My listing is a lakefront cottage on Lawrence Pond on Cape Cod MA, but Elevate is assigning its location to the wrong lake (Peter's Pond) that is about 2 miles away. Therefore its category is only "Lake" (which means within a 10 minute walk) instead of "Lakefront". In fact, Elevate has grouped about a dozen homes not on Peter's Pond to that lake. I also see this is true across the entire region where homes are assigned to lakes that they're not located on.
My title, description, photos, and reviews all clearly indicate that the home is a lakefront property. However, my request to add the "Lakefront" category has been denied 4 times in a row.
I've called Airbnb about half a dozen times seeking help, but as everyone knows none of their representatives can contact Elevate (which is a third party department) directly about any problems. The representatives agree that this is a problem, but no one knows what to do other than advise the host to submit a request through the app, which I've done repeatedly with photos and detailed explanations. I get automated responses, but no resolution or explanation.
What seems to be happening is that the Elevate algorithm can only handle a limited number of geographic points, and then uses those few points as a reference for an entire category. Because there are probably tens of thousands of lakes around the country, they only select a few in each geographic area. However, that negatively affects the other 90 percent of the lakefront homes that are on their own lakes by not being included in the "Lakefront" category.
One solution would be for Elevate to rely less on geographic locations on a few random points, and instead looks at the photos, titles, and descriptions more carefully when a request is made as often as I have made. Can someone share any insight on how to get Elevate's or Airbnb's attention that the algorithm is flawed? The reason I'm pushing for this correction is that I'm losing bookings and potentially higher rental income because a "Lakefront" category is more exclusive and valuable than the normal "Lake" category.
