Somehow Airbnb mostly doesnt work for me. You find a nice/cheap place to stay, message the host and wait for 24 hours for a revert. Fairly often, the host declines for seemingly specious reasons. The bigger problem is the wait than the refusal. An Indian startup called OyoRooms has a much better solution to this problem.
The few times I've tried it, the host was either non Internet-savvy or seemed to have regretted the too low a price they set, cancelling and putting the place back in the market for a higher price.