AirBnB for individuals not for companies

[Stephan2]

AirBnB started as a sharing service between individuals. Guests are looking for a new and personal experience in someones home. Host wants the best experience for people in their homes. 

Now I see more and more commercial companies using AirBnB to rent homes. Some of these companies are renting up to 100 different homes. This is no sharing anymore,what's the difference with an ordinary hotel. These homes are only used for renting the whole year and making as much profit as possible. This made cities like Berlin, Barcelona and Paris to change the rules and make it almost impossible to use AirBnB as an individual. 

So I would like to ask AirBnB to go back where it all started. Share your own home, or a room in your own home.  And make it impossible for commercial companies with large amounts of apartments to profit from AirBnB. They are damaging the good intentions of a lot of hosts. 

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Reponse from Airbnb

We really appreciate the fact that the Airbnb host community cares about the mission and future of Airbnb. Last year, hosts asked the founders a similar question during Q&A at Open. You can watch the full video in the Community Center.

Our mission is to create a world where everyone belongs. For that to happen, we will always work with our community of hosts to create a more inclusive product that helps people find a place to feel connected, respected, and a part of a community again.

This is the main reason why our product is constantly expanding. At the beginning, Airbnb was only a platform for air mattresses. And it slowly transitioned to rooms and later to entire homes. Now, we’re growing from homes to global experiences that change the way people travel.

That doesn’t mean that we care any less about our individual hosts. On the contrary, we are constantly thinking about new ways to empower our hosts. Last year, we launched co-hosting and experience hosting to provide product solutions that expand our hosts’ economic opportunities beyond their private homes.

Empowering our hosts allows our community to support travelers all over the world despite the wide variety of hosting patterns and different regulations that govern home sharing in regions throughout the world. We remain committed to working with housing-constrained cities to ensure our platform is not impacting housing supply.

Additionally, we’ll continue to work closely with our hosts in such efforts like Host Voice to ensure that they feel that they have a space to establish an open dialogue and that they see us as partners in defining the future of home sharing.

[Stephan2]

Wow, thanks for all the support :-). I really hope AirBnB will do something with this signal. Just placed it at my LinkedIn too, maybe the three founders will read and do something with our responses. 

www.linkedin.com/hp/update/6169207605827747840

[Erin65]

My gripe with Airbnb is the hotel like pressure they pu ton individual owners looking to let out a place.  I got a 4 star rating for overall experience, while all the metrics were 5 stars.  Every time I logged in I got a warnign symbol telling me that I had a low rating.  

Low rating is like 3 or below, not a 4.  This is how hotel chains operate and it is extremely demotivating after you put your heart and soul into your listing to see a yellow warnign symbol because a guest doesn't understand that anything less than perfect is not good enough.

Also along this subject is the fact that if Airbnb expects me to provide hotel like service then don't quote me a hostel level price for my unit. ANY hotel room here is $150 or more and they don't include breakfast.  To tell me my room is only worth $30 is an insult and refusal to acknowledge that it takes time and money.

[Diana103]

I agree!  People that don't realize this is my private home treat my home badly.  Thankfully only once.  But I have a broken window and a day or ruined skiing from a horrible guest.  He asked for a early check in and I had to shovel snow instead of skiing.  Then he showed up late anyway!!!!!!!

[Vivienne-Of-Gorman-and-G0]

As a manager who does look after a small number of properties I would like to add that I offer a service to my home owners who do not feel comfortable or do not have the time to be responding to requests.  These people are just like you, and are embracing the shared economy philosophy but for various reasons don't want to do the leg work themselves.  If you work during the day, how can you meet a guest at the house at a time that suits the guest?  If you are away on holidays yourself, who is going to give the guest 24/7 service.  Would it be a well meaning friend - who will most likely not be able to offer the special service that you are talking about as they don't have the knowledge of the home or understanding the needs of guests?  Having a property managed by a manager does not mean that guests receive an inferior service as I personally meet and greet every guest and I personally correspond with every guest before they arrive, am available 24/7 and work every day that a guest arrives or leaves a property or needs assistance during their stay regardless of if it is a weekday or weekend.  Whether I correspond with the guest or the property owner does doesn't change the fact the owners are sharing their home with others.  

[Ange2]

@Susie0 I agree with the individual thing, but I have two guest rooms in my apartment that I rent when I do not have friends staying, two listings because Airbnb do not allow two rooms unless it listed as the whole apartment, without host. I live here, I am always here. I would not like to find myself in the 20% not included. Better same address, same apartment number.

[Stephan2]

 @Ange2 @Vivienne-Of-Gorman-and-G0

I am nog against companies that help me when on holiday or people that have two rooms. But have problems with people/companies that buy one or more apartments to rent it the whole year to tourists. They don't live there themselves anymore, and there is accoriding to me no difference with an ordinary hotel. 

[Rosemary19]

I absolutely agree. In Australia I am hearing a lot of stories about individuals signing 5 or more rental agreements, then putting all the properties on Air BnB. The problem is that these people multiply their exposure to risk - suddently if the market dies down they are still stuck paying rent on multiple properties. That then incentivises them to keep dropping their prices because any income is better than nothing. It becomes a race to the bottom and pushes rates down for other hosts who are doing the "right" thing. 

[Sandra126]

Airbnb could do it quite simply by having a box in the search categories: Agency managed - or owner managed. I find it a chore to weed through the masses of listings I am not interested in but a filter would fix it. It has been made even harder now that the host pictures have disappeared from search. You have to go into each listing before you discover the picture which is the same as 50 other listings, ie agency run.

Bring back the host pics while you are at it, I am surprised nobody but me complaining about that.

[Nina69]

Why hasn't airbnb responded to these 4 weeks of commenta?? The concept of airbnb is being ruined by property management companies.  NOT FAIR!!!

[Mira11]

I agree! I can tell you from my experience living in a tourist/ beach/ resort destination that for the past 14 years of living in this neighborhood that we all hated these types of rentals. No management present, wild parties, trash, cops called all the time for noise violations etc. Allowing rental companies into the airbnb family will ruin the product and reputation of airbnb. Hopefully airbnb will pay attention before they suffer the consequences. Mira

[Stephan2]

@Nina0 I am also little dissapointed that they don't react. Just tried to book this week for an apartment in Venice. It is unbelievable but almost all the apartments are hosted by commercialcompanies. Has nothing to do with an AirBnB experience anymore.

[Stephan2]

Other people came with the idea to split AirBnB! One for bigger firms, real estate and the commercialised renting companies etc. Let say the Hotel section. A second section for the real personal AirBnB experience. So guest can choose between an ordinary hotel experience or a really authentic  experience.

[Sandra126]

@Stephan2, that was me. Glad your suggestion has been moved to popular, and that my suggestion is added inside it as I think this is such a winner. Airbnb will get more revenue and more listings if more hotels will join, and the small hosts will be kept superhappy if they can operate as what they are, small hosts with slightly different needs.

Airbnb Pro and Airbnb LiveLikaA Local. Siblings.

[Wyatt]

The status of this Idea has been changed to Under Consideration. The Ideas in Host Voice with the most Thumbs Up are reviewed closely by the Airbnb product team. The status of this Idea will be updated according to this discussion. We appreciate your patience as we try to thoughtfully listen and respond to this Idea.