[Closed] May Release: Your Questions Answered

[Catherine-Powell]

Hi Hosting Community, 

It has been wonderful to read your questions over the past week and to see that overall your feedback about the May Release has been positive. It is also helpful to hear your suggestions about features we should consider, and how we can improve launches in the future. Thank you for being candid and for being so collaborative. 

Since May the 3rd we’ve been gathering and reviewing a large amount of community feedback via our Early Access program, the Community Center and Host Clubs. We have also held several feedback workshops with Hosts to speak with you directly. There are lots of common themes across your feedback and I am grateful for the opportunity to elaborate further on the exciting changes we made just a few weeks ago. 

With nearly 50 questions, we chose the most popular and combined a few that touched on similar topics. So, let’s jump straight to your questions!

1: How does Airbnb decide what improvements to work on? There appear to be some good features here but other things people have asked for don't seem to be being worked on. 

By Host:@Mike-And-Jane0  

Great question! As you might imagine, there are many factors involved in these decisions. 

We are committed to improving Airbnb’s core service, for both Hosts and guests. To do this, we have storyboarded the entire guest and Host journey— from sign up to checking out, and every step in between. The result of this exercise is an extensive “blueprint” of the Airbnb experience— every screen, every policy, and every touchpoint with customer support has been mapped out. 

With this blueprint designed, we are now able to clearly map the feedback we get from our community of Hosts and guests, whether through customer service tickets, social media, reviews, this forum, live workshops and so on. This helps us identify priorities to focus on and informs the updates launched at each release. Hopefully you are seeing the results! Since the inception of these launches in 2021, we’ve made over 340 improvements.

This is only the beginning, we know that we have much more work to do, and we will continue to listen to your feedback and requests as we plan our next launches! 

I hope this sheds some light into how we, at Airbnb,  prioritize what improvements to work on. All of our work has a  very clear focus on incorporating Host feedback. Thank you for your ongoing contributions and presence here in the Community Center

2: Given this and the growing value of our community's sense of hospitality, could we expect Passports to be extended to all hosts including entire houses?

By Hosts: @Felicity11 , @Lina88 , @Leo3395 , @Sarah5000  and @Keshav7 

It has been great to see the positive response of our Host Community to our new Host Passport. 

We are definitely considering expanding the Host Passport beyond Rooms Hosts. Passports were designed to create more connection between Hosts and guests and we see lots of potential for this feature.  For now, we welcome any feedback from Rooms Hosts about your experience with the Passport.

I also encourage all Hosts to complete their new profile fields. We know that guests want to know more about the space they are booking, and they will be looking to your new profiles to provide these insights, regardless of the listing type. 

Thank you so much for this question and for actively providing feedback.

3: Could we please have the Passport for guests too? So many guests have nothing on their profiles, which is sad. Perhaps more options might inspire them?

By Host: @Kitty-and-Creek0 , @Clara116 , @Christine615 , @Mariann4 , @Laurelle3  and @KatieKayMead0 .

Several Hosts have asked about this and as a Host myself, I see the importance of learning more about my guests before they arrive. As I said above, Passports are an exciting new feature and it could be an additional way we accomplish connection with guests in the future. For now, all Hosts and guests can add details to their profiles, and we hope to see more in our Community share information about themselves.

Thanks for the question, Kitty and Creek. I learned someone from our team here at Airbnb had a chance to stay at your listing and shared that you were an incredible Host. You are what makes Airbnb so amazing!

I would also like to thank our other Hosts who echoed the same sentiment and suggested guest Passports, including Clara in Florida (US), Christine in Kansas City (US) , Mariann in Bergen (Norway) , Laurelle in Huskisson(Australia) and Katie in Lake Arrowhead, CA (US).

4: Why have you removed the option to edit Custom Promotions from the Calendar?

By Host: @Christian2086

Hi Christian, we have heard from many of our Hosts in the Community Center and Host Clubs on this topic, so I’m glad we can address it head-on. 

The Calendar is a really important tool and a part of the app our Hosts use most. We wanted to make it even easier to use, so we have organized all pricing features in one place. You can now set your custom promotions in the new Calendar settings section (click on the Settings icon, then 'Pricing', then 'Promotions'). This is accessible across all platforms, including desktop and your mobile app. Once you set custom promotions, these will be visible when you edit the relevant calendar dates. We have also updated the current flow to make it easier for you to remove and set new custom promotions across all platforms. 

However, considering your feedback and the convenience of editing existing promotions, we are actively looking to reintroduce the 'edit' functionality into the custom promotions. In the meantime, if you wish to change your discount percentage, you will need to delete and create a new custom promotion.

We will be providing an update to our Community when the ability to edit existing promotions returns. Thank you for the feedback to improve our Host experience! 

5: Not being able to edit the rule sets within this calendar view is a big step back for me. Would you be able to add back the rule sets?

By Hosts: @Tara44  and @Brux0.

The Calendar is one of the most important features for Hosts, so we are always looking at ways to improve it.

We made significant changes to the calendar editing feature to simplify the Host experience. We increased transparency regarding what guests pay through the 'guest total' feature, and we now display discounts/promotions applied to each date. We have also added the ability to view the average prices of similar listings in your area through the Similar Listings feature. 

As we added functionalities, we simplified the experience to prevent the calendar editing process from becoming overly complicated.

Consequently, we removed rule sets from the single calendar view, where the Host's experience was subpar (for example, you could not see different colors). Instead, rule sets are displayed and available in the multi-calendar view (which you can access through the desktop by tapping on the ‘calendar’ tab). In this view, you can color-code rule sets for easy recognition. 

We understand that rule sets are important to you, and we want to provide the right experience. We plan to gather more feedback from Hosts to help us design a better rule set experience. Thank you for the question and feedback. 

6:  Previously, Hosts used to receive advice from Price Tips but this seems to have stopped with the release. Is there a reason why?

By Host:@Elena487  and @Daniel1651 . 

Thanks Elena for your question and for letting us know that the Price Tips were helpful to you. 

We know how important it is for our Hosts to understand prices in your area and to have access to as much information as possible. During our May release, we introduced the Similar Listings feature. For the first time ever, Hosts can compare their price to the average price of similar listings, both booked and unbooked, nearby. This new feature takes into account over 100 inputs to determine listings that may be best for you to compare yours to.  Bookings are indicative of demand, however we hope the Similar Listings feature will help inform pricing strategies. We will share this feedback with our product team for further exploration. 

Daniel also asked how we determine which listings are similar to yours. To curate this list, we consider criteria like location, listing type, rooms, amenities, reviews, ratings, and the listings that guests often view alongside yours.

Elena, it is also great to see you help other Hosts as a Superhost Ambassador and are very active sharing advice here in the Community Center. Daniel, thank you so much for your contributions on the Host Advisory Board!

7: I use a Channel Manager to support my Hosting. Will the  new "compare prices" feature work alongside this tool?

By Hosts: @Sabrina-And-John0  and @Charlotte40.

Thank you very much, Sabrina, John and Charlotte, for your question.

At this time, we plan to only make our Compare Similar listings feature available via the Airbnb product given its proprietary information. We will keep Hosts informed if we plan to change this in the future. 

Thank you so much for the work you do as Community Leaders, Sabrina and John, and Charlotte. We are so grateful for the incredible impact you both have in your local communities. 

- -  end of question and answers section - - 

Thank you all for such thoughtful questions and constructive feedback. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have this connection and dialogue with you here in the Community Center.

Warmly, 

Catherine

[Quincy]

Hi Everyone,

As we conclude this Q&A session, I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you who participated in Catherine's Q&A session. Your thoughtful questions and valuable contributions have made this discussion really constructive and insightful. And I hope the answers provided in this thread add value for our Hosts.

We would like to extend a special thanks to all our Hosts who took the time to ask their questions that resonated with our wider audience. Remember that the conversation doesn't have to end here, and our Community Center is always open for constructive and meaningful discussions. If you have anything to share further, you can always share more comments by starting a new conversation.

We look forward to bringing more such Q&A sessions and learning opportunities for our Community Center.