I have 4 Airbnb listings. in Nashville. As you know, it is one of the top short term rental markets in all of the United States. All of my listings with have perfect review scores. Airbnb is not a business for me or about dollar and cents but rather a passion of mine. I personally bend backwards for every guest to ensure their 100% satisfaction. I manage my own listings, I have on countless times driven to my listings to take extra towels, toilet paper, paper towels, address a maintenance issue sometimes in middle of the night. Anything the guest wants, I just make it happen again to make them happy. Anything you can imagine, I always drop everything and make it right asap. This is so my guests will be 100% happy and in return I will continue to get good reviews and also in return be more successful.
But it is absoustely heartbreaking what Airbnb did to hosts like me with the summer release. After getting zero bookings or inquiries since late May or June on 3 of my listings. I just thought it was a matter of time, or maybe inflation, current worries about a possible recession, etc. But finally I was like wait something is not right. So I started doing research and found countless articles and messages like this from other hosts on Internet forums. It finally hit me, I was like wait there is no way my house with 4.96/5 star reviews in the most prime location of Nashville just couple blocks from Downtown is all the sudden receiving no bookings. I even changed my prices to half of what they were last year at this time but still no bookings. Lowered my cleaning fee by 30% still no bookings. Keep in mind that I was full last year at this time last year at double the price and half the 5 star reviews since my property was new. This is happening on 3 of my listings.
The 4th one is new and is getting bookings because it was not affected by the summer release. I know that airbnb boost new listings but still it is getting bookings while the other 3 Zero since summer release all with spotless reviews. So I kept doing more research and looked at my views and all the metrics. What you know, since May/June my views almost took a noise dive.
It finally came together to me that during the Summer Release, Airbnb probably by accident did something really bad that has impacted hosts like me. I called Airbnb today and the rep confirmed to me that there is something wrong with my listings and he has received the same messages from countless other hosts.
I asked him to pull up my listing on his end and view the metrics based on what he saw on his computer and systems. What he told me was so shocking and really made me so upset and just broke my heart.
Basically in the last 14 days, there were over 5000 guests looking to book a place that matched my open dates and my house. He told me that my house only appeared to 50 of them in a page result. Basically my house is ghosted or invisible to other 4950 guests that were looking for a stay. So the other 4950 never saw my house, it never appeared to them in the search result. How is that possible?
So a house with perfect reviews, in the absolute best part of the city that was almost 90% booked last year, is now only being shown to 50 guests out of 5000? You can walk to Broadway from my house. I can not explain the location of my properties unless you lived here. Imagine being couple blocks from the Eiffel tower type of location. So the programming or update by airbnb basically has just made my listings almost invisible. But why? Why do that to a host that has perfect reviews. has made your company so much money, that takes so much pride in his work, that ensures every guest is 100% happy so they always have a great impression of your company and they continue to use airbnb. Why did not they catch this? Why has this not been fixed yet? What will happen to all my of lost business so far? How can they make this right?
It is so upsetting because, I worked so hard building my airbnb business. I spent countless nights in designing, setting it up and then worked so hard to earn each and every 5 star review. I worked so hard to safe money to buy my airbnb and my other airbnb. I put every cent of my savings on the line for this. I do this with my two young children to show them the value of working hard but this is a slap in the face from Airbnb. Why did this happen? Why harm your superheats who put everything on the line to make it all happen for your company and for the guests?
I can not believe that I just noticed that this has happened. It means that for the past 3 to 4 months, I was just thinking that hey it's slow right now, it's inflation, etc. but I was just Wrong. I feel so naive and stupid not realizing that I was being screwed by broken algorithms and search engines due to flawed programing by the Airbnb development team as part of the summer release.
The rep told me that he will escalate this to the engineering team for an escalation so they can fix my listings. But I have lost so much business due to being just empty for months and I have zero reservations for next year or rest of this year. If this continues any longer, I will lose everything. My homes will be all foreclosed. I put everything on the line because I believed in Airbnb and the company's vision and purpose. Please share this post with everyone and specially Airbnb leadership. This is not right. My case is black and white. My views/bookings/inquires went to almost zero since the update. There is black and white data to prove that. The Airbnb rep himself confirmed to me that my listings are screwed up due to the update.
