Hello @Lizzie,
Did you perhaps mean this message for me? In case you did, I’m going to share my thoughts.
First off, @Jennifer1421, in her reply to you, has done an excellent job of expressing many of my own thoughts.
I agree: I can only speak for myself as all of our listings and locations and real life situations vary tremendously. As an Airbnb user I’m around about a 2:1 guest:host ratio (I travel as a guest twice as often as I host), so I’m looking at this issue from both perspectives, guest and host.
FROM A HOST PERSPECTIVE
In my specific situation, I host in a popular holiday town on the east coast of South Africa. My family has owned our home for over 20 years and we dearly love our little apartment. It’s not an investment/money making property. We live an hour or so away, and we rent out the whole apartment during holiday season.
It is of vital importance to us that our guests, our home, our family, and our neighbours are all safe, secure, and well taken care of.
It grieves me to say (especially on this international forum) that South Africa is a country with serious safety and security issues. Because of this, proper vetting of guests is absolutely paramount for everyone’s safety. This is why the continued undermining of host freedoms and continued focus on guest obscurity is deeply concerning to me. So much so that I have already removed my listing from Airbnb.
For me to be able to host with confidence in my particular circumstances, this is what action I would like to see from Airbnb:
1) Restore guest profile photos.
2) Perform proper background/security checks on guests. If this was done thoroughly, there would be fewer safety and security problems.
3) Require the following in order for new members to sign up, and for current members to continue using the platform:
-Government-issue ID
-Clear facial profile photo
-Useful, informative bio
-Where guest/host/user is from
-When guest/host/user joined Airbnb
-Current contact details
This basic background information should be provided before guests can send booking enquiries or requests.
4) Have real consequences for bad and dangerous guests: ban them from the platform so that we don’t end up hosting them.
5) Take a real security deposit and allow hosts to recover costs from it. At present, the process of recovering costs from guests who have caused damage is cumbersome and inefficient.
6) Provide guest star ratings for hosts to see. Hosts deserve to know if guests break house rules, have low cleanliness ratings or poor communication.
There may well be some hosts who don’t feel they need this detail at all. But perhaps there are those, like me, who would find it immensely helpful.
FROM A GUEST PERSPECTIVE
When I first signed up to Airbnb, there was no such thing as a Bélo. It was back in these days:
Anyone else been around since then? 🙂
My husband and I signed up under his name. (I later made my own account when I decided to become a host.)
I remember thinking at the time that the sign up process was exciting. I felt as though we were joining this new, intriguing community of people willing to share their homes, hospitality, and trust. The sign up took a while, because there were photos to upload, IDs to verify, contact details to record, and a bio to write.
Hosts, real life everyday people were risking themselves and their homes by inviting me, a stranger, in. They had shared the photos of the interiors of where they actually live, along with all sorts of information about themselves, their homes, and their communities. The very least I could do was share a picture of my face with them.
What a privilege it was to be part of it all! We met the most amazing people, and stayed in truly remarkable places, because we put in the effort to be decent guests; making it easier for hosts to accept our bookings.
Those early days trained me to write informative messages to prospective hosts so that they could decide whether or not I would be a good fit for them and their home. Sometimes the answer was yes, sometimes it was no.
To this day, it has never occurred to me to question a host on their decision.
It’s their home.
Their property.
If they would rather not host me for whatever reason, it is entirely their choice.
I have been declined, and have never held it against a host.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In my experience, back in the early days, I think guests were more respectful-more grateful and appreciative-for the opportunity of travelling this way. I feel as though these days, guests are considerably more entitled, and certainly I’ve wasted numerous messaging hours with those who have no understanding of what Airbnb really is (or originally was).
I’m guessing that these are likely the guests who do not want to spend their time verifying themselves, providing profile photos, reading listings and house rules. There is a profusion of platforms for guests like this. The internet is full of them, they are spoilt for choice. Guests who do not want to participate in the trusting spirit of Airbnb are a poor fit for the platform, and I’m at a loss as to why they are being catered for, especially at the risk of hosts who have helped to build this company from the ground up. I don’t know why this has been allowed to even become an issue.
I genuinely want to believe the best about about Airbnb. Despite the information put forward by the company in these two posts;
Airbnb Answers: Guest profile photos
Guest profile photos: Airbnb response to community feedback
I find it difficult to believe that this profile photo policy is about non-discrimination at all. Allowing host profile photos to be seen before booking, but hiding guest profile photos before booking appears blatantly discriminatory to me. Why do I have more rights, more freedoms, as a guest, than I do as a host?
Just some ponderings off the top of my mind. Thanks for reading!
-Jo
P.S. Fellow ABBers, South Africa is a gloriously beautiful country of rivers, oceans, mountains, valleys, waterfalls, rolling hills, forests, grasslands, deserts, wildlife, and wonderful people. We are so much more than a country-wide crime scene, as often reported in the news. Please come visit!