Host questions answered: Airbnb’s Summer Release

[Stephanie]

Updated Jun 19, 2022

Just to share a quick update that we have created the promised Resource Center guidelines for listing descriptions has been published and you can read it here.

Hi Hosting Community, 

A month ago, we introduced the Airbnb 2022 Summer Release with a new way to search designed around Airbnb Categories. 

Since then, we’ve gathered feedback from thousands of Hosts through our Community Center, Host Clubs, emails, and in workshops with the Host Advisory Board and Host leaders. Thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions. 

Today, we want to share an update on some of the important feedback you’ve shared.  More updates will follow. 

You can read about them here.

Please continue to share your ideas and feedback as it directly assists in how we evolve our platform. 

Your continued support, feedback and constructive thoughts on this and many of our release features is incredibly valuable and I encourage you to continue sharing here.

Thanks,

Stephanie

[Ann72]

I like that most changes described in the article are driven by how guests actually search and book @Stephanie.  Choose dates and location and go from there.  I hope they continue to refine map search because that’s crucial.  Do guests have any idea you can search in many different ways, including intersection?  If I’m searching in a city I might want to find a place within three blocks of a certain intersection (or what you might call a “junction”), and I don’t see any pointers for guests on using that way of searching, or even of searching by listing title, which one used not to be able to do.

At the same time, I didn’t care that titles disappeared because so many I’ve seen are ungrammatical, but you and @Nick know how I roll lol 😁

[Mark116]

This doesn't really answer any questions, but that isn't surprising.  It's nice that Airbnb will eventually bring back unique titles, but there is no answer or information that addresses the drastic problems that hosts have had in terms of not being listed in the categories where they belong, the windmills and lake front places that aren't in the correct categories. 

I didn't expect Airbnb would acknowledge the absolute failure of the AI, and so the best that hosts can hope for is that in the coming 'months' after the Summer high season is over for Europe, US, Canada, etc, that maybe tweaks to fix this problem will surface.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

[Jeremy785]

Quite frankly, this is a load of BS! I've been fed lies from "support ambassadors" and been unable to reach anyone who can actually do ANYTHING. I was told it was "machine learning" that was picking the categories. Then I was told the categories were manually curated. My listing is a lake house. It has "lake" in the title, it has "lake" in the description, it has multiple pictures of the lake! And yet, I have support telling me that maybe I haven't optimized my listing to show up in a "lake" category! It has been more than a month since the roll out and still nothing! I guess I should at least be happy that Airbnb has acknowledged that there is an issue! ALL categories should have been COMPLETELY populated BEFORE the roll out of the new search feature. I haven't had a single inquiry for my LAKE HOUSE since the update. Thanks for timing it perfectly to kill the summer high season! 

[Mark116]

@Jeremy785 You could try changing 'lake view' to 'lakefront' in the title and the photo captions.  

[Ann10]

!

[Catherine-Powell]

Hi @Jeremy785 can you send me your listing details by sending me a DM.  I can look into this. Click on my username her and choose to "send message".

C

[Mark116]

@Catherine-Powell  I don't mean to be unkind, but you can just click on @Jeremy785  profile and see his listing.  You can see it is a beautiful, well decorated, lake FRONT house that looks out onto a LAKE, has a dock on the LAKE and multiple views of the LAKE from a variety of rooms and decks. 

[Loretta126]

@Catherine-Powell  there are numerous listings that have the same issue as @Jeremy785   We have incredible views of the Pitons and the Caribbean, and yet we aren’t in the “Amazing Views” despite adjectives like “breathtaking” “stunning” “unrivaled” “amazing” about the views in the reviews. 

We did make it into “Amazing pools” even though the pool is a standard 15-by-20 foot rectangle.  To get that changed to “Amazing views”,  I was advised by a moderator here to change the main picture to one without a pool.  They then advised me to remove the pool as an amenity if that didn’t work!  Oh, and most of my neighbors with a very similar view are not in the Amazing View category, either. 

[Jeremy785]

@Loretta126  @Catherine-Powell As Loretta says- there are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of hosts with similar issues. Many aren't even aware and are just wondering why their bookings dropped way off. Seriously, there are 50 (FIFTY!!!) pages of host complaints on the "Update" thread, which as been going on for nearly a month. I've had an open file with "support" since May 14th (after the first three were closed with nothing accomplished!) and they keep feeding me BS and telling me that MY listing is at fault when there wasn't a SINGLE "lake" or "lakefront" for the first three weeks. As of today there are a total of 14 "lakefront" homes in the entire state of CT. Not mine, of course, but my nieghbor's house finally made it up. They were one of the ones that weren't even aware of the issues until I mentioned it to them. 

[Kyle325]

Our views have dropped significantly since the Release rollout - we averaged over 1000/month for the last year; in May we dropped to 680 and in June had only 451.  July MTD we're at 194 - it's TERRIBLE.  We've had only 1 booking in 30 days as compared to 6-8 advance bookings per month.  Their new Release IS NOT HOST FRIENDLY.  The search result pic of our Cabin is NOT the primary cover photo, nor is it the best representation of our Cabin.  We are currently very, very frustrated hosts....

[Catherine-Powell]

Hi @Loretta126,

Thank you so much for your patience while I connected with our Categories team to see what happened with your listing. I can confirm that your listings are both Amazing views (and Amazing pools).

Many thanks for reaching out,

Catherine

[Jeremy785]

@Catherine-Powell I sent you a DM with the pertinent info. I look forward to hearing back from you. 

[Patricia1945]

Surely airbnb have this poor Hosts details, why not go out of the way and contact him ?