No More Categories By Location??

[Joan2709]

I was informed by Airbnb today that you can no longer use categories by location. The entire categories header has been removed from guest searches by location. For example; if you wanted to search for "Beachfront" in Miami, FL you can't anymore - the categories strip at the top of the page has been removed when you search by location. 

Not sure if there is any reason to continue having Categories then; and perhaps this is a good thing. Categories have been a big headache for many Hosts (placed in wrong categories and denied categories they obviously should be in, etc).

[Elyse51]

Bring back catagorys!  Now we cant search for house boats, treehouse, yurts, views or any other cool things.  Now you have to know exactly where you want to go to even have a chance of locating something like that.  We have a treehouse in Oregon and are losing 2k a month with this change.

[Kim5049]

Same! I'm still so bummed about this. How am I supposed to filter for rural country farms, or treehouses? I don't want to see suburban homes when I'm looking for a remote getaway or lake front cabin. Also, finding creative spaces has been so cool, and I often travel just for a cool experience, so no way to pick out the places that really put the work in to be unique and stand out, versus a hotel. There's no chance now to find the best spaces, which will leave me just booking a cheap hotel nearby. Luckily, I have some lists with some of these places saved, but it's so frustrating that they just lumped everything together, especially when I, and many others, are fine booking a place a little out of the way,  just for the once in a lifetime stay. Recently, I had been looking for a "fun" space, which usually meant home theater and game room/arcade and more playful theme throughout, which also used to be a filter option, and now can't find those, either.

[Dmitry191]

really liked the categories, and just had a conversation with support that confirmed that AirBnB is upgrading their systems and the categories are gone (for now?).  The support person could not say when and what the changes will be.

While it's understandable that for hosts these may not have worked out well, the guests definitely enjoyed the feature.  Really odd to remove it and not replace with something comparable.

In fact categories would not even be needed with guests could simply filter search results by keywords, but that doesn't seem to work right now either.

😞

[Anne-M621]

Why why why why why why do this? Very VERY BAD DECISION!  Loved the OMG Category and honestly this is the only category I used. Want to stay in a Missile Silo (yes), or a house built into the side of a cliff (yes), or an airplane hangar (yes), or a house shaped like a space ship, or ABSOLUTELY ANYWHERE THAT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE SOMEONE'S SIDE HUSTLE BACKYARD ACCESSORY BUILDING? YES!!!!

You are not considering that for some of us the Airbnb was the point of the trip. I don't effing care where the Missile Silo is located (Roswell NM ICYI - great place to stay and Gary the host is a treasure). If it was in Tennessee or Maine or N Dakota or anywhere else I would have gone there. Great way to turn yourself into just another hotel site. Booking.com anyone? Vrbo?

I may as well go to VRBO! Jeez, that was the best part of AirBnB! Why can't this at least be an optional filter? How can I search by uniqueness? I am soooooooooo angry right now I think I might just unjoin or unsubscribe or whatever Very bad move Airbnb! Very. Bad. Move. Now you're just like everything else.

Sorry, but I've been a loyal user and now I'm just sad and disappointed. Please bring back categories. Or at least a way to filter for them. Please?

[Keith995]

It's absolutely stupid that they did away with this.  I travel a LOT throughout the year both for business and personal, all around USA and Europe, spending well upwards from $10,000 / year exclusively on Airbnb for the sole reason that I could search for "Farm Stays" which are my favorite.  Also loved being able to search for Beachfront, Tiny House, Lakefront, Campsite, Unique Stays, and even Grand Piano.  This all led to some incredibly memorable places that I've since been a returning repeat customer for!  Now that these search features are gone, it sucks trying to find the type of place I'm looking for.  So, I just booked a 2-week trip using other sites like VBRO and Hipcamp instead.  Airbnb and its hosts missed out on thousands of dollars of business from me as a result, which sucks.  I'm going to continue to explore other options as well.      

I doubt anyone at AirBnB will care, but I submitted feedback about it and suggest everyone do the same.

[Joan2709]

@Keith995 

You can still search for "beachfront" and "waterfront" using the Airbnb search filtes at the top of the screen:

Airbnb may add many of the popular categories as new search filters, but we haven't seen that yet.

Categories for Hosts were a disaster for some. Listings were put in the wrong categories, denied categories they should have been in and had callouts on the listing generated by Airbnb that were incorrect. Things like "20min walk to beach" when actually the listing was ON the beach. The AI wasn't developed enough on the Host side to prevent these issues. Not sure if that was the reason they were removed or not?

[Stefan5288]

I found a wworkaround.

Type into into Google: airbnb + the category you want

For example: airbnb europe cabins

leads you to this link

https://www.airbnb.com/europe/stays/cabins

[David13980]

It really stinks. They need to bring back the categories. There is some limited filtering, but not good enough.