May Release: Q&A with Catherine Powell

[Catherine-Powell]

Hi everyone,

I am so excited to connect with all of you today.

I have recently started Hosting and I absolutely love it. Meeting with guests and sharing my home has been an incredible experience and also given me a deep appreciation of all that being a great Host involves. Coming to the Community Centre and reading all the comments and suggestions from you, I can see clearly what a powerful resource this forum is for Hosts across the world. 

Last week, Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, announced the 2023 Airbnb May release with many exciting updates to our platform, including features for Hosts designed to enhance your overall experience on and off the app.

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the feedback across our forums and channels including here in the Community Centre. Your feedback guides how we prioritize the updates we make across our service, our policies, and our product.  

And the feedback doesn’t stop at the release. I’m inviting all of you to our very first Community Centre Q&A session. This is a moment for us to have an open conversation to answer questions you have about our May release. 

Our wonderful team of Community Managers will help coordinate the Q&A and ensure we have an environment where everyone is respected and feels comfortable to ask questions and share their thoughts. One request of you for this Q&A, is to keep your questions related to the 2023 May Release. I know you will not be short of questions and I promise we will have more opportunities to discuss other hosting matters in the future.

Please submit your questions before the end of this week – Friday the 12th of May. The Community Managers will gather the most relevant and popular questions and I’ll make sure to write back to your top questions here in the Community Center by the end of this month. 

Thank you all and have a wonderful day!

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👉 Make sure to read and follow the Q&A Guidelines. Click "read more" below.

Read more

• Remain respectful in your interactions with other Hosts and the Airbnb team. Let's make sure our communication remains meaningful and constructive. 
• Kindly keep your questions focused on the 2023 product release and provide relevant feedback on the topic.
• You may  use the comment section to ask questions related to the release and the like button to upvote a question that you would like to see addressed.
• Be as clear as possible regarding your question, describing what you want to know and why you think it’s relevant for Airbnb’s Host Community. 
• All questions  will be reviewed. We’ll prioritize the most relevant and popular questions – those concerning our global  Host Community and directly linked to the May release.
• Kindly focus your questions on the features and enhancements included as part of the May updates rather than what’s not included. 
• We reserve the right to remove replies that do not follow the above guidelines
• We will do our best to ensure that critical concerns about Airbnb’s 2023 Summer Release are addressed.

[Karen114]

Totally agree! There has to be a bottom that you are willing to not go below.  Otherwise it's likely costing you money to rent the space. 

[Keshav7]

Thanks @Catherine-Powell ! The new summer release is so exciting! I however have just 2 questions to ask.

Q1 - We recently read about "smarter search autocomplete" - Does Airbnb plan to introduce a keyword search using smart search? For example I would like to search listings that have word "beach" in their title or perhaps "Art" in their name? Also this feature would be so useful during experiences hunting too - for example "scavanger" or "trek" would help guest reach to right listing / host faster! 

Q2 - Do you plan to introduce host passports to "entire place" listings too? Presently when we search a city, we see some listings with passport & some without, making the ones with passport more reliable , attractive , human & easy to book! Would be great to have it extended to all listings universally on airbnb! Thankyou 

[Laurelle3]

@Keshav7 I agree with your Q2 about passports for hosts with entire listing as I think it would help guests who maybe looking for like minded hosts. Such as sustainable interests and properties. 

I find when introducing yourself and listing is limited. This is where a green symbol would be helpful for advertising.

However, the passport for hosts is a great initiative but it would be greater if Guest had a passport too. As I consider it allows safety for the Host.

[Felicity11]

Yes @Laurelle3 it would be great to connect up with like minded hosts - especially the Sustainable ones ! 

[Jenny]

Hi @Keshav7 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

I think these are interesting questions, and I'd invite anyone else who is interested in knowing more to give your post a thumbs up!

Jenny

[Elena487]

Thank you @Catherine-Powell for this opportunity to share our feedback in the Community Center. I truly agree with you that this forum is really helpful, it has been for me a great source of information, ideas, advice and inspiration since my beginnings as a host.

The new release is so exciting. As a Spanish saying goes I feel  “like a child with a new toy”. It’s great to use all the new useful features.

I miss the Price Tips that was shown on the calendar before. Now, it shows a range of price that comes from comparing other listings around. It seems to me that the original price tip had much more information behind it, not only about nearby listings but perhaps more expanded search, demand data, etc.

Have you thought about continuing to offer the price tip along with the compare listings tool? Or does this new tool already contain all the great things of the price tips plus improve the ability to view the listings pricing comparison?

Also, when I try to select several dates to compare prices, it seems like the new tool doesn’t allow to select more than 6 nights.

Thank you,

Elena, host in Marbella, Málaga, Spain.

[Jenny]

Hi @Elena487 

We really appreciate your feedback - thanks for your questions as well.

Jenny

[Daniel1651]

"Like a child with a new toy”, I love your expresion @Elena487 !

As you said, the new tool of comparison just allows to do it with a maximum of 6 nights.

For those who used the previous tool called "suggested price", it is so important to have more date for a longer period of time (2 weeks, for instance).

So, maybe @Catherine-Powell could tell us if the new tool will be able to compare prices for more than 6 nights. Thanks!

[Felicity11]

I also love your expression @Elena487 like a child with a new toy!  I also love the pricing comparison tool! I think this will be a game changer for many hosts and help hosts to maximise their earnings and occupancy. 

Good point @Daniel1651  about the pricing tool and being able to check comparative prices for longer stays. With one in five stays on the platform being for a week or more and hosts trying to attract these types of guests it would be very helpful of hosts to be able to compare with similar prices and make sure they offer similar discounts - or step up to offer a discount to attract this guest! 

[Daniel1651]

That's right, @Felicity11 

Specially if we are thinking to offer 2, 3 weeks or also monthly stays!

[Clara116]

@Catherine-Powell  Thanks for the open invite to us for questions Catherine and also sharing your absolutely amazing listing - WOW what a divine place to live and visit. Breathtaking is the best word I find in describing your place.

I love the new READ message - instead of the mystery of "Has the Guest seen the message?" Now we know. 

OK to my question: 

I also find the Passport for Hosts very clever - since we as host are somewhat transparent --what about Guest Passports? Is there a plan in the works for Guest Passports? 

If there were Guest Passports - Host might cancel much less. Host might also feel some comfort - like they don't have to ask questions into a guest life if there was some info supplied by the guest about themselves in front. It would be great to know if you are hosting an introvert or extrovert. Could help many hosts do a better job.  For those that have contact with guests the passport could be a great Ice Breaker!

Thanks Catherine,

all the best,

Clara

[Jenny]

Hi @Clara116 

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, and for such an interesting question.  It sounds like Guest passports is a popular discussion topic.

We're really pleased that you love the read receipts as well!

Jenny

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Catherine-Powell Gorgeous listing. Good to see you are resisting the Airbnb suggestions of. flexible cancellation policy and taking pets. I hope it doesn't damage your search placement too much.

[Brux0]

Hey Catherine,

it was great meeting you in Rio.  The Rio de Janeiro community was very happy to know you were here and meet with host from our community.  The May 3 launch, so far, had a great positive response.  It is so great that all our feedback is being listened and implemented.  

Some feedback i can give you to further improve the tools are:

1) READ BY THE GUEST

this is a great feature that has been asked for many years and everyone is loving it.  Great Job.  This is a great improvement in the previous system.

Currently the tag "read by xxxx" shows below the text you have written.  If you write another text the tag disappear from the previous text and appear below to the last text.   This means that the tag "read by xxx" will just show on the last text written. In the previous text there will be no tags "read by xxx" nor time stamps on when it was read.

The current message system, show on the side of the senders name (guest or host) a time stamp when the message it was sent.  I think a further improvement to the tag "read by xxx" could be showing a time stamp of when it was read in the same way is show when you write the messages. Adding a time stamp in each "read message" will give a context of when the message was read, than in a long reservation will be essential for example in resolutions.  One thing is knowing the guest / host read the message 5 minutes after you sent it, another thing is knowing it just read 5 days later.  

2) CUSTOM PROMOTION

It is great to be able to access the promotion in the app, and create new one.  The best improvement of the may launch with promotion is that now we see the final price of the promotion in the calendar.  Before we would just see the original price and an indicator that there is a promotion.  But was very difficult to really know the price of that day.  This is simply great.

I am sure you guys are working on it, but in the multicalendar still does not appear the final price after promotion, but still appear the original price with a green dot showing there is a promotion.

Another thing that I have noticed (and many members of the community contacted me about it) is that it was taken away the "edit promotion" button.  This was a very useful tool to further give discounts in case of no bookings.  You can still give it by removing the promotion and create a new promotion at a higher percentage discount, but it is not easy as it was before where you would simply click on "edit promotion" slide the percentage bar further and save.

3) CALENDAR

As I stated above the improvement of the calendar is amazing by being able to manage different setting by clicking on tools.  Thanks for the great job.

One thing I immediately missed, is the rules set drop down menu that was removed.  That was a great tool to be able to change or see in the regular calendar the rules set I have created and applied in the multicalendar.  Many host who used the professional tools (not necessarily professional hosts) contacted me about this.  People who have more than one property, usually activate the multicalendar and create rules set either for minimum days or for discounts etc.....  Being able to see and manage the rules sets via normal calendar and app calendar, has been a request for long time, and it was included in the online calendar with great success.  But was removed.   That would be a great feature to include again in the normal calendar and in the app calendar.  Today a guest contacted me asking if I would accept a 4 night reservations (I have a rule set with minimum 5 nights).  On my phone I cannot change the rule anymore.  Just on the desktop and on the multicalendar. 

I haven't fully tested all the new tools, and will give further feedback along the way, but I can assure you it was a success in the community, and even "those hosts" the always had something negative about anything, are really loving it and posting great comments about the launch. 

warmly

brunello

[Bhumika]

Hi @Brux0 ,

Thank you so much for sharing your feedback.

The suggestions along with your feedback definitely make sense, especially the ones that you mentioned about read messages. 

While I make sure to pass it on to our team, you may also like to send this feedback to Airbnb directly as well. You can do this for all Airbnb 2023 Summer Release features by going to Early Access in your Hosting menu.