Why does my listing does not show up when searching for one night stay?

[Eric48]

Recently, my AirBnB listing does not show up in searches when looking for reservations of one night. It will only show up when looking for places that are available for at least 2 nights. When searching for locations without a specific date set, the listing will appear first. This issue specificly relates to searches for only one night.

My minimum reservation requirement is set to 1 night and my maximum is set to 5 nights. My maximum accomodated guests is set to 3.

I've seen a few people post on this forum within the last month saying they've experienced similar issues. I'm hoping this isn't a problem specific to me and would be gracious if somebody could let me know whether or not this is a website-wide issue.

The listing can be found here: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/9647531

[Crystal3]

We have found out that our listing shows up for one night searches for 1 month from current date. However after that one month date searches have to be 3+ night searches.

We did not sign up for this when we originally became Hosts on Airbnb. None of the hosts were informed by email that this was going to happen. Why some hosts and not others? What's the criteria? It seems if you have excellent reviews then your listing does not show, however, those with lower reviews have their listings show up for all searches. Guess maybe we shouldn't try so hard. 

This is typical of big corporations. Employees have to justify their jobs by coming up with "new ideas", when the old ones worked fine. There is no justification to only have listings show up with 3-night searches. I would like an explanation of how a 3-night stay is going to enhance the hosts and guests. 

J&C

[Nan2]

@Crystal3, @Eric48, @M-and-I0, @Ally-And-Iku0, @Dede0: The "blockout" dates for 1-2 night searches rolls forward. In mid-April, my listing would not show up at all in June and it did start showing up again around Aug. 15. Now since we're closer to June and I'm unbooked, my listing is showing up through about mid June but the blockout extends through Sept 11. It's a no-win situation. Have you tried calling airbnb?

[Dede0]

@Nan2 That rolling change matches what we've heard from other affected hosts. My own listing, by the way, has not been affected so far. (Being paranoid, I check every day.)

On the other hand, independently of AirBnB experimenting (secretly) with this technique, I have in effect been conducting a similar experiment on my own listing. Details: We only open our calendar on a rolling 3-month basis. Meaning, for now, that August is opening, day by day. So, for starters, we've gone ahead and opened all of August. And we've set a 3-night minimum for that entire month instead of our default 2-night minimum. I hesitate to say this, but my logic is much the same as AirBnB's. That far off, I want to go for longer bookings, rather than shorter bookings. (Shorter bookings can, depending on their relative placements, interfere with the ability to accept longer bookings later on.) As that month grows nearer (like 1.5-2 months out instead of 3), I plan to reduce the 3-night min to our default 2-night min.

My aim isn't to increase our bookings (we usually book up 95% every month anyway), but to reduce the number of 2-night bookings in favor of longer ones, thus reducing the number of times per month that we have to clean the apartment. (And by "we", I mean *me*.)

We haven't been conducting this little experiment long enough to see anything meaningful. I've got my fingers crossed...

[Nan2]

@Dede0: Yes, I do think it's potentially not a bad strategy for those who want longer bookings and it might work well for some! I happen to be someone who wants shorter bookings though - especially the 1-2 nighters! My space doesn't have a kitchen or microwave - so it's just not ideal for longer stays for most people. In other news, I just checked my listing again and miraculously, it was fixed!!! I hope it's really fixed! Will see in the morning!

[M-and-I0]

Those who want longer bookings can set their own minimum stays, I don't get why Airbnb feels the need to decide all of these things for us without our knowledge or consent 😞

[Crystal3]

We had two rooms on our listing. One would have been started new next week. We have blocked that room for most of the summer for other reasons. Our original room now shows up for 1-night stays through out the summer. Yippee!  Although we would not mind having multiple night stays, it is not the norm in our area. Even local motels are the same way, 1-3 night stays. (I've had several friends who have owned small motels). We live in a tourist area, however, not an area that most people need more than two to three nights to enjoy, like an area with a National Park or a big city. Airbnb should not be setting minimum night stays because they are not familiar with any hosts situation.

J&C

[Ally-And-Iku0]

Thanks for the updates - I relisted my original listing which I had put on hold, and found the issue to be resolved (finally).  Let's hope AirBnB consider the impact a little more before trialing such "features"

[Tracy1]

I seem to be one of the only affected hosts in my area as well. I finally discovered the real answer (the "experiment" they didn't tell us about) last week on another discussion thread. After MANY emails, with a few different people, I recieved this three days ago: 

Hi Tracy,

Thanks for your reply.

I tried to call you just now but I could not complete the call.

I have investigated every avenue of this for you and I'm quite satisfied it's a bug.

In order for it to go to the bug team for investigation, I will have to close this from my side and send it to the IT team for further investigation if that's ok with you.

I'm sorry it took so long, but I have to literally exhaust every avenue to find your listing and be 100% sure before I submit to the correct team.

Once again, apalogies for the delay and thanks for your patience while I investigated the matter for you.

Kind regards,

Mick N

A "bug"..nice way of washing their hands of me, letting me think that anything will be done about it. It took several days for him to come up with this "answer" - after my last email explained that I knew of the sneaky experiment that they were doing, and I have had zero bookings since it started. 

He could not complete his call because he rang me at 5:40am!!! I was not impressed, but then of course they didn't ask me if I am in the same time zone as my listing...

I suppose I will keep emailing, even though my case seems to have been closed. 

Tracy

[Nora-and-Hajni0]

I had these problems too.
Turned out, it is not enough to open a new window, you need a completely different browser.
I use Chrome for everything, and dowloaded Firefox for testing, and browsing my listings.

Works great!

Hajni

[GIOVANNi95]

 my liste as well does not show up in the Airbnb comunity 

[Laura156]

I am also having trouble with this.  However, we are only booking our place for 4 months.  When I use 120 days as the minimum rental time, my listing cannot be found.

I've been forced to indicate that 1 day is the minimum, but this gives me many unwanted requests that I must reject. 

Any ideas?

[Sheryl--Lynn-0]

Hi Laura, I have the exact same problem. I want to rent my place for at least 1 month stays but when I do this is doesn't show up in search results. However, when I change to minimum one night it shows up no problem. I also do not want to have to reject those requests for less than 1 month stays. It's frustrating to say the least!

[Margaret122]

Im new at this: No glitches but today (maybe before today as well) : When checking my listing does not show up at all (neither are some others) when checking for more than 2 people, yet it accomodates 5.

What am I doing right/wrong?

[Julie446]

This whole process has been a joke. Here is our story......

My wife and I made a listing.

We used autobooking ...being new ...

Had added that no kids under 12

Our First "Auto" booking was for a month and in his email had said he would like to bring a 10 year old child aprox 4 times for two days and other 2 kids around once and awhile.

And would need parking for a cargo trailer ( receintly diverced he said )

We went into panic mode and contacted him the same day. his bank had already been charged.

We had a conversation with him and he was toatly ok with our saying this but we were not sure how to make sure how this was all going to go down, wanting to make sure he got a refund and ensuring we would write him a check if need be.

WE were able to find our how to cancel. He canceled on his end also. we felt much better.

Now we were understanding with auto book there would be no penelty. there wasn't good to go.

BUT heres where the JOKE started...

They continued to block the whole month of April even though he canceled and we did also the same day.

So as it stood we were out of luck and could not book another day till the month went by. WTH

It said this was to discurage cancelations. ???????

I deleted the account. MAD as HELL. due to there is no way to speak with a person to find out what the heck was going on.

I got an idea.

I would open another listing in MY name. everything went ok and it took the exact same listing but in my name and the dates were open.

HUMMM.

Wonder if I just re-Applied in her name again because no one was EVER responding to our cry for help. These folks are so bad a customer support thats its base is question and answer.

Well the took the wifes listing with no problem. again....

But before the actual list buttonn was hit i went back to my listing and unlisted it with a brief explanitation.

Listed it in here name and it showed the listing to us and everything seemed fine but when you search for the listing in or city its not there.

When I reopened the listing in my name it showed right away on the map.

We have a listing and its not showing.

What my concerns are with this company is that just what would happen if you needed their support in an insurance matter, we could only guess as to the lack of being able to speak with a human.

So as it stands we have a listing but its not available in search and were stuck with horrible customer service.