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.

[Charlotte40]

thanks @Bhumika  - yes no problem, I'm using Guesty,

Regards

Charlotte 

[Sandra4813]

Hi Catherine

Feedback from Newcastle & Northumberland Group had been very positive, especially the read receipt. 
My questions are ;

1.Is there plans to upgrade the search function for guests?

2. Can Ambassadors & Community Leaders have a badge on their listing similar to the Superhost badge?

There are a few glitches with the upgrades which I have highlighted to Community Manager.

Otherwise we are all loving the changes & carry on with the great work

My personal favourite is price comparisons.

Thanks Sandra

[Bhumika]

Hi @Sandra4813 ,

Thank you so much for letting us know about the positive Host feedback and sharing your questions! 

Similar listing comparison tool has been insightful for many Hosts. Did you happen to change your pricing strategy after reviewing listings nearby? 

Also, the potential glitches have been reported to the respective teams and they are actively working towards it. The Host feedback is valuable to us and it helps us constantly improve. Really appreciate all of it. Keep sharing!

[Sabrina-And-John0]

Hi Catherine,

Glad you are enjoying the hosting journey. We love it - it's what John and I are both passionate about - connecting with people and helping people make connections.

Feedback from our  club members in Mid-Wales is very positive.  My favourite is the read 'receipt' and that is echoed by the members.  I did look at the other upgrades on the early access (another great idea) and found the ones I was interested in easy to use.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

Sabrina xx

[Bhumika]

Hi @Sabrina-And-John0 ,

It is great to hear that you enjoy Hosting and connecting with people. Thank you for sharing such positive feedback with us!

I was curious to know which are the next most interesting features that you found easy to use and are super helpful. Do you have any questions about the latest release that you would like to ask Catherine?

[Sabrina-And-John0]

Hi Bhumika,

The other upgrades I thought wee great were the 'compare listings' - it gives an idea of how booked up other places nearby are when you might have a bit of a gap to check you are not alone (or otherwise) and also the Check-out instructions - great for both hosts and guests (we are fairly frequent travellers too)..

i suppose sort of related to the compare listings I would be interested to know if you will be bringing back the 'dates guests are looking for' that used to be on the platform many years ago. Its helpful for knowing future popular dates and a bit of a heads-up that a booking may come in for those dates.  Hope that makes sense..

Thanks for the opportunity to comment on features and for listening 😁

Sabrina xx

[Bhumika]

Awesome @Sabrina-And-John0 !

Really glad to hear about the upgrades you are likely to utilize more 🎉 .

Thanks for sharing your question with us! 

[Rachel1200]

My host club’s favourite feature of the new release was “read receipts” too, and also being able to compare local booked nights prices.  Some hosts are reluctant to change to the new upgrades until they have no choice, because they are still confused and upset about the categories, and think things might get even worse.

Many hosts are not in the categories they should be (myself included), and tbh the AI doesn’t seem to work.

I was put in the right categories after appealing to CS, but a few weeks later they have gone, disappeared!

Personally however this hasn’t affected my bookings, so I’m going to just chill out about categories, and do my best to reassure the hosts in my club that actually, it probably isn’t categories that has affected bookings.

Rachel Melland  HAB (UK & Ireland) x

[Bhumika]

Hi @Rachel1200 ,

Thank you so much for putting forth the feedback from your Host Clubs and I guess everyone agrees that Read Receipts and Similar Listing tools are topping the charts. 🎉 

Appreciate you sharing the concerns about categories. We will make sure to pass it onto the appropriate teams. And really glad to know that it has not affected your bookings. For many best things to come🎉.

[Fred13]

@Catherine-Powell  . Love the update, the Host Passport and 'Guest-Seen-the-Message' features  foremost. Maybe someday a PC desktop web version will also undergo such a great update.

<a wave from Belize>

[Larry339]

As a host and moderator od the Kitchener and Area Community group our members really appreciated the email reply notification and the new pricing tool. Thanks for the updates!

[Sheila609]

Thanks for your feedback @Larry339 , it is much appreciated! I wonder who here has noticed the "read receipts" feature on their messages? (I see @Fred13  has!!)

[Stephanie]

So great to see you on the Community Center again @Larry339 🙂 And thrilled to hear you're now a Community Leader working with my colleague, Sheila. 😁

[Mariann4]

Hello @Catherine-Powell 
I was asked personally to contribute since it had been a while since I posted in CC.
This is me contributing.

I like that hosts can be able to make check-out lists to make sure their places are being well taken care of. It should not be nessescary though since the Airbnb ToS are very clear on how a place is to be left by guests: the same way they found it.

But OK. There have been complaints. Airbnb try to fix it. It's a decent fix.

Then Airbnb goes out with this statement. If hosts gets low score on their check-out list the host will be taken off Airbnb! We are talking about lists that will be shown BEFORE asking to book. Before confirmation of booking. Guest can choose not to book a place with such a list.
Does this stop the guest from booking? No... They book. Then they complain AFTER their stay that they didn't like the chores list. Low rating given. Host, transparent up front about expactations, is kicked off platform.

How is Airbnb making sure this will not happen to hosts? We already see hosts being closed down after trying to stop guests from throwing a party or breaking houserules, when Airbnb themselves are then ones who claim that parties are forbidden on Airbnb. They close the host down for following the rules. The guest walks free, into another home, trashes it and closes down another host. Can we trust that this chores list and review of such will actually benefit hosts?

Another thing about the chores. It's a long tradition in Scandinavian countries for guests to clean the entire place after their stay. It gives a chance of borrowing a place at an affordable rate. This is our culture. Being shut down because guests don't like this is an attack on our culture. And Airbnb is so adament on protecting different cultures that they really need to treat this with caution.
Does Airbnb have this in mind when they train their staff on how to treat complaints towards the chores lists? Are they aware that they operate in different parts of the world with different behavioural expectations?

As for passports. They should also be for guests. Especially for homesharing hosts and hosts who rent their homes on occasion. Ideally profile picture AND full name should be available before confirming a booking. I do understand that it might be a problem in some parts of the world. But inviting complete strangers into our homes calls for every possible chance to vet guests up front. We know CS is not very helpful helping hosts after accepting a booking that turns out to be unsafe after information is given.

The search function has yet to be fixed. It still has "any week" as default. Or any month or weekend. Many only search for area, which could be done before, and that leaves hosts like me (with a max of 5 nights and typically one night stays) out of the search result. We become invisible.

Airbnb should also bring back deposits. We provide our most valuable property. Our houses, cabins, appartments. We need safety. AirCover is flawed. People are asked by CS to change 20 centimetres of their countertops when a full replacement is needed after it's damages by guests. Or a few planks of their parquet floors after waterdamage. This is not possible. Please, bring back deposits.

And to finish off: ** All of the above is written with meaningfullnes and constructiveness in mind. Sometimes constructiveness is painful.
Also keep in mind that English is not my first language, so please give me the benefit of the doubt if something is easy to misunderstand.

I'm not going to comment further on my own post. This is my constructive contribution.

Best wishes from the beautiful city of Bergen

Mariann 🙂

**[Content removed inline with the Q&A Guidelines-  Please read the shared guidelines in the above Post by clicking on Read more]

Statement from Airbnb

[Mariann4]

TOS went missing in posting