Dear Airbnb,
Regarding the overhaul of the Airbnb site into categories and removing control from hosts; I understand what you were going for but this should have been tested for usability by both hosts and travelers in the form of a ride-along widget to the existing legacy functionality of the site before a system-wide change. Hopefully, you are reading these forums, hopefully, your CEO is reading these forums because Airbnb just f----- royally with the core of your product: your hosts. My bookings since this change was implemented have ceased, visibility non-existent and from what I am reading this is affecting thousands if not millions of other hosts.
Brian Chesky, my name is Kim Grijalva and I am the face of Airbnb along with millions of other hosts. I hope you take the time to read and hear from us.
When Covid hit, so many people stepped up and offered their places for workers and did their part to give back. In the midst of what was happening around the world, Airbnb rose to meteoric success with a product in the right place at the right time, but they didn't do it alone; it was on the backs of hard-working hosts like myself. But we loved Airbnb, great tools, great interface, insights... we made money, Airbnb made money and travelers had options — from a treehouse in Peru to a staycation weekend an hour from home and everything in between. It was a Win-Win-Win.
My business pre covid was running a design and marketing firm, and my primary clientele were 5-star resorts: Four Seasons, Hyatt, St Regis, etc. As you know, the travel industry was decimated, all the mentioned hotel companies shuttered, and even Marriott, the biggest of the "Big" had massive layoffs. But people picked up and did what they had to to survive. For us, that was sinking everything we had to create a special place on an old farm and run it like I'd seen for 25 years among my core clientele in the travel industry. Airbnb was different; they gave "Small" a chance to compete with "Big." We hosts were doing what we loved, we had hit our stride, and we were not just surviving but thriving, enjoying what we were doing and meeting wonderful guests along the way. Connecting with people and creating the face of Airbnb.
We are stylists, photographers, marketers, and creative experience curators. But then Airbnb gets "Big," really big, and so it decides to feed that big ego, and like the hotel valet that parks the most expensive and sexiest sports car in the front of the hotel, Airbnb parked the best, sexiest of all listings front and center and we "Small" independent, hard-working hosts now relegated to the mire of stuff that was deemed not so special were floating around somewhere else, considered too dumb to be able to properly tag our listings with accurate locations or descriptions, our places went from wow to where? Our hearts were broken because we foolishly thought Airbnb was different from Amazon, Facebook, and Google. We thought Airbnb saw us as people that couldn't be replaced by Ai and that they knew that without us, they'd be nothing; that they'd created nothing tangible, nothing crafted, curated; not a single calloused hand. 0 product, 0 experiences, 0 heart, 0 loyalty.
