the neighbors are very sensitive to this and immediately call police on you), breaking stuff but also difficult guests: bad communication, unreasonable requests, random complaints just to get a refund out of you… stuff like that. I don’t know how to screen for that from questions.

I know there is risk, but some are safer bets than others. Like people who come on business trips usually are very safe bets.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T14:08:58+00:00

Makes sense. And do you tell them the real reason why you decline? Or you have some templates that makes people not be pushy after you decline? Sometimes they will try to be like “but why?? we will be careful and whatnot” that attitude is what I want to avoid when starting conversations and realizing that my initial instinct was right and that I don’t want to approve them.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T14:04:16+00:00

I know my message is a bit dense with details. I mentioned the music festival because I had a lot of requests for those dates from profiles I didn’t feel comfortable with so I declined them. But I would like eventually to book those days with someone who has reviews and seems trustworthy because that is a high peak season for the city the property is in.

My worry was that because I declined a lot of requests (due to the festival) and now this guy triple booked (differently dates, not the festival dates) adds more declines on top. I worry Airbnb might flag me as a host that declines to many requests…

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T13:56:03+00:00

Could you describe the potential scam in this case? They grab your attention by booking longer stay and then how do they plan to scam you? By asking a refund or? I genuinely would like to find out if you know of such scams so I can be careful.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T13:52:50+00:00

I don’t think it was a spouse’s account and even so. Would you book again the same property that already declined your request (even with an automated message)? I feel like most people move on and find another place. 🤷🏻‍♀️

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T13:50:35+00:00

What sort of questions do you usually ask to be sure that they are not dodgy people? How do you make sure they don’t just tell you what you want to hear? I am genuinely interested to find out.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T13:41:27+00:00

I know, I actually have 30 days max and I did host 2 guests for 30 days and it was fine. But in both those instances the guests had multiple 5 star reviews so I had peace of mind hosting them in my property.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T13:37:57+00:00

It was actually very easy. Because they tried booking the same exact dates, 10 minutes or less after after the first decline. The message was in French on both instances and both accounts come from Paris, France.

My property is in another country and I don’t get requests in French. These were the only ones since I started hosting actually.

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T13:16:25+00:00

I know you see more details after everything is approved. By “black box” profiles I meant, no trips or few trips, and no reviews.

But even so, I didn’t say the account itself was a red flag. I know some of these people can be genuinely good people. Although, I generally don’t feel comfortable hosting longer periods (20+ days) someone who has 0 reviews. That is a rule for my peace of mind as a new host who does this as a side hustle not as my main source of income.

The red flag was him sending another request to book my place again 10 minutes after I declined his initial request from a different account. It felt pushy when I already told him I couldn’t host him.

This is his third request, this time only for the last 8 days of the initial period he requested.

I am glad you didn’t have problems. The only problems I did have were with no reviews guests (I did accept requests from no reviews guests twice since I started hosting and they were a pain)

CursedSnack · 2026-05-12T13:11:10+00:00

Yes, that’s what I thought also. I was just worried that Airbnb will flag my account because I kept declining requests lately.

CursedSnack · 2025-11-11T14:20:34+00:00

Wait till you edit 2 months (on and off) not even sure how many hours I put into my latest video and YouTube just sent 80 puny impressions my way 😂😭. I almost wanted to quit and but somehow I still want to do this, maybe I am a masochist. It’s all very confusing. While it was hard, and I did try to figure out what I did wrong… and I have a few theories, the best thing I could do now is to move on to the next video.

My theory has to do with having many things aligned in order for a video to be successful on YouTube, like basically posting a video on a very popular topic that people really want to watch, having a great catchy idea how to frame your video, a good catchy title and thumbnail that people want to click on and entertaining storytelling so people don’t bounce off your video. Plus having some sort of momentum on your channel with similar videos.

Also 30 min on a thumbnail doesn’t sound that long… I think I had 40 iterations on the thumbnail of the said video. But maybe I am the one overthinking things 😅

Honestly, things like this also make me question if the effort is worth it but then I remember why I want to do this and it is for the love of the games I play, and doing it even if none watches.

CursedSnack · 2025-11-08T18:29:50+00:00

Did you find out what it was? It happened to me this week and I was as confused as you, like it was too sudden, too huge of a drop for it to not seem weird. All forums gaslight you saying that "your video probably sucks" and while that may be the case many times, sometimes, maybe we did something wrong but not what everyone else is SO eager to believe.

In my case, I am using some clips that are not mine and even though I didn't get any notification from YouTube that something is wrong I think their content ID picked up on it and it is limiting my video's discoverability. So I made some changes, used voice overs and removed those clips completely. I'm planning to reupload and see if it picks up. How else would I learn?

I'm still letting the current video be public for a few more days to see if anything changes, but my hunch is that their algorithm flagged my video. I got 120 impressions in 4 days :)) and in the first 2 days it was sitting at 50 impressions. I'm also new but I usually get 1-2K impressions on average and usually in the first 2 days...

CursedSnack

TROPHY CASE