Airbnb Photo team

[Northon0]

Hosts be aware, if you are contacted by Airbnb and they suggest to use them to professionally take photos of your site, run as fast as you can.

I thought it would be great to upgrade my site, but they ***blindly*** replaced ALL the pictures on my site with their pictures. They removed all nature and wildlife pictures even though they did not have an equivalent.

They did not backup their work, and when I asked them to restore the previous pictures, they did not restore any of the wildlife and nature pictures. It took me hours to fix their mistake.

I contacted Airbnb MULTIPLE times and the story I received was always the same "we will get back with you", "we are a small team".

They never got back with me and they did not take responsibility for their mistake.

@Airbnb you must take ownership for your mistakes and make things right.

[Normen0]

@Northon0 Good to know. They kept sending me messages to do this and I finally decided that we would as all our guests tell us the place is better than the photos. A month after requesting it, we were informed that there was no one available in our area to do it. I assume no one for whatever the small cut was that they were going to pay them because I could reach out to many photographers locally with no issue.  

[Northon0]

That was exactly what happened to us. After months Airbnb "found" a photographer who drove 3 hours to get to our place.

Some of the pictures she took were nice, but Airbnb did the botching (blindly replace ALL photos in the site regardless of they had a counter part).

I think that having professional photos is good - I hired a professional photographer for my other places and the results were amazing.

[Helen3]

I used the Airbnb photographer for my previous listing and they did a great job.

Appreciate it's frustrating if they removed your scenery photos, but I'm not sure why it took you so long ie many hours to upload the scenery photos they removed from your listing though. Surely you keep all the photos for your STR business in a folder, so they are easily to hand when you need them?

[Huma0]

@Northon0 

I have had two Airbnb photographers come to my place and didn't have any issues, other than it took a while for the photos to be approved and uploaded (the photographers explained to me that it is a small team dealing with this so there is a back log of a few weeks). As soon as the photos went live, my bookings shot up.

The trick, if you want to include other photos, is simply to have them saved on your computer/device and then you can add them after Airbnb upload the professional ones. There is nothing to stop you having both. I have added some photos of the garden and of my cat. The only difference is the professional Airbnb ones say 'verified by Airbnb' and my own ones don't. Other than that, there's really no issue.

[Northon0]

I am glad you had a good experience. In my case, Airbnb blindly replaced all photos without asking me for any approvals, and they did not provide an option for me too download the pictures.

I wish my experience had been similar to yours.

[Huma0]

@Northon0 

As far as I can remember (it was 2016, so I am not totally sure) Airbnb also replaced all of my existing photos. That didn't bother me though because their photos were better and my bookings increased. Since then, I have added a couple of my own photos, which you can still do.

Do you not have your original photos saved somewhere, e.g. on your phone or computer? I am assuming you took them and uploaded them to Airbnb, so shouldn't need to download them from the site. Just find where you have saved them and upload them again. You don't have to replace the Airbnb photos if you like them. You can simply add your own ones as well.

[Northon0]

The important thing for the community to be aware of that:

1) Airbnb replaces all photos when you use their services

2) You (host) will need to re-add your nature and/or "extra" pictures

3) If you request Airbnb to restore your "extra" pictures, you don't know what they will restore (in my case Airbnb literally restore 100 old pictures that I had to go through and delete)

4) Professional photography increases bookings

 5) I recommend using a service where you have control  over the pictures you upload (do not use Airbnb photography team)