We’re excited to share what we’ve been working on over the past few months, from expanding our efforts to tackle inconsistent reviews (we heard your feedback!) to offering new promotional tools that can help your listing stand out. Read on to learn more.
A review update inspired by your feedback
Late last year, we announced a new tool to help address inconsistent reviews. Here’s how it worked: If a guest gave you a 5-star rating in each category (cleanliness, value, etc.) but 1, 2, or 3 stars overall, they’d get a prompt asking them if they wanted to correct that inconsistency.
We got lots of great feedback from hosts on the new tool, and some of you asked why we set the threshold at 3 stars or less—in other words, why wouldn’t a 4-star overall rating trigger the prompt if the guest gave 5 stars everywhere else? We heard you, and we’ve changed the system so that now, even a 4-star overall rating will trigger a prompt if the guest has given 5 stars in each of the specific categories.
With this update, we’re continuing our work to make reviews more relevant and useful for hosts and guests, and we look forward to sharing more changes later in the year.
New custom promotions to get your listing noticed
We recently rolled out our new custom promotions feature, which lets hosts choose their own date range and discount amount. Hosts who set custom promotions can get access to special perks, including:
- An eye-catching strikethrough price in search pages and on their listing (e.g. $100 $85/night)
- Special callouts on their listing page, and the discount clearly detailed in the price breakdown
- A spot in the emails that go out to guests who browsed their listing
If your dashboard doesn't currently show custom promotions as an option, it may be because you're in a location that isn't supported or because you've had fewer than three bookings in the past year. In the meantime, you can still offer deals to guests by setting a lower price for specific dates, or setting up weekly and monthly discounts.
Host Guarantee will soon cover damage by assistance animals
We know that assistance animals (which include service and emotional support animals) play a crucial role in the lives of many of our guests, and we appreciate your willingness to accommodate them. We also know that there are rare cases where an assistance animal causes damage to a host’s property, so in the coming months, we’ll be expanding our $1,000,000 USD Host Guarantee to cover those incidents. (Keep in mind that the Airbnb Host Guarantee is subject to certain terms, conditions, and exclusions—you can learn more about it here.) We hope this update helps bring peace of mind as you continue to welcome guests with different needs into your spaces.
As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on these changes in the comments below. We’ll continue to work on updates that help make hosting easier and more enjoyable for you, so stay tuned for more to come!