Airbnb blocking "High risk" bookings

[Paige Martin]

We recently had a 2 guest, 4 night booking including New Years eve blocked by airbnb. We received the booking inquiry with a "red flag" from airbnb which we had never seen before. We told the guest we were unable to approve the booking because of this and called airbnb support- they said the account was under investigation and couldn't tell us anything further and they would eventually make a decision to block or allow the booking. The guest reached back out to us and said airbnb blocked their booking due to concerns about covid and gatherings and that they should try to book a single room instead of an entire house. Mind you our unit is a 1 bedroom condo that sleeps 4 because we have a hallway bunk bed. We called support back and explained all of this and they were not helpful. We asked are all new years bookings being blocked? No straight answer (our other rentals have NYE bookings) they recommended the guest extend their stay to avoid the block, but would not say how long the stay would have to be to not be "high risk". We are waiting on a call back from a host support manager. We haven't listed this specific property on vrbo but thought about doing it and having the guest book through there and also just doing an off platform booking. However, we have already been "dinged" once by airbnb for "inappropriate content" when messaging a guest and do not want to risk our account being deactivated by trying to give them our contact info or ask them for theirs.

Has anyone else had new years bookings blocked this year ? Or any anything similar to this? We only started short term rentals in Feb 2021 and have yet to deal with covid related issues like this