Payments update: Retiring the Group Payments feature

[Airbnb]

When we introduced Group Payments, we were trying to create a simple way for guests to split booking costs when traveling in a group. This arrangement meant the person organizing the trip wouldn’t have to pay all of the money up front, and hosts would have more visibility into who’s staying in their home since they’d be able to see profiles of everyone who contributed.

But we heard from you that holding your listing for 72 hours while waiting for all of the guests to pay was inconvenient. We considered the overall usefulness of this feature and its impact on the whole community and have decided to remove it in mid-September 2018. Any existing reservation that was paid for with Group Payments will be honored; we’re simply preventing new reservations from being made with Group Payments. We appreciate your feedback and will continue to work to build the simplest, most beneficial tools to support your hosting success.

[Jess78]

Just my 2 cents, and too late apparently, but having a 72 hour window was the problem. 3 whole entire days to collect your group's funds together? That's an insane amount of time for a host to wait. On the flipside, a group payment option is an incredible help to groups booking.

Why demolish a good concept rather than change it til it works? How about a group payment option within 12 or 24 hours?

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

[Georgia128]

That's not a 2 cents comment, that's a million dollar comment. Group payments are excellent, just give 24 hours!

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

Just another example that Airbnb does NOT listen to host voices and feedback. Did anyone at Airbnb stop to think about WHY hosts hated the group payment so much? 

[Rebecca181]

I agree with @Jess78. The concept of Group Payments was a good one - Why not just give the group 24 hours to pay? Why were the original terms so generous to the guests at the hosts' expense (a running theme around here lately that is only getting worse)? And why ditch the entire group payment when it could be adjusted to benefit everyone, including Corporate's bottom line?

Tying up our listings for what could turn into 4 days (or even beyond, as one host has reported) was the problem - Not the group payment option itself. The fact that the 72 hour 'hold' on our listings was deemed reasonable by Corporate concerns me - What property owner running a  short-term rental business would find this acceptable? This suggests to me that someone or more than one someone at Corporate is out of touch with the ins an outs of the short term rental business. Which supports my repeated statements in this CC that there needs to be some sort of Advisory Board or Committee formed which meets regularly with Corporate, whereby successful, experienced hosts (including TRADITIONAL, home-sharing hosts); experienced, long-term Airbnb guest users in good standing, and commercial operators are included and invited to share what is and is not working for them.  This would be FAR more effective than those Q & A meetings, which leave many hosts feeling even more frustrated, ignored, and unheard than they did before the Q & A. 

Just a thought.

[Lizzie]

Hello @Rebecca181, @Jessica-and-Henry0 and @Jess78

I hope you are all having a good start to the week. Thanks for your additional comments here.

I understand you might be a little surprised to hear this news.

I think it is important to not overlook the amount of negative feedback which has been shared on this in the CC, particularly earlier in the year, but even last week I saw a discussion where hosts were questioning the use of this feature to hosts.  There were a number of different key points that were highlighted by hosts, in addition to what has been mentioned above. All of which I read and fed this back to the team who have been working on this.

As you have mentioned, one of the key pieces of feedback provided was on the length of the booking window and modifying this would have sufficed, however it is not necessarily that simple. However much, I agree this would of been great.

I believe there are many things the team have to consider and take into account when there is so much feedback on features like this. I imagine things like what are the main difficulties people are having, what possible solutions are there to make it work better and data is important factor too. I don't know the specifics, but closing a feature will be looked into carefully and the feedback given by our community is really important to this. 

Therefore, something that sounds easy like reducing the booking period, might actually not solve all the difficulties. Also, it maybe that more time is needed for the feature to be really improved, so in the mean time, with the best interests of the host community at heart, this decision was made.

The feedback given here by the community has been instrumental in getting the team to look further into this and so I hope you will see that your feedback is being listened to and that you words are important. 

As I say, personally I am going to be hopeful that a similar feature will be introduced in the future. Perhaps if you have specific ideas around this, you might like to share them. 

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Lizzie

[Jess78]

Thanks for your reply @Lizzie. Kudis for passing along CC feedback. It is good to know that the project team is taking host feedback into account. It would be excellent if host feedback would be taken more into account BEFORE new roll outs occur, to prevent such a bungle in the future. If it was SO bungled that it couldn't even be fixed easily apparently. Hopefully AIrbnb will learn from this lesson and make changes that impact hosts in a much more measured and careful way in the future.

I would give my suggestions, but having read all the posts from earlier in the year regarding this feature, I think there were many, many excellent suggestions from hosts that would more than fix the issue from our end, so there is plenty of feedback there to go on that I don't need waste my time summing up for anyone here.

I just think the main takeaway instead is... when new features are rolled out,  ellicit host feedback and improvements before it is deployed,  instead of issuing mea culpas and taking back the features  after the fact. And after screwing hosts over by hijacking their calendars for 3-6 days at a time for a year. It wasn't that difficult of a problem to anticipate in the first place, and just demonstrates the fact that they really are clueless when it comes to being sensitive to the needs of their bread and butter, their hosts. Quite amazing, really.

[Cindy62]

Excellent decision by Airbnb. Group payments was not a good feature.

[Sarah977]

Glad to see that this has been eliminated. Responsible adult guests should be able to work out their group trip arrangements between themselves without involving hosts or the platform. If you can't trust your family or friends to pay you directly for their share of a trip you are booking, why would you want to go on vacation with them?

[Helen150]

It is not about trust but about organising international transfer so that the person who is booking is not out of pocket for long. Also there is the small matter of the fluctuations of the US$ which has an effect on the AU$.

[Sarah977]

@Helen150 It really doesn't take long to transfer $ to someone else's bank account or paypal account online.

[Mark116]

Good.  This was a mediocre idea that was implemented in the worst possible way. 

I'm not convinced people traveling together need the ability to split payments....but if they did, the answer would be to allow the split, but on the same 24 hour timing, there is no reason why anyone who is booking a trip needs several days time to pay.  

[Julie1198]

The .... do it yourself holiday property rental was a fantastic way to look after your own investment ....... you did the work and you got the $return ..... very simple . 

Now you do All the work ..... You pay All the $ money and you Do Not receive the $ financial Return .  Find a Good Property Manager they will do the Work for the $Money instead of You 

[Helen150]

That is pathetic! I as a host would not have been fazed by that time lag! As a user of airbnb organising friends from Australia and USA it was a godsend as I didn't then have to do AU to USD conversions etc.

Bring it back!!!!!! to quote the Coodabeens champions which you in Ireland wouldn't understand! Look up AFL and Coodabeens and they have a segment about what should be brought back from the past. BRING IT BACK!!!!!!!

[Cathie19]

I never had to deal with a group booking, and as a guest in a group, just paid along with others, straight into the bank account of the booking friend; simple!

One issue that was of concern with the group payment was the holding of dates across busy dates on a regional calendar when demand was high. The other was the opportunity for an “out of reach” $$$$  property, being paid for by a group for a party weekend. Great if you want parties, not great if you are deliberately pricing your property to avoid the party weekend away from uni.

I thank you @Airbnb  & Lizzie for getting this one right. But agree with others, a  consultative approach from the home owner / hosts in the coal face is a requirement. Too many professional tenancy and commercial property manager decisions have been taking precedent.

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