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.

[Michele4]

I would encourage a strict distinction between private and commercial hosts. Ideally with some sort of "airbnb plus" or at least a clearly visible hint like a badge or different color.

[Amy38]

I was with Personal Umbrella with my old agent but switch to Farm Bureau because I was changing all my insurance. My main insurer just went too high...they tried to charge me an extra1000/year for simply inquiring if some damage was covered.

[Marsha11]

Thanks Amy...why did you switch to Personal Umbrella?

[Amy38]

@Rebecca0I believe there is a Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance company in a number of states. But if not there is Personal Umbrella which is located in Emeryville,CA and which I used before Farm Bureau.

[Rebecca181]

@Amy38 I found out that Farm Bureau is only available in Tennessee...

[Amy38]

@Marsha11  Try your state Farm Bureau agency...I am paying about $140/year extra on my homeowners...but my guest house is separate. Different companies have widely ranges prices on insurance.  I started renting with a $270 Umbrella policy which covered the Abnb part.  My isurance company would not insure it but my agent found the extra policy for me. 

[Marsha11]

I agree! I've hosted for 5 years now and suddenly all forces seem to be against my continuing to airbnb rooms as "shared space" and/or my whole house.  The current challenge is changes within the insurance industry which seem to have united as of January 2018 to no longer cover "shared space" with traditional homeowner's policies (in my case State Farm). They are also restricting rental of my whole house to only 2 persons at at time (3 bedroom house) and there some unclear restrictions regarding "no continuous postings" on the Airbnb site. On the Airbnb chat site, I found that people all over the country were experiencing similar problems with all of the big insurance carriers. So beware and check your policies regarding liability insurance.  Of course State Farm will offer me their hotel motel coverage for an outrageous price. The Airbnb $1,000,000 policy has nothing to do with personal liability, and when I contacted them asbout this issue more than once, I have gotten NO response. Increased insurance costs are not an issue for the "Big Players" which are increasingly the norm within Airbnb ... and increasingly encouraged and supported by Airbnb.

[Adam-and-Carol0]

This is likely to get worse and worse, especially now that Airbnb is partnering with companies who are building purpose-built airbnb hotels/condo buildings, meaning you'll soon have to compete with Airbnb's stock of units directly. This is what's happening in our area of Florida anyway. They claim hosts will be able to lease these purpose built units to host on airbnb, but they don't make any mention of how many they'll run themselves. Everything is slowly moving away from the original model airbnb was known for and becoming more and more commercialized. It's really sad to see.

[Rebecca181]

Translation: "We thus far as of February 2018 have not created any sort of filter whereby a prospective guest can choose between a hotel-like experience and a home host / personal / community experience. We also do not care that hosts who were listed in the top page of search rankings because of their superb hosting skills are now buried on the 8th or 9th page because property managers are listing hundreds of properties and receiving what appears to be preferential treatment via 16 changes to policy that entice them to list on the platform."

Unless home host / property managed filters are indeed being planned, then let's acknowledge what has happened in an honest fashion: Airbnb is going the way of Expedia and is no longer that concerned with retaining home hosts.

I'm a newer host and I'm doing well on the platform thus far, but I feel very sad about comments and posts here who say their businesses are destroyed because of Airbnb catering to property managers and allowing hotels to list with them now.

So, are the filters that I read about as being planned here in Host Voice actually coming? Or are us traditional, community-minded hosts seen as a liability to management and shareholders as Airbnb moves toward an IPO?

[Amy38]

@Marsha11. I would thinks so...it is a commercial insurance to cover events related to events caused by the commercial enterprise.

My insurance covers my house, a neighboring rental and my car. Just ask about an Umbrella policy.

[Marsha11]

Thanks for your comment.  Does your coverage specifically cover private rooms and shared spaces ... that seems to be where things are breakind down .

[Amy38]

For insurance, ask your agent about an additional umbrella policy....this will cover you.  I pay about $300/yr for $1,000,000 proberty and liability coverage.

This is in addition to my primary insurance.

[Marsha11]

I agree with all that has been said above.  I have been hosting for 6 years and I have witnessed the change.  The most recent situation that I find alarming is that insurance companies are no longer covering airbnbs with private rooms and shared spaces. If you check the airbnb chat room on insurance you will see countless stories of people who find themselves without a primary insurance carrier and the airbnb host insurance is not adequate. In some cases, people who asked questions about airbnb coverage were then cancelled by their primary carriers.  In this scenario, the founders of airbnb would be out of luck! Will Airbnb come to the rescue of us small time folks who value both hosting and staying with people in a shared setting?  Will they beef up their host protection so that we are adequately covered? Will they lobby insurance companies to close the gap?  Surely they have plenty of money to do these things, but only if they value us enough to make sure we can exist under the Airbnb brand. I loved the branding that came out about "making connections" a few years ago ... well not so much any more, if all of us private room hosters are forced to quit because we can not find adequate insurance.  

[Mercedes107]

We just wrote AirBnB a long commentary about this issue.  We are also in favor of splitting it into 2 divisions, the "oldschool" style of hosting, and the "lockbox," hotel-type listings.  We are getting more and more weird and demanding requests from newbies that we, as oldschool hosts, are not comfortable hosting.

[Stephan2]

blablabla, so it's all about the money, the investors that want to get as much money as possible. I am very dissapointed. Hopefully there will come a real social company for the real BnB feeling. 

[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.

[Daniel224]

Totally agree.  There is a company close by to me that abuse the platform.  They have multiple listings (50+) and constantly show each one as available even if they aren't.  When people book they then place them in a listing that's available.  So use airbnb only to lure potential guests. Needles to say the service they offer is not in line with Airbnb's original values. Stop

[Akos0]

I manage 30 apartments currently (I own a company who manages the apartments for investors and also some of the apartments owned by me), and i am fanatic on the well-being of my Guests. I am maximalist and would like to give the personal care of each and every Guest of mine. I wake up and i go to bed with the messages of my Guests . I just wanted to share my opinion because i wanted to grab the attention to the fact that a lot of commercial-sytle hosts are as conscious and enthusiastic as the individual hosts. Please do not think in black and white but in shades. Sorry for my English, my native is Hungarian, I am from Budapest.

[Leslie7]

Agreed! I understand that the bottom line is the main driver, and corporatization probably makes Airbnb more customers, but separate out the actual homestays so that people who are looking for that experience can still get it. That way the company can have multiple offerings for all host and customer types.

[Punam0]

@Stephan2

Hi all, this is now 'Under consideration'.  But what does that actually mean now?