Summary
Airbnb's Booking Lead Time setting controls how far in advance a guest must book before their check-in date. Use it to prevent surprise same-day bookings, give yourself time to prepare the listing, or coordinate with cleaners. Host Tools lets you set Booking Lead Time per listing and syncs the change directly to Airbnb.
⚠️ Important — Airbnb's "1 day" doesn't mean 24 hours. Airbnb measures advance notice in calendar days, not hours. With At least 1 day notice selected, a guest can book at 11:55 PM on the 20th and check in on the 21st — that's only hours of notice, depending on your check-in time. As soon as the clock ticks past midnight into the 21st, Airbnb blocks bookings for that day. To avoid these midnight-edge bookings, many hosts set Booking Lead Time to At least 2 days notice instead.
Setting Booking Lead Time
Click your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner and choose Settings.
Go to
Settings > Channelsand click Airbnb next to the listing you want to update.Scroll to the Booking Lead Time field.
Pick the option that matches the buffer you want. The drop-down includes:
Same day until [time] — allow same-day bookings up to a cutoff time you choose.
At least 1 day notice (Guests cannot book same day and can only book the calendar day before the reservation begins).
At least 2 days notice (Guests can only book 2 calendar days ahead).
At least 3 days notice (Guests can only book 3 calendar days ahead).
At least 7 days notice (Guests can only book 7 calendar days ahead).
Click Save.
Host Tools pushes the new value to Airbnb. Going forward, Airbnb's booking flow will reject any reservation that doesn't meet the lead-time requirement.
Choosing the right Booking Lead Time
The right choice depends on how much notice you actually need. A few patterns:
Want to maximize bookings, including same-day — pick Same day with a cutoff time that gives you enough notice (for example, "Same day until 2 PM").
Want to avoid the midnight loophole — pick At least 2 days notice. This guarantees a true 24-hour buffer regardless of when the guest books.
Need lead time for cleaners or remote properties — pick At least 3 days or 7 days if your turnover takes longer.
What about "request to book"?
Below the Booking Lead Time selection, there's an Allow request to book toggle. When it's on, guests who don't meet the advance-notice requirement can still request a reservation that you have to manually accept. Turning it off rejects late requests automatically.
Does this affect other channels?
No — Booking Lead Time is an Airbnb-specific setting. To get the same behavior on other channels (for example, blocking same-day bookings on Vrbo), use a block-same-day-check-ins pricing rule in Host Tools, which applies to whatever channels you select.