Airbnb 2022 Summer Release: What you need to know

[Airbnb]

Our 2022 Summer Release represents the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade. We’re introducing:

• Airbnb Categories: A new way to search that makes it easy for guests to discover millions of homes they never knew existed

• Split Stays: An innovative feature that pairs two listings when a guest searches for a longer stay

• AirCover: The most comprehensive protection in travel, included for free with every stay

Get all the details on the Resource Center, and tell us: Will you be updating your listing for Airbnb Categories and Split Stays? How will you update it?

[Annie1372]

@James2743 

I wish 😂🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

i believe it will takes weeks before anything changes.

But I love your optimism 👍🏻

[James2743]

Not sure about optimism either. Sarcasm, resignation and frustration sounds more accurate.

[Kimberly718]

do you mean a patch to stop the hemorrhaging of money lost by this idiotic change? I spoke to someone today and he said they are just testing this out. Great I said, I will just wait till next year to have bookings, no problem, you just test this fun little widget out Airbnb. Ugh. What a mess. 

[Susan1188]

@Kimberly718

I agree I wonder how much money is hemorraging..

Because in addition to not getting viewed by my best candidate guests, I am getting viewed by poor matching guests I now have to refuse.  So overall lose-lose.

[Kristina46]

@Airbnb @Stephanie etc... (Not sure who to direct this to). 

Aloha everyone. I am on the Big Island of Hawaii. I have been a host with Airbnb since the beginning when Airbnb was a brand-new start-up, no one had ever heard of them and Brian himself answered the phone when you had to call customer service. Yes really.  Airbnb helped me stay out of foreclosure during the recession, and for that I am eternally grateful. 

So yes, I have seen a lot of changes with the platform over the years. This one is not your finest hour. 

I have been experimenting with the new search and category function. I have found some very odd errors with the mapping/geotagging of listings. First issue. All listings in Kailua-Kona are tagged with something called "Beans Beach." I am a 30-year resident and senior travel writer for Fodor's Travel Hawaii Big Island since 2011.  I have never heard of Beans Beach. If it does exist on a google map somewhere it might be someone's nickname for a small beach that got added to Google maps. Screen shot below. This is literally on EVERY listing in Kailua-Kona. They are all geotagged to Beans Beach! What is it and where is it? I've lived here three decades and I have no idea what they mean.  Needless to say, travelers to the island are going to flood hosts with inquiries about how close they are to Beans Beach and whether they can walk to it. Then when they find out it's nowhere nearby, or is basically non-existent, they will smack us around with a bad review and one star for accuracy. Could you blame them? 

Next issue: Many listings not in the Mauna Lani Resort are tagged with "49 Black Sand Beach." 49 Black Sand Beach is an exclusive oceanfront housing development where Lisa Mare Presley once owned a villa. It's not a spot where the little people typically book vacation rentals. While there could be some Airbnb rentals available there, these in the screenshot below are located outside the Mauna Lani Resort and have no access to the exclusive address or facilities at 49 Black Sand Beach. 

Were the programmers just trying to add the closest beach? If so, that's inaccurate, especially here on our island. And 49 isn't a beach, it's a luxe housing development. But the AI bots wouldn't know that. 

Third Issue. I searched the Beaches and Amazing Views categories on my side of the island (South Kona) where there is an abundance of both but no listings pop up. My place, which has amazing views (the number one thing mentioned by guests in reviews, and which has access to a private beach in our neighborhood) is not listed in either category. But in the Beaches category I DO find this little house located in a remote location of the island NOT near any beaches. See Screenshot. It's tagged to Pohue Beach, which is accessible only by 4WD and with the permission of neighboring property owners who have gated off roads to get there. Not only is this house nowhere near any beach, it's tagged to one that can only be reached by trespassing on private property. Will guests who check in and discover it's not by an accessible beach be eligible for a refund? Just curious because I'm pretty sure the listing host doesn't promise that so why should they be penalized with a bad review or forced into giving guest refunds? Guests would now have 72 hours to try to get to Pohue Bay, and when they couldn't get there might have a case for a refund, since it's inaccurate on the listing. 

 

While I am no IT professional, I'm a long time resident and travel writer familiar with every corner of this island. I know where the beaches are in relation to the properties they are tagged to. Hire me and I will go through all of them and fix it for you. 

[Kimberly718]

make sure you share this feedback and start a ticket. https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback?_ga=2.224747418.1252609813.1652530773-2103335467.1649787412

[Summit-View0]

@Airbnb @James2743 @Kristina46

@Rhonda45 @Kimberly718 

Airbnb already has huge problems with ;

1) fake reviews and that people who stay for only one day during the low season at below cost rates can and often do reduce the rating of a typical superslave as much as guests who stay for three weeks during the high season.

This of course is an outlet for fraudulent reviews galore as competitors send their relatives, friends and even themselves for a one or two day stay to lower ratings of listings that are competing for the same segment.

2) hosts (including Superslaves) already pay very high and unjustified fees for the luxury of getting bounced from one fake-name Airbnb support member to another if they face any issue.

I am not paid for a 28 night successfully completed stay for two and half months and I am in touch with no less than 19 'support' team members.

They all (without exception) apologise for a true or imaginary 'glitch' which prevents funds from being released to me despite that at this stage I already know the ins and outs of this horrendously clumsy system and so I surely have a default and verified payout method (not that it makes a difference to Airbnb).

3) There are no checks on hosts nor on guests.

There are YouTube videos of people doing pranks such as setting up doll houses with bottles of water positioned next to the 'house with garden' that is supposedly for rent but the Airbnb bots are unable to detect this which tells the whole story in a nutshell... 

4) Naturally these 'hosts' with fake listings are approved and I wouldn't even be surprised if money from 'guests' is released to them in contrast to the many thousands of hosts that don't get payments for many weeks and months 

(The customer service staff is so clueless that they even mention that the delayed payments is due to a 'technical issues' that MANY hosts are experiencing 😀😀

I suppose this is stated to make people like myself feel better (I am waiting for more than 70 days since I informed Airbnb the thousands of dollars paid by the guests for a 28 night stay in March 2022 did not reach me and the delay continues into summer!).

[Emilie]

@Kristina46 Thanks for flagging this and adding some very useful screenshots to illustrate. I've shared your findings and concerns about these geotags on my end!

Emilie

[Kristina46]

Thank you Emilie. Bear in mind these findings were just the result of a minimal search. I have no idea what other errors exist with geotags to beaches around the island. I stopped looking after three errors. 

[Susan1188]

@Kristina46 

You didn't get the memo: they are proposing places the traveller never thought he would be interested in!  AI knows better than the guest, and than your track record, what should be proposed to him!

You are much too sucessful, your track record is much too proven, you are a much too multiple five star host!!! You are much too predictable!

They will now propose competitors 50 miles away who have one review, when someone clicks on your town and your category.

[Jonathan47]

It seems to me Airbnb is making the same mistake it made with PLUS hosts. Both PLUS and ‘Categories’ base themselves on something which undermines the very success of Airbnb. This was a very simple brilliant concept: Offer millions of original places to stay that are unlike the streamlined offerings of hotel chains. Everybody could find a quirkiness that suited them. And then, let the guests inform others if their expectations were met.

PLUS’s repetitive pictures and anodynes text have put off both hosts and guests. Although we would qualify, we would never list there. Instead of a guarantee of quality, it has become a guarantee of boredom.

The idea of categories is a good one, but because it relies on algorithms rather than individual hosts, it reduces for example “Amazing Views” to endless photos of a blue sea or blue pools, however little the spec of blue might be somewhere in the distance.

Airbnb, do yourself, guests, and hosts a favour, don’t abandon a successful concept. Drop PLUS and let hosts decide the categories.   

[Kristina46]

Wait, where is PLUS? Not included anymore? Gone?

[Huma0]

@Kristina46 

I also thought PLUS was gone, but now I am not so sure. For quiet a while after the Summer Release, the only listings showing on my landing page when logged in as a guest were PLUS.

[Molly396]

I just got a little more info after escalating my ticket. Still confused! I’ll post the response below. I was surprised to hear the rep say that the listings are manually reviewed, as this is the opposite of what I’ve been hearing. They also shared criteria for inclusion with me like turning instant booking on or flexible cancelation. Of course I know they’ve always favored that criteria, but it was not made clear that’s criteria for category inclusion. 

 

[James2743]

@Molly396 

That second message is pretty crucial to all of this. If that is the case then I can see Many people giving up on the categories altogether.