Forced Photo Tour even if you already have a photo tour

[Scott-And-Hester0]

I have MANY listings I manage that ALREADY have a photo tour, yet Airbnb is not letting me make any changes to my photos on the listings until I press the "Create Photo Tour" button AGAIN which totally scrambles all of my photos out of order, delete rooms, puts pictures into the wrong rooms, creates rooms etc etc. It will take a half hour to rearrange the photos again when I ALREADY have a photo tour setup. 

There needs to be an option to skip this if you already have a photo tour setup. The Airbnb platform has a glitch and it's not seeing that many of my listings already have a tour setup so it shouldn't for users to do this again. It's super time consuming to fix the tour after it's algorithms jack it all up. 

[Paula]

Hi @Scott-And-Hester0,

Thank you for sharing this in our community. Have you contacted the support team for their advice? What have they said?

I’m wondering if our experienced host, @Joan2709, would like to share some additional advice here.

Regards,

[Joan2709]

@Scott-And-Hester0 

We saw this too about a month or so ago. We just clicked create the tour and the system ended up leaving our original tour in place...no changes. I would try that as you won't have access to your photos. 

BTW, we don't use the photo tour as it forces Hosts to show the Living Room as the first room and many don't necessarily think that should be the first room shown.

[Scott-And-Hester0]

Unfortunately for me it scrambled my photos. It deleted rooms and created rooms and recombined multiple bathrooms into one and multiple bedrooms into one etc etc. I spent about 5 days somewhat arguing with tech support advocating for myself and for millions of other Airbnb hosts that there was a flaw in the system that was forcing the recreation of the photo tour even when a listing already had a photo tour. I don't know what they did but finally after about 5 days the technical support agent I was texting with in the inbox told me to look at the listings again and lo and behold the forced photo tour creation button was gone and I could finally edit my photos again. 

I don't know if they're going to roll out an update that will prevent their system from incorrectly thinking listings don't have a photo tour already but I do know that they have some sort of ability to remove the problem. If anyone reads the thread and has the same issue it might take a bit of work but if you will keep advocating for yourself they do have the ability to remove the forced photo tour creation if you already have a photo tour in place.

[Joan2709]

@Scott-And-Hester0 

Thanks for posting here as it most likely will help someone in the same boat. We didn't experience what you did when clicking the create a photo tour again. Yikes! What a mess. 🙄

The thing I don't understand is why Airbnb continues to try and force Hosts to use the photo tour despite many Hosts stating they don't want to use it?  Just make it optional by placing an on/off slider button next to the photo tour in the Listing Editor. At a minimum, let Hosts decide the order of the rooms shown. 

[Belinda8]

I absolutely agree Joan.  I really hate this 'Photo Tour' as it does not allow hosts to even put the 'areas' in the order you would like!

I have called support about this and they say there is no option to move these into a different order.

So frustrating as I do not want 'kitchen' showing before my 'outside areas' which is the highlight of my listing.

So unhappy with this!

[Joan2709]

@Belinda8 

Yes...agree. We have had to come up with a workaround so as not to use the Photo Tour. The Hosts I work with probably would use it if the order of rooms could be selected by the Host.

[Belinda8]

Could you possibly share what 'workaround' you used to get rid of the Photo Tour?

Many thanks

[Joan2709]

@Belinda8 

The photo tour only works if there are photos in every room.

1. Move all your photos to the Additional Photos room except for bedrooms and bathrooms. You need your photos in those rooms to populate the number of bedrooms/beds and bathrooms in the subtitle and the Where You'll Sleep section.

2. Delete all the empty rooms except for one (leave one room with no photos)

3. When you click "All Photos" they will appear in a grid. Click and drag your photos in the order you want them to appear in the grid.

4. You will still see the words "Photo Tour" on the left side of the Listing Editor, but the photos are no longer arranged in a "Tour" in guest view. Photos added will appear at the bottom of the photo grid. You can move them around after that as needed and place them where you want. 

Airbnb has started adding "Tasks" to try and get you to add photos to your empty room and use the photo tour again. Just ignore that.

[Belinda8]

Thank you SO MUCH!  Thats a wonderful help