Guest profile photos: Airbnb response to community feedback

[Airbnb]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of your feedback on the recent changes we announced to the guest profile photo process. Our team has read each and every one of your comments. We understand many of you are feeling frustrated right now, so we want to respond with some more details and clarification.

First, we want to acknowledge that this is a complicated and emotional topic: It touches on elements such as discrimination, choice, safety, and equality between Airbnb hosts and guests. As always, we’ve been really impressed by the quality of the conversations, and the supportiveness of the community in this thread. We’ve had significant discussion and debate about it internally at Airbnb, too. It’s clear that we need to keep listening and engaging with you (our hosts and partners) on this topic, and we commit to continuing to do so.

At the same time, it’s important that we also continue to take guest concerns into account. Most guests do provide a profile photo, but others told us that they didn’t want to share a picture of themselves when booking on Airbnb because they’re concerned their photos could be misused in a way that violates Airbnb’s nondiscrimination policy. As you know, Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where people can belong anywhere, and we want to make sure guests can feel comfortable when they travel on Airbnb.

We also know from many conversations with hosts (and from reading through your comments here) that you really value profile photos, for several important reasons (knowing what guests look like before they arrive, feeling safer, etc.). We always want to balance the needs of both hosts and guests and, at the same time, make sure we’re working towards Airbnb’s mission. It can be exceptionally hard to get that balance right, but we tried to do this with these recent changes.

As we highlighted in our previous post, the new policy means that Airbnb will not require guests to provide a profile photo and that, for those guests who choose to provide a profile photo, those photos will not be shown to hosts until after the booking is accepted. At the same time, we introduced a new host control that allows you to opt in to require that your guests provide a profile photo prior to submitting a booking request. This photo will be shown to hosts as soon as you accept the booking request, so you’ll be able to ensure you know what your guests look like before they arrive. In addition, you can always require your guests to provide a government ID to Airbnb, as well (more on that here).

Here are a few more tips to help you build trust with guests before a trip:

• You can message with them to get more information about the purpose of their trip;
• You can use your House Rules to set expectations with potential guests, too. (Guests have to review and agree to your House Rules before they can request to book your space.)
• You can review past guest reviews, from other hosts, to make a more informed decision about accepting booking requests.

Now, there are a few key themes we read in your comments about these changes, and we want to take a few minutes to address each of them:

Safety: Many of you mentioned that you’re not comfortable hosting someone who doesn't want to show their face, and some of you pointed out that you’re in challenging situations (remote locations and solo female hosts, for instance). This is an incredibly important topic. We’ve read through your responses, and we are committed to looking for ways to build trust between guests and hosts in all situations.

We’d like to extend an invitation to the engaged host community following this thread. Our home safety team is brainstorming ideas for how we could improve your experience and ensure you feel more safe hosting. While we have lots of ideas, we know the best solutions will come from listening to you, so we’d like to connect directly. Please let us know in the comments, below.

Timing: Many of you asked when you would see the changes to the guest profile photo process occur. We’re rolling them out gradually, as we often do with new products or processes. Currently, these changes have been introduced to 75% of hosts globally, and in the coming weeks will be available to 100% of hosts.  

Profile photos: A number of you raised concerns about profile photos that show a picture of a sunset or the guest’s dog instead of the guest themselves.  We have updated our policies to address these concerns. If you choose to turn on the new control and require that your guests have a profile photo, you can call Airbnb’s Community Support if you accept a reservation from a guest that does not have a profile photo of themselves.  Our Community Support team will work with you to address the situation. If you feel uncomfortable hosting someone without a photo of themselves, you can request to cancel the reservation penalty-free. (We recommend messaging the guest directly before cancelling.)

Discrimination: We do not condone discrimination by any member of the Airbnb community. These changes are part of our commitment to combating discrimination. Many of you responded that you believe these changes were unnecessary because you share our commitment to diversity and inclusion. We appreciate that feedback and can’t overstate the importance of having a host community that is engaged on this topic. Nonetheless, guests have consistently told us that they have concerns about hosts making decisions based on profile photos in violation of our Non-discrimination policy. We believe the changes to how we display photos addresses these concerns while balancing hosts’ interest in seeing potential guests before they arrive. Making these changes was an incredibly complex decision, for all the reasons you raised, but after significant debate (and working with many experts on this topic), we decided they were crucial changes to make.

Thank you for continuing to give us feedback and support as we strive to continue improving Airbnb for both hosts and guests. We hope you understand that we needed to make these changes to ensure a world of belonging and inclusivity. Please continue to tell us how we can improve, and we’ll continue to listen and adjust as we work to ensure you can feel comfortable and confident hosting.

Thank you,

The Airbnb Team

[Anna33]

Hiding guest photos is going to do NOTHING to stop discrimination (and is in itself discriminatory!)
If hosts wish to exclude certain people from their homes HOW MUCH WORSE FOR THOSE PEOPLE TO TURN UP AT SUCH HOMES!!! 
We all make decisions all the time based on our faculties of discrimination on what will be good or bad for us, enjoyable or not, easy / difficult, worth effort / expense / etc. or not, ..... It is clearly obvious that we must exercise discrimination on who we receive into our homes.

[Ruth152]

I am also a South African hostess, hosting is our beautiful country. I agree with every point you make.

The guest know everything about us. Profile picture, our reviews and detailed discribtion of our properties. Why should we take a risk and just book anyone with out security checks or seeing who we are accepting untill after we have booked them.

Then we rated down if we decline people?

[Elisha27]

Dear Jo13,

Thank you so much for taking the the time to write such a detailed and thoughtful expression of exactly how I feel about the subject.

I'll be joining you by taking my listing down.

Thank you,

Elisha

[Jocelyn82]

I do not reserve my listing for anyone who has an incomplete profile. Now it looks like they all have an incomplete profile. The photo is a MUST. The ability to connect with the potential guest is a MUST. Airbnb is going backwards.

[Francesca-and-Dave0]

Hi Lizzie,

With all due respect, that is totally disingenuous and somewhat misleading information. As far as I can ascertain after repeated attempts, hosts can only control guest requirements if they agree to take instant booking. For the many of us who do not take instant booking on our properties due to the types of properties we have, that option is unavailable and completely useless. I continue to be astounded and disturbed at the detrimental changes Airbnb seems to want to make to a system that used to generally work quite well for the majority of both hosts and guests.

While I do appreciate the fact that ABB reads these comments and attempts to respond to them — and the fact that there are multiple areas of concern that have to be addressed from multiple parties’ viewpoints — the new ABB changes and policies are clearly no longer working for a large number of the “traditional” ABB hosts who helped ABB build their brand and their business. I find this both discouraging and incredibly sad. 

[Ronald143]

Hi Franceska! As I already expressed somewhat similar a bit higher up, I share your sadness. It's totally demotivating.  I feel abuse of good willing, with "managers" who have stolen this goodwill and fill their pockets. Must we just say "that's the way things go" ?

[Signe7]

Hello, I was very interested in this thread and I wondered if you ever answered the second question from the other host

"2). Why can we not see the ratings guests have received?  They can see how hosts have been rated. That seems fundamantally inequitable."  

I could not find the answer and that is VERY important to me. My home is furnished with very expensive high end antiques and we are not in the home with our guests. I find it terrifying to have to wait until guests have booked to see what other hosts have said about those guests.

Because of the unique nature of my home I usually get an inquiry prior to booking and I would check the guest out on Airbnb, other booking sites, and social media before I committed, now I can find no way of checking to see whether those guests might pose a risk until after they are booked I am then in a position of having to possibly having to cancel them.

I had a woman contact me about a booking not too long ago on another service and when I checked Facebook I found that she ran huge pop up parties in hotels and vacation homes in college towns the pictures of these parties were wild. Our listing strictly states no open house parties but she wanted to book our home regardless. I then checked her out further and found she had destroyed a hotel room at a very nice hotel near us just a couple months prior. I had the opportunity to respond to her inquiry with the language stressing that we do not allow any large parties and we pursue any damages with court action and she did not book our home.  With Airbnb's new system i could not do this and avoid the cost of cancelling a reservation.

I want to continue offering a very unique opportunity for people to enjoy our rare and expensive furnishings, but I am now very uncomfortable since this change and I can find no way to see what has been said by other hosts before a booking is complete.

Please let me know how I can see what has been said by other hosts before accepting a booking. Star ratings tell nothing because you have no idea what type of home they had stayed at or what the rules were at those properties. Some properties allow wild parties and do not have expensive furnishings that can be easily damaged, that is not the case with our home.

Thank you

[Jocelyn82]

We used to be able to see our potential guest's star rating before they booked, but Airbnb calls this "discriminatory" and has "improved" the site and removed them. Airbnb is going backwards.

[Tigger0]

Hi all,

Since AirBnB have removed the opportunity to see a guest's photo at the enquiry stage, we are more inclined to question guests about the reason for their visit. 

If we get a booking enquiry which says, "Hi. We will arrive at your place sometime after 5pm. Thanks", this can feel a little disrespectful, like we are a hotel or something. I will usually send a very friendly message back, asking for them to tell us a little about themselves and the purpose of their visit. Usually they oblige. 

I think the whole AirBnB model is weighted in the guests favour because it's all about AirBnB making money - so many of the prompts on the website, or emails we get are asking us to switch on "instant booking", reduce prices, offer a deal, etc. 

AirBnB could be doing a lot more to help the hosts who invite guests into their homes, and share their spaces, making them feel more secure. Maybe making more effort to insist that potential guests have a profile that actually says something more than, "Hi! I'm X", or really encouraging guests to write a personal message which lets hosts know whether they are coming down to discover the city, work, attend a conference, get smashed out of their skulls... It really would be useful. As open as we are to all genders, sexualities, ethnicities, ages, etc in our home, there really are some human behaviours that we are not keen to accept from people we've never met, in our own home. 

I can see the reasoning for not revealing photos until after booking, however. I dodn't want to be a judge-y person, whether that's concsious on unconcsious.

[Mark116]

You should require a government ID and photo be part of every guests profile, that way, even if the hosts can't ever see it, it is on record in case of a problem.

You should also change your damage deposit policy to be one of a real damage deposit in order to ease the minds of the hosts who now have in some cases literally zero information on the potential guest before accepting or declining them:  no photo, no description on their profile, and no details in their message.  This is totally unfair to hosts, especially those of us who don't use Instant Book because we wish to have an exchange and some background before allowing someone to book.

You should also allow hosts to make their photos invisible prior to booking as well as guests in order to be fair.

You should relax your punishing policy on denials and possibly stop counting it toward super host status, pressuring  hosts to continue to accept guests where there are blank profiles, blank photos, and single sentence requests to book is unfair.

Or, you could do the one thing I know you will not do, which is simply go back to the previous policy, which worked well enough to build  your company into a global brand.

**Please note that your roll out of this was truly terrible, I know we had several days of blank photos from guests before the host side allowing us to require photos was up and running.

[Emilia42]

I am not concerned with seeing profile pictures before the booking is accepted. I am a big supporter and user of Instant booking so I have barely noticed this change.

I would, however, really like to see more complete guest profile pages. More times than not, I see a blank page with no information whatsoever.

What is this guest’s history with Airbnb? Did they just join or have they booked under this profile before? Where do they live (sometimes I just see United States.) I cannot even see if a guest is recommended by previous hosts. I like to see more of a travel profile. 

And then some simple questions to give these strangers more of a personality. What are their interests? Would they choose the mountains, the city, or the ocean? How do they take their coffee? Are they animal lovers? Just seeing some simple facts about the user (whether serious or playful) will give hosts more reassurance that they are actual human beings.

At this point I do not feel there is enough of a push from Airbnb to have guest’s actually complete a profile.

[Francesca-and-Dave0]

Hi Emilia,

I completely support this. While I would also like to see photos, it is the rest of the information that is lacking in my inability to see guest profiles until AFTER accepting a booking that concerns me the most.

I have now had to add a disclaimer to my house rules in order to require that potential guests show me screenshots of their profile information that includes their photo, the fact that they have indeed been verified with a government ID, and showing me their reviews from previous stays before accepting a booking. Without this information I will no longer continue to book guests and am adding my listing onto other rental platforms.

We were doing “Home Stays” a decade before ABB even started and we did just fine without them, so while I am sorry to see the host—ABB relationship deteriorate, I will not risk my safety, my home, my community or my ability to ensure a positive experience for both myself AND my guests due to ABBs deleterious changes.

I sincerely hope the Powers That Be at Airbnb are listening, because I am seeing the demise of a system that we used to thoroughly enjoy (as both hosts and guests) that no longer seems to be working for the “traditional” hosts who built the brand and the business for the Airbnb corporation.

[Mark116]

@Francesca-and-Dave0  I honestly don't think airbnb cares about the traditional hosts.  The easieset thing for them to do is what they've been doing...moving the platform to be just like every other booking platform where it's anonymous to anonymous. 

The large property management companies and hotels that are now listed here won't care at all about a photo or no photo or a nice message or any of the personal stuff that traditional hosts have valued and used as tools to make the experience safe and as stress free as possible.  Airbnb has already rolled over on all the regulations for the most part, so who will be left at the end?  Property management companies, hotels, and hosts who can afford to meet burdensome government requirements, with maybe a tiny carve out for treehouses and other unique type listings, and a few in home shares.

[Francesca-and-Dave0]

@Mark116 

Sadly, I think you are spot on...  Another sharing economy and cooperative business model caves to greed. The caliber, focus and expectations of both the hosts and the guests has changed markedly. Perhaps a new platform supporting the “traditional” model will emerge — and even better having learned from all the mistakes and growing pains of ABB — but I’m not holding my breath. 

[Patsy6]

I totally agree with Mark from New Jersey.

Has airbnb forgotten  we rent spaces in our homes and charge way less than a hotel/motel and complete transparency was the host's small piece of feeling secure. I feel if a guest does not feel secure providing a profile picture than he or she can go to a hotel/motel and I also feel this would have very little if zero impact on airbnb. I have continued to accept reservations from people who have a minimum of 3  five star reviews otherwise I have declined the request. I am very disappointed with airbnb for this change and do not think good things will come of it. I spent a lot of time convincing neighbors of airbnb support for hosts and much time with city hall fighting to keep airbnb in our community and this is what we get in return?? I for one, do not believe that the discrimination card is the real reason this change has has happened.

Per airbnb guests do not feel secure providing a photo, and hosts do not feel secure accepting a reservation without one...and the guests wins and the host has all the risk.  Aiebnb

Do you really think this is fair. I think the hosts are now being discriminated against.