Airbnb: choose who to welcome for your first reservation

[Shankar Patil]

Hello Everyone,

I recently listed my Airbnb listing and finally decided to move out of Evolve.

The listing is fairly ready, but I had a question on "choose who to welcome for your first reservation"
there are two options 

1. Anyone on Airbnb
2. An experienced guest(This i learnt to be someone who is verified by airbnb)

I have selected as an experienced guest, but that also means I will be discouraging a lot of other guests who are yet to be verified.

what is your take on this, and is it a good idea to just have anyone on Airbnb book it?

regards,
Patil

[Matt Owens]

I go with "Anyone on Airbnb" and I'd suggest you do that. You can tighten up your guest requirements (i.e. require a govt id, require a profile photo, minimum age of person booking, etc.). Unless your market is in such demand you think you can be picky and still crush it? 

[Dave Stokley]

Anyone

[Trent Reeve]

i think #2 is good for completely brand new hosts, likely to protect them from scammers. If you choose #1, it will definitely be in front of a lot more eyeballs

[Nathan M kiefer]

seems these days new guests and guests that have been with the platform are the same. 

unless you have a guest with over 5 star reviews it basically means noting to us as we have been burned by "5 star" guests and newbies alike.

run with the new guest especially at first start up and you can be more selective at any time, get the bookings and go from there

[Brooklyn McCarty]

Instant Book on and don't look back. 

I require an ID, other than that, I'll gladly host anyone. You have to remember that Airbnb is still a fairly new concept and a lot of people are yet to use it. You can also have a experienced guest turns out to be a stinker. It's really half a dozen, one the other.

[Michael Baum]

I would allow bookings from anyone on the platform.

We don't use instant book and vet each and every guest. Cuts down on the riff raff.

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Shankar Patil:

My opinion isn't popular, but I think the AirBnB rating system is completely unreliable. 500 5-star reviews? That's statistically impossible. Guests leave glowing reviews for average rentals because they want good reviews as a guest. It's nonsense.

Hotels don't check guests based on ratings and I wouldn't, either. You know who does? Communist China. LOL!

[Shankar Patil]

Quote from @Brooklyn McCarty:

Instant Book on and don't look back. 

I require an ID, other than that, I'll gladly host anyone. You have to remember that Airbnb is still a fairly new concept and a lot of people are yet to use it. You can also have a experienced guest turns out to be a stinker. It's really half a dozen, one the other.

 how do you check for id?

[Shankar Patil]

Quote from @Nathan Gesner:

Quote from @Shankar Patil:

My opinion isn't popular, but I think the AirBnB rating system is completely unreliable. 500 5-star reviews? That's statistically impossible. Guests leave glowing reviews for average rentals because they want good reviews as a guest. It's nonsense.

Hotels don't check guests based on ratings and I wouldn't, either. You know who does? Communist China. LOL!

 I think it is logical, systems are not fair and while these mature over time we will have to learn how best to monetize. I am trying to see how too avoid bad experiences. but again I will lean on this wonderful community if and when such an incident happens. For now, I would go with the majority of the lot "anyone on Airbnb".