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.

[David-and-Fiona0]

I fully agree. What I don't understand is that Airbnb could easily duplicate there platform for resorts and mass holiday letting (under different branding) this would appease the core market and give them significant traction in other markets against the likes of bookin.com and agora. 

[Daniel219]

As a host and user of Airbnb I applaud the idea to go back to the roots of Airbnb. Airbnb used to be different from other websites that offer appartments for rent by giving a whole experience of staying with a local. As such I am also a big fan of Couchsurfing, but I'm afraid the people who use Airbnb as a guest have changed to much for that. They expect hotel service done by amateurs and if it's not up to that standard you get bad reviews. So also being a superhost has gotten much more difficult to maintain.

Also there are more hosts who just use Airbnb as a way to make the most profit which will be difficult to filter from the people who do this from their hart.

I hope Airbnb can find a way to seperate the good and the bad apples to make Airbnb a product basedd on sharing values.

[Susie0]

Airbnb could easily put a badge on listings for hosts that have only 1 rental to highlight them as home sharers that way (which I imagine would be accurate 80% of the time). 

(Realisitically there's no way they'll kick off all the others because of the $$$ unless citites force them to although I have had a bad experience with a hired property manager whose absentee real estate investor who lived in Australia.)

[Kathryn51]

Airbnb was a major driver of the sharing economy on an individual to individual basis. But it is clear it has grown.  I can understand the economic value of this commercial growth to Airbnb but at the same time it is this commercial growth that has led to many of the regulatory challenges given the competition with the hotel industry.  

I would recommend that, if Aribnb wants to continue working in the commercial market space, then it might make sense to start a different business line that makes it transparent to guests that they are "buying into" a commercial venture. You can then have a different cost structure for commercial hosts.  

The original Airbnb concept represents the best of the sharing economy concept which I applaud!   As a guest, I prefer to support the small private proprietor and not find myself suddenly contributing to a commercial venture.    As a host aligned with the original model, I could never compete with the corporates. 

I know the coprorate angle will not go away but there is an opportunity to separate the "house sharing" from "home sharing." 

Kathryn

[Laara0]

I agree with other posts that corporate greed has infiltrated AirBnB and changed what it started out to be -- a home-sharing service. Because AirBnB has allowed this, cities are up in arms and readying themselves to come down hard on all hosts. In Vancouver, Canada, certain developers and owners of what in the past were rental suites, have decided to make a much better profit by using the AirBnB platform, thus eliminating said rental suites and creating a zero per cent vacancy rate in the lower mainland. With the price of real estate also skyrocketing here, there is a lack of affordable housing for lower and middle income people, and so the city, which is irresponsible in my view, for not building any, is scapegoating AirBnB hosts! They create legislation in the blink of an eye -- e.g. -- decided after a year of saying "NO" that they WOULD actually charge a foreign buyer's tax on property, and once decided the legislation was in place within a couple of weeks. I would not be surprised to see this happen regarding AirBnB.

[Vibeke3]

Could not agree with you more!! In actual fact it is what I mailed AIRBNB just two days ago! II have started to feel that the individual hosts -the pioneers upon whom AIRBNB built their platform- are more and more 'overlooked' by the company. For by the ultra-corporate system generated messages etc. The other day I vented my frustration about one of these generic system messages. And suggested that maybe it is time for them split their platform into different sections:
- the "oldschool" airbnb-stay, being: a stay with in a real live host (either in their house or a room in their house) who is actually present living in the property ; and

- the "commercial / investement property stays"

It is my experience that there are (currently still) a lot of guests out there who can see the difference. They can spot ‘the real deal’. Guests that book with me, do mostly specifically chose my room (as one of their options) because of the fact that they can see that I am really there and that the place is mine. From guest the reviews they can read that I live there, give people a lot of personal time and information. And thus that I offer the real airbnb-pioneer deal.

I am currently living abroad so not hosting now, (have been using Airbnb for housing) but I was hosting frequently up to late last year and will commence gain in the autumn.

Personally I am less interested in the 'superhost' status goals etc.

What I find more distressing is that, with the aggressive growth of all these investment-type places, the actual interesting guests (those who are/were looking for the traditional AIRBNB style experience) might start avoiding AIRBNB altogether. And thus that AIRBNB's popularity might become it's downfall. Or that AIRBNB-stays will indeed become so generic/commercialized/impersonalized that the company will (deliberately) start 'pushing' the old fashioned hosts out. At the end of the day 'the bottom-line' is 'the bottom-line', and if all these investments style hosts bring in the bulk of the profit to AIRBNB, who knows which way the company will chose to develop.

So yes I am also all for going back to the roots.

Or if not that, then at least a new approach of the platform to make ‘the pioneering AIRBNB hosts' more visible again.

Recently I stayed in Wales and the lovely family I stayed with wrote in their review: “She is how I imagine the original Airbnb pioneers - appreciative, unfussy, self-managing.”

I SO HOPE AIRBNB WILL BE ABLE TO MAINTAIN, OR MORE SO BRING BACK THIS ORIGINALITY TO THE PLATFORM!!

[Vera-C0]

I so agree with this!!! I have several listings, but they are all different configurations of our two properties (PEI and Ontario), depending on where we are and when with our kids. I HATE seeing commercial operations take over -- it also affects the quality of the guests. They don't realise that many of us are sharing our HOMES! I love the original concept of AirBnB -- you meet interesting people, offer an affordable place to stay, and make a little extra cash on the side.

[Nicky6]

I couldn't agree more and have actually contacted Airbnb about this in the last 24 hours.  I live on a very small barrier island and in the last 3 months several vacation rental companies have literally 'blanketed' Airbnb with their listings.  Each company has between 200 and 300 listings.  Not only that but they have just lifted the listings from their own websites and therefore the address of each property is visible and they have their own payment terms and conditions which obviously they cannot use on Airbnb.

I feel this is a huge departure from the original 'essence' of Airbnb.  It appears they are now going the same way as VRBO/Homeaway and others who also started off for owners and then could not resist the buck!  The thing is what now distinguishes Airbnb from these other companies who have gone this way?  They are starting to feel just like any other travel agent.

As a host I am very frustrated by this as what i loved about Airbnb was the personal experience for hosts and guests alike.  Now I feel my listing is lost in a sea of vacation rentals by management companies.  

At a minimum i would like to see Airbnb 'tag' companies that are listing properties so that it is immediately obviously to a guest that they will not be dealing with the home owner but a management company.  This would be very easy to do - no different really to a superhost tag. This tag could also be filtered.  If I am traveling I would always rather communicate directly with an owner and I don't want to spend hours wading through listings trying to ascertain whether I will be dealing with a management company.  I also notice that the management companies on the whole have inferior reviews - again not surprising when you lose the personal touch.

If Airbnb are not very careful I think going this route will come back to haunt them.  They are going to lose the quality that separated them from the rest.

[Eloise0]

I was so glad to see this post as I have been sending emails to airbnb about this issue.  I have a problem with the absentee, multiple listing host and see the practice as a potentially huge problem for not only airbnb but in particular for Hosts who have already put in a lot of time, money, energy and good will to making airbnb a choice for Guests who also share the shared economy philosophy.  The decision of airbnb to continue to allow this practice is a  great dis-service to the Hosts who built their company for them.  

We are essentially stock holders and this practice feels like a hostel take over!

I also do not like instant booking and will not do it.  I thought the original over arching philosophy was about choices.  We as Hosts were offering more choices and now our choices are being taken away from us.

OK, I am off my soap box, as I love Hosting and I hope I will be able to continue to do so for a long time, but I worry at the direction in which things are going.

Peace,

Eloise

[Eloise0]

I was so glad to see these posts as I have been sending emails to airbnb about this issue.  I have a problem with the absentee, multiple listing host and see the practice as a potentially huge problem for not only airbnb but in particular for Hosts who have already put in a lot of time, money, energy and good will to making airbnb a choice for Guests who also share the shared economy philosophy.  The decision of airbnb to continue to allow this practice is a  great dis-service to the Hosts who built their company for them.  

We are essentially stock holders and this practice feels like a hostel take over!

I also do not like instant booking and will not do it.  I thought the original over arching philosophy was about choices.  We as Hosts were offering more choices and now our choices are being taken away from us.

OK, I am off my soap box, as I love Hosting and I hope I will be able to continue to do so for a long time, but I worry at the direction in which things are going.

Peace,

Eloise

[Ruth18]

I totally agree. Airbnb, do you hear us? Companies might be lining your pockets but we are your bread and butter. Airbnb is gaining a very bad reputation by allowing companies to use the service. It ruins everything. 

[Mira11]

AMEN to all the comments! I hope Airbnb recognizes the spin with corporate/ company involvement is not a plus and dillutes the essence of what made airbnb so special.

[Merrill0]

My biggest concern is that investment hosts (who buy houses and then rent them out short term) are taking properties off the market for long-term renters who are then left without housing! I'm sure airbnb never wanted this to happen when they inflated those mattresses back in the 'old' days.I know that many cities are opposed to airbnb for the same reasons--separate the two businesses and give people the choice. Investment hosts have different concerns and responsibilities that could be directed to them specifically. Personal hosts -- ditto.

As a guest, my only bad airbnb experiences were in places where the hosts were absent and the room was rented in absentia.

[Donna88]

I aagree. There eare hotels in my area that are listing on this site and not saying they are a hotel. I have had guests that say they booked them thinking they were a room in a house. There should be a difference between corporate and private.