Improvements to guest reviews, house rules, cancellations & more in the latest Host Update

[Airbnb]

*Post shared October, 20th

In the latest Host Update, Catherine Powell shares how Airbnb is addressing your top concerns from the past few months and provides detailed answers to several direct questions from hosts. Thanks to host feedback voiced in workshops and here in the Community Center, there are several features being put into action. 

*To add or change subtitles to the video, hover over the video and click on the little 'Settings' wheel in the bottom right corner. Then select your language. 

Airbnb is improving the guest review process to make it feel more fair. This includes rewriting the majority of review questions that guests answer after a stay. For example, instead of asking guests if the description of a listing was inaccurate, we’re now asking if it was accurate instead. These changes will help guests leave reviews that feel more impartial and truly reflect the quality of your hospitality. 

Unauthorized parties are another top host concern, and we’re launching several new features to help protect you against them. For example, by the end of this month you’ll be able to immediately cancel a reservation without contacting support if you have valid reason to believe it will lead to a party. As long as your reason is upheld by our review team, you won’t receive financial penalties or have your Superhost status affected. 

When our team reviews a cancellation, they’ll search for evidence of a potential party from message threads or previous guest reviews. As always, these cancellations must adhere to Airbnb’s nondiscrimination policy and we’ll carefully monitor them for unfair treatment that violates that policy.

Many hosts have also asked that house rules be more prominent on listing pages so guests can both read and understand them before booking. By next month, your house rules will be visible in four different places when a guest books a stay:

1. Key house rules—like not allowing smoking or pets—will be visible at the top of your listing page so that they’re more prominent as guests search
2. All the house rules you’ve listed, including important safety disclosures, will be visible in the details of your listing page
3. House rules will be displayed again on the booking confirmation page to help better ensure that guests understand and agree to them before completing a reservation
4. They’ll also be included in the booking confirmation email to remind guests of your expectations before they arrive
   
   

All house rules must be in line with Airbnb’s policies and terms—including our terms of service and nondiscrimination policy.

To read a full overview of all the updates being put into place, visit this Resource Center article. As always, thank you for sharing the topics that matter to you and providing feedback that helps elevate the hosting community. Please let us know what you’d like us to cover in future Host Updates with Catherine.

[Pat114]

I would really like to laugh at this - but, alas, so true.

[Super47]

@Catherine-Powell

Further to the review updates, you state.. 

"Airbnb is improving the guest review process... This includes rewriting the majority of review questions that guests answer after a stay" 

Currently, Airbnb is also stating that as part of the upcoming drive to verify all listings.. 

"The process to verify your listing begins by assessing each listing’s online details and guest reviews" 

As the review questions are currently being re-written at the same time as the introduction of the new mandatory Enhanced Cleaning Protocol requirements, presumably Airbnb plans to monitor host compliance with the cleaning protocol in a similar way to how they'll be conducting the listing verification process - by assessing listing details and guest reviews - thereby appointing the guests as de facto 'hotel inspectors' and/or 'mask police'?

If so, could you please share with us the details of what the guest will be presented with on their side in relation to hosts' cleaning protocol, and how, exactly, any associated review questions will be framed? 

Thank you. 

[Diana867]

I agree completely, I believe that when the question for Location comes up is open to interpretation is more like: How is the neighborhood and the houses around it. Or  Was the location of the home as you expected? Like the distance? Not like you knew it was 20 miles from the ocean and you still booked it.

[Susan1730]

I have had the same problem with Transportation...my property is on a major bus line and major east west road. Who rated my access to public transportation? Airbnb??? WTF. Trains are one mile from my house. Again WTF. I feel like Airbnb has lost it. Out of touch. I have demanded that they change PROFILE photos to be accurate. "Oh no that's a privacy issue". I need to know who is downstairs in my house! Are they an member of a friend...? If I suspect a problem in advance I demand legal ID and addresses. I digress here.

[Alyssa31]

I recently had a guest trash my place and cause damages. The guest didn’t respond (why would they? There’s nothing requiring them to and no financial penalty) to my request for payment so it went to the Airbnb host guarantee. 

In our small mountain town, we do not have trash service. It’s required the guests, at checkout, take their trash with them to a city site. This is a short term rental requirement in our town. 

When the guests don’t take their trash, I’m billed a fee from my cleaning crew as now they have to load the trash into their car and take it to the trash site. 

The guest left 9 bags of trash plus beer boxes and pizza boxes. However, because this wasn’t “damage” to my property I am now required to make this payment to my cleaning crew out of my own pocket. This is not right. 

They also left the house so dirty that my cleaners charged me $100 for extra cleaning. Again, this wasn’t “damages” so I won’t be getting this back. 

This isn’t right. If I were to be renting directly and had a security deposit from the guest I would have been able to make these deductions from their deposit. Instead, Airbnb just lets the guest not respond and leaves me with $350 out of pocket I have to pay my cleaners. 

This is not right. This is not what makes me want to book my home through Airbnb. It needs to be understood that without monetary fees - guests will break rules without consequence. Guests need to be upheld to better standards. You shouldn’t be able to just ignore a resolution request and Airbnb definitely should be backing me up on my entire claim. 

[Ute42]

.

Hi  @Catherine0   ,

I'm impressed by all the good things You have in the pipeline for us. I've never heard of anything like it ever since I'm listing on airbnb. This is a total change in policies - Wow.

This statement of Yours blew my mind:

• We have proactively cancelled one night bookings in the US and Canada on october 30th or october 31st. If You already have a booking we will reimburse You.

Are You serious? Did You really get this approved by Brian, or is he no longer with the company?

[Colleen253]

@Ute42 lol

"Did You really get this approved by Brian, or is he no longer with the company"?

Yep Brian is still with the company. How do we know? Hosts are reporting only getting reimbursed a fraction of the cancelled bookings. Notice no mention of reimbursed "in full"?

[Super47]

@Ute42 @Colleen253

Well, it's difficult to ascertain exactly how much that reimbursement will be now. Perhaps @Catherine-Powell might clarify, please? 

In the initial emails to hosts about this, Airbnb stated.. 

"We’ll issue a cash payout equal to the host payout you would have received for the booking"

And in the October 2nd Press Release (and subsequently repeated all over the media) it stated.. 

• Airbnb will fully pay for the guest reimbursements – meaning hosts who have confirmed bookings canceled will still receive payment.

However, the corresponding Help Article which originally stated that "hosts will still receive the expected payout for that reservation" appears to have been deleted now, and the current Help Article simply states 'Hosts will be reimbursed by Airbnb' - amount unspecified. 

Unfortunately, the 'Learn More' button for the corresponding paragraph in the Resource Centre article that Catherine linked to in her post above appears to be broken too, and just leads to the ice-cream girl 404 error page. Ooops. 

1. Single-night reservations of entire homes in the U.S. and Canada won’t be allowed over Halloween weekend this year, and we’ll be reimbursing hosts for any canceled reservations. Learn more

[Ute42]

.

@Colleen253 @Super47  

Thanks for bringing me back down to earth, I think I got carried away by excitement for a moment.

In fact, Catherines statement is not very clear. I think there are 2 questions that need to be looked into:

• What will be reimbursed
  
  

• How much of „what“ will be reimbursed

„What“ could be the rentalprice, the cancellation fee or the cleaning fee, Catherine didn't specify that. And I agree with Colleen, there was no mention about „how much“.

Here's what I expect: Airbnb will reimburse hosts according to their cancellation policy.

For hosts with a flexible or a moderate policy that means, their reimbursement will be zero which is fair, as this is in full line with the cancellation policy they themselves have opted for.

Hosts with a strict cancellation policy will receive a 50% payout. Not 50% from the rentalprice, but 50% from the 50% cancellation fee which then will be 25%. Airbnb already did that with COVID cancellation reimbursements in april/may. Why change an established reimbursement scheme?

Of course I'm being a bit ironic here, but who knows. Let's wait and see what fellow hosts report on here starting early november.

[Lizzie]

Hello @Super47,

Thanks for spotting the error with the 'Learn more' button. It was only displaying to hosts in the US and Canada, but it's now visible to all to find out more. 

Would you mind checking it to make sure you can now see it now?

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Super47]

Hi @Lizzie

Yes, it's working now, thank you! I was speaking with a couple of hosts in the US on the day I posted my comment though - one in Sonoma, one in Nashville - and it wasn't working for them either. The linked page does now state.. "hosts who have confirmed bookings cancelled will still receive the expected payout for that reservation", which is excellent

The article was also updated on the same day it was reinstated - do you happen to know what the changes were, and what the previous version of the article stated? I ask because the host in Nashville had also received a payout for a cancelled Halloween booking, at a fraction of what his full payout should have been (of a very similar percentage to the payout another host who posted on here about this some days ago) When he queried it earlier this week, the customer support agent was adamant that the payout he had received was the correct reimbursement that he was due, as per Airbnb's policy on this.

Thankfully, yesterday he was able to send them the newly updated information linked to Catherine's Resource Centre article, and the Case Manager capitulated and said he'll now be paid in full for that reservation. Do you have any idea why some support agents appear to be under the mistaken impression that these bookings are to be reimbursed at a greatly reduced rate? 

[Lizzie]

Hello @Super47,

Glad this is now working for you and others, and you're pleased to see the expected payment amount is what hosts should received. 

Thanks for letting me know about the person in Nashville. I don't suppose you could send the CC profile of the person you mentioned who experienced this (or CC listing) and we can look into it a little more to see why this might have happened. Feel free to send it via DM to me. 

Thanks again,

Lizzie

[Super47]

Hi @Lizzie

Thanks for the response. Yes, I'm always pleased to see hosts receiving the expected payouts they were told they'd receive!

I whatsapped the host in Nashville and unfortunately, he replied that he has no interest in joining the CC and said he wasted more than enough of his time fighting with customer support to get his proper payout sorted already, and he got the correct result in the end so that's all the time he's going to spend on it. 

However, you might like to get in touch with the host in the thread below, who posted exactly the same issue here on the CC on October 15th. She did tag Catherine Powell,  but apparently didn't get any response from either Catherine or any of the CC mods.

She's already a CC member so perhaps you can reach out to her directly and she may be able to provide you with the information you require. 

Payouts for Canceled one night reservations over Halloween
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Payouts-for-Canceled-one-night-reservations-over-Halloween/...

[Lizzie]

Thanks for looking into that @Super47 with the host from Nashville, totally understand they are probably fed up with talking about it now. 

This link will help. Thank you. 

Lizzie

[Kim932]

In our 15 years as a property management company, we have NEVER seen as many issues with guests as we have seen in the past 3 months.  We have had several guests host unauthorized parties, and we can't get AirBnB to promptly deal with these repeated issues.  My biggest frustration with AirBnB right now is their refusal to penalize a guest for breaking the house rules.  Unless something is broken, and you have spent 3 hours proving to them that the item is REALLY broken, you get no compensation.  They have the attitude of, "If it ain't broke, don't contact us!"  It is time for AirBnB to implement a damage deposit that all guests must pay, or have held on their credit card, and guests must be assessed a penalty for breaking rules!