need an improvement to the booking process - party prevention

[S14]

When my dates are not available (due to other bookings or blocked dates), potential guests are not able to submit a reservation request or an inquiry for those dates. This makes sense. So, both guests and hosts automatically know if the dates are mutually agreeable without wasting time discussing further. (Yes, that assumes that hosts keep their calendars up to date -- but of course most of us are well on top of that. I am!)

Sometime within the past year, Airbnb started a process of screening and blocking certain guests from booking according to an algorithm that can help predict guests who are planning to have (an illegal) party in the space. Here's the Airbnb policy about it:

Go to the Airbnb site slash resources slash hosting-homes slash a slash strengthening-our-safety-commitment-to-hosts-in-the-us-225

I am not objecting to this policy! I'm sure it helps a lot -- and we sure need help to prevent parties. Much appreciated. Here's the problem: If someone is going to be blocked from completing a reservation due to this (or any other) policy, Airbnb should prevent them from trying to book -- exactly like the process for not allowing guests to try to book when the dates aren't available. AND Airbnb should simply give those guests a pop-up with a link to the policy at the time of blocking so that they will understand.

I am very upset about the zillions of hours and aggravation wasted, utterly wasted, communicating with guests and preparing for potential bookings when Airbnb is going to block them anyway. Since Airbnb hides the age (& sometimes the location) of the guests making an inquiry, I can't tell in advance if someone is about to be blocked.

In the recent past (perhaps still?) when Airbnb did finally block these potential guests, they never told them why! So then these potential guests wasted more and more time trying booking after booking, with listing after listing, aggravating more and more hosts as well, spending their own time on something that was never going to work out. If you have a policy, stick to it and be honest and up front about it! Please!  We had many -- yes many -- attempted reservations in this category and most of them got a very misleading message from Airbnb stating that the reservation could not be completed due to "safety concerns" -- incorrectly and unfairly implying that there is something unsafe about the listing! I freaked when I first heard that -- and wasted even more hours getting through to Airbnb Support who finally said that it is the guests who "might be unsafe" to my property! I guess Airbnb needs people who have a better command of language and communication skills. Honestly. Yes, that's the point -- honesty.

I wish I knew how to get the right person(s) at Airbnb to read and respond to this.

[Ann72]

@S14  Yes, the "safety concern" statement is alarming on so many levels!  I hate that kind of indirect language, because it leads to confusion and misunderstanding.  Unfortunately, however, I think Airbnb isn't looking for people who have a better command of English - they are looking for people who have perfected this kind of passive-voice-speak that tries to offend no one yet offends everyone.  It's very common in bureaucracies everywhere.

[Tommy150]

What they need to do is just be up front and say we're sorry, your account has been suspended. Or until you have additional reviews, the selected dates and property are unable to be booked by you due to our safety policies.

I hate all the passive Agressive bs to avoid making guests unhappy.

[S14]

@Tommy150I agree. And they need to say it to them at the proper time -- i.e., before they permit people to engage in discussions with hosts about bookings that cannot happen. The timing and the content.

I hold out some hope that Airbnb will finally get some professional management now that it's publicly owned. Just hoping.

[Inna22]

@S14 I agree with you and @Ann72 @that the language must be improved. I do see the screening working, it is a good tool. My question to you- why do you spend so much time screening guests? Perhaps putting more info in the listing will make the process easier and will bring you more bookings- some people might just pass you and not bother asking. 

[S14]

@Inna22Your comments are funny. Obviously you did not read my listings before you suggested "putting more info the listing." Take a look! It is all there, in spades. If I put "more" in there, I'd be offered a book publishing deal LOL.  All the info has been there since day one.  People do not read. A lot of people do not read. The state of literacy around here is seriously deplorable. I cannot begin to tell you how many people state -- in words, not just checking a box, that they read and agreed to our House Rules, only to find that they never read them at all. Like  -- as one VERY frequent example - they state that, again in specific words, and then they book, sometimes instant book, with young children when the very first House Rule on the list prohibits that. I could give you a zillion examples. It's huge. Mind blowingly huge. It's either illiteracy or lying. But it's hugely prevalent.

This problem really started with the pandemic. Before that, virtually all our guests were tourists, coming from all over the world to see New York City, and staying in Brooklyn due to better prices and more space than Manhattan options. Other than the occasional bad apple, almost everyone was just fine. Currently, obviously, there is no tourism. Borders are closed. To be honest, I feel that anyone doing domestic travel for the goal of "seeing NYC" at this time is missing a screw upstairs. We can't afford to just shut down the bnb -- but really, why would someone think they can "experience NYC" when everything, or almost everything, is shut down? Not very smart. So, these not very smart people are coming and they can't read. That's one category.

By far, the biggest category of guests coming to book during the pandemic are people who grew up in this neighborhood and are coming in to visit their family. Which translates to party.  Their family obviously doesn't want them partying at their house, so they think they can just do it in a bnb. Wrong. Sadly, this neighborhood, up until about 15 years ago was severely underprivileged. Depending on the decade that someone grew up here, they might be very very smart, or they might be illiterate. I'm serious. I know my neighbors -- and I love them dearly -- we have a fabulous community. But depending on their age group, they are either acutely astute about all things in the world or they are illiterate. The group of latter is shockingly large and seems to be mostly people who are now like 28-45. People who are younger or older must have had great teachers back in elementary school. Not so for that group -- very sad.  When neighbors who I personally know want to book, I know I won't have a problem, regardless of that. But most bookings are from people I don't know. Brooklyn is huge, bigger than you think. Airbnb hides the ages so I can't even make an educated guess. If people say they read the rules and agree with them, I have to accept that. But OMG -- like "hello, please don't mix your wet leftover food with the recycling because it's not cool when I have to clean it up -- ya know, like in the house rules you agreed to before booking." The answer is ALWAYS "Oh, I didn't know." It's maddening. The number of types of repeated examples is as long as our list of House Rules. "Please stop smoking immediately. We have an ashtray outside. You know we don't permit smoking inside the house." -- "Oh, I didn't know." GMAB.

NYC is a tough market during the current pandemic. Very tough.

Yes, this screening algorithm surely is (gratefully) preventing a lot of party people from booking, but they are missing so very many of them. Anyway, the purpose of this thread was simply to complain about the poor communication from Airbnb to the guests who get blocked -- and most importantly about the Airbnb system error of blocking them after instead of before they start the requests for booking.

It's not easy.

[Inna22]

@S14  yes, you’re right, I did not read your specific listing. I completely agree with you on several points: guests don’t read, the quality of guests have declined tremendously and Airbnb has washed his hands of helping us.

I know the purpose of your thread is different, but if I can make a few suggestions. Not that my own listing is perfect, but sometimes fresh eye is useful.

You provide a lot of information that I find is not necessary and clouding the listing and distracting from what’s important. Less is more. If you cut two thirds out, I bet you will get fewer questions and more compliance.  For example, most of the information in your “other things to know” is already in your listing. You do not need to put that you offer a minimum of three days of maximum of 14 days.  people will just plug their dates in the calendar and see it for themselves. Same with check in and out times and so on. Instead, I would use that space for your most important house rules, such as no children, no smoking etc. 

You have a lot of free text writing. Perhaps group it in categories and make into bullet points.

Make your rules simpler. No kids. Period.  Do not put anything about any exceptions. If somebody wants an exception, they will email you anyway – you know it! Same with smoking. Just no smoking. I used to do the same- say no smoking and explain about place to smoke and the receptacles for the butts. No one followed the rules, furthermore people smoked in the doorway stinking up the place. Now it just says no smoking. If somebody cheats and still smokes in the yard and picks up after themselves – I will never now. Also raise your  penalty to $500. You don’t want somebody to say: I am willing to pay $250 for two of us  to smoke for the two weeks of our stay. It needs to be high enough to not give them that idea . 

I hope this helps and feel deee to point out what can be improved in mine

[S14]

@Inna22 

Thank you! I will definitely think about your suggestions and make some changes! Much appreciated.

About the penalties -- they are kind of meaningless after all because Airbnb will not support it. Even when I have tons of evidence about smoking, Airbnb says I can only put in claims on the Resolution Center for physical damage to material items, not for any penalties, even when they are in the House Rules.  They said that if I have to pay the Housekeeper an extra cash fee for cleaning up after smoking or any other problem, that the invoice for the extra cash out-of-pocket expense can be charged, but nothing else.  Even though the lingering smell jeopardizes our reviews for the following six months. No amount of Febreeze or open windows and fans can get that smell out faster than six months, if then.

I feel it's wrong for Airbnb not to support us in fees like that. I guess it probably has to do with their insurance coverage limitations. It got so bad, I decided to charge a non-smoking deposit, forfeitable if they smoke. Airbnb nixed that too. They don't do that and don't facilitate our doing that.

[Inna22]

@S14 so far I have had 100% success in collecting my smoking fee. I have made a post about it, perhaps you want to search for it in archives next time you have an issue. Yes, the fee is not punitive, you should use it to get rid of the smell. I have bought a $70 ozone machine on amazon. It is magical. Also, make sure to launder, dry clean or replace  everything fabric (that is what your $250 or $500 is going for) and wash the walls with mild soap solution. Needless to say, best solution to not having a smell of smoke is having guests that do not smoke but we are not always in control of that.

[S14]

@Inna22  Wow -- can you possibly please send me a link to your post about that? AS we know, every Airbnb support person has a different story because they are all inadequately trained or experienced. So, I would really like to know how you are collecting the fee. When I put it into a Resolution Center request, the guest declined to pay and AIrbnb said they could not help me.

Yes, the money is to go towards fixing the problem, but it's hard to justify every penny with receipts. Unless I hire a cleaning service to come in for 8 hours extra, which means I lose a day of bookings -- a cost that Airbnb also won't pay. I would also need to hire and schedule upholstery and carpet cleaners to come it -- which takes a lot of time to schedule (they won't come immediately) and again it means losing rental availability while they do it. And I have never found a carpet cleaner that will do anything other than wall to wall carpeting on site. For area rugs, which we have, they will only remove the rugs and won't return them cleaned until weeks or months later -- kind of unacceptable since we need to rent out the space in the meantime. Appreciate your advice!

Thank you so much for telling about the ozone machine. I'll look for that right away! In case it's easy, would love to know the exact make and model number of the one that worked for you.

Thanks again.

[Inna22]

@S14 you can search in past post for it, that's what I would be doing myself to find it. You can get a crew of people to accomplish everything. Get a phone number of a couple of same day cleaners to have handy. They are double the price, but again, this is where your fee is going towards. I bought my own rug cleaner, it has come in super handy over the years. Costco has amazing giant rugs for $70. Another option would just be to replace those -again, this is what your fee is for. There are many tools out there to do almost anything at home, including dry cleaning kits. All those are super handy for a host. If you have Airbnb insurance as part of your home owners policy, it would cover loss of revenue. Insurance claim is of course a whole other story but something you should have in your back pocket as an option

[Inna22]

@S14 the ozone machine- I will take a picture of it when I walk past it next. Mine is nothing special. I am pretty sure there have been posts about them here, so search the data  base

[Inna22]

@S14 found it

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Smoking-deposit-collection-best-practices/m-p/1373352#

[S14]

Thank you so much @Inna5 ! You're an angel.

[S14]

@Inna22BIG CHANGE -- Airbnb no longer considers the CASH expenses paid to third parties to be "damages" when we must pay these amounts to remove smoke smells. I am in the middle of ridiculous correspondence with Airbnb "Support" right now. When I articulated why this is a problem they decided to do me a "one time" favor and reimbursed my little $50 third party invoice for extra cleaning caused by the guests smoking. "One time" -- really?? And it is maddening that the support team will not admit that this is a change in policy. Terrible. And in spite of their marketing gimmick of supposedly creating a host advisory board to communicate suggestions to Airbnb, there is, as always, no way to effectively communicate with anyone at Airbnb (including this fake "host board" which I doubt really exists) who has any authority to do anything at all. I thought of you right away -- how you described hiring a team of specialized cleaning services for days of work at a cost of hundreds of dollars every time a guest smokes in your non-smoking bnb -- You said that you have always been successful in getting the reimbursement. Well, I'm sorry to tell you that this probably won't happen next time. Of course every support person you speak with about anything tells you a different story from some other support person because of the dire lack of transparency in policies. I have been going back and forth with this guy and the time I've spent on that is not worth the small money I finally got back. (I don't have time between bookings to spend more time and resources on getting rid of smoke, other than sometimes a $50 extra cleaning.) "One time?" Insane. Unfair. Totally arbitrary and unreasonable. The lack of host support at Airbnb is continuing to worsen by the day. I really wish I could figure out a different way to make a living. But I am older and have disabilities so I can no longer do a traditional day job, as I did for 35 years in the past. I used my retirement savings to buy my home in Brooklyn NY which has a couple of extra apartments I can rent as a bnb. Traditional rentals in NYC is never viable because all the tenant laws here are 100% in favor of tenants. Landlords are categorically vilified here, maybe everywhere. It is not possible to be a small landlord in NYC and survive. I had thought a BnB would be a good solution -- and it was for several years. I have been a host on Airbnb (& on Vrbo before Vrbo pulled out of the NYC market entirely) for about 7 years. I have two bnb units here in my house, besides my own home. Other than Covid times, both units are usually booked. Does Airbnb value my contribution? No. Not at all. Upsetting. But you need to know! / Shosh