Will I be penalized for declining a reservation request on Airbnb?

Generally decling the occasional booking request that you don’t feel comfortable with or can’t accomodate doesn’t cause any issues.

Airbnb do state that declining a “lot” of requests wlll impact on the visibility of your listing. The purpose of the algorithm sorting is to prioritize listings with the highest chance of being booked. So many experts in the industry overlook or don’t understand this and promote all sorts of tactics for visibility while missing the fundamental driver.

So it makes sense that if you are a host that keeps saying ‘no’ to requests it is going against the end goal of the algorithm and your visibility will suffer.