Airbnb still determined to proof to guests they are not safe

[Inna22]

I got the following one question survey. I guess they did not have enough guests claiming they were not safe through reviews ( @Lawrene0   thank   you for posting about that) so they keep on looking?

A guest who has not travelled in a while (me) gets this email and now I am told Airbnb might be so unsafe, it needs to make sure I was ok on the last trip. Same day I get an email from Vrbo to remind me there are still few nice days left to book a beach vacation. Who has a better marketing strategy?

 

 

[Fred13]

This probably stemmed from a Covid-19 angle, in other words if Airbnb can 'prove' their guests felt 'safe' (whatever that means as @Emilia42 pointed out) then they can use it in their marketing in the near future. And yes, it has the 'danger' of a new nebulous 'rating' arising (as @Inna22 pointed out), where some listings immediately will show 100% or something less than 100% and the latter be at a disadvantage till the law of averages takes place. Heck, anyone staying in certain American cities right now couldn't possibly feel absolutely 'safe'.

The whole thing I consider a bit childish, in the same range as using the silly word 'uncomfortable',  which is just as nebulous and an open-ended invitation for infinite usage. Airbnb needs to get out of the psychiatric field and fully join the business field and treat everyone as an adult, not children that need looking-after.

[Sarah977]

@Fred13  If it's about whether the listing was cleaned properly re COVID, then why on earth can't Airbnb just say that? "Did you find the listings you stayed in were properly sanitized in light of COVID?" 

I don't understand Airbnb's penchant for stating everything in such ambiguous and misleading ways. Like the message guests get if they fit that "party risk" algorithm. It says something like "This booking is not safe, book a hotel instead". Because the guest's age and the fact that they're booking an entire place, etc, match their algorithm, they tell the guest it isn't safe? What's that supposed to mean? It just bamboozles guests and also the hosts who aren't aware of it.

If they're going to block those guests from booking, they should stop being cowardly and come out and tell the guest exactly why they are being prevented from booking.

[Fred13]

@Sarah977 . Aye, asking for a reason to even think of a 'problem' is not smart.

   Airbnb trying to prevent certain 'usual suspects' from reserving a listing is a very complicated route to try to stop parties. Why try to control the whole herd of humanity when all they have to do is hold only the participants responsible; hosts & guests.

   If a party occurs the first person I would question is the host - "How did that happen?". 

   On the other hand,  If a guest gets out of line the first person I would back is the host, till further notice; not the other way around. 

[Inna22]

@Fred13 @Sarah977 I do not think this has anything to do with Covid. It says bad or unsafe in person incident. It is so broad and can mean so many things but not Covid. I guess if someone coughed on you, you could get it and it would qualify for bad or unsafe in person incident. Otherwise, anything would qualify. If Starbucks got your coffee order wrong- bad in person incident right there! Pothole on the street- very unsafe. And in person

[Sarah977]

@Inna22  My neighbor right across the street, who also hosts, sent me a really nasty text one day because her guests had written in the review that when they were leaving, and had called a taxi, the neighbor across the street (meaning me) had yelled at their taxi driver and that that was totally unacceptable and ended their stay on a bad note.

I most certainly never yelled at any taxi driver, I asked him quite civily who he was looking for, because he was parked right in front of my gate, with his motor running, for 10 minutes, filling my house with exhaust fumes. He said he didn't know. I asked if he had a name or phone number. No, his dispatcher just sent him down our street. I then said I thought it was ridiculous that the dispatchers here send the drivers out without a name or number of the person they're supposed to pick up.

Those guests never even came out of my neighbor's gate until I was already back in my yard, so even if I had "yelled" at the driver, they weren't there to witness that anyway. Not to mention, what does a neighbor's interaction with a taxi driver have to do with a review of their accommodation and my neighbor's hosting?

It's bad enough that some guests don't understand what they are meant to be reviewing, without giving them fuel for claiming they felt "unsafe", whatever in the world that's supposed to mean. If those guests had been given that question, they probably would have said they felt "unsafe".

[Huma0]

@Sarah977 

Yes, exactly. It often surprises me how differently people can interpret a certain situation and, in the case you mention, exaggerate about it (sounds like there was also Chinese whispers going on. Who knows if the guests had actually said you yelled?)

You might remember me mentioning one lady who was determined to find fault with my listing and used the word 'dangerous' several times in her review and feedback. She had never used a French press before and said it was 'dangerous'. I had some paints, brushes and wallpapers sitting neatly in boxes to one side of a wide entrance hall. She described them as 'building materials' and said the house was 'dangerous' because it was a building site. There were no building works whatsoever going on.

She expected the switches for the hallway lights to be in her bedroom and insisted that the lights must all stay on overnight. She seemed incapable of turning on a light switch at all. If she came home at dusk before I had a chance to switch on the hallway lights, she would become hysterical. Clearly she had some mental health issues, but I am sure she would have been all over the 'unsafe' question.

[Fred13]

    'Unsafe', 'Uncomfortable', etc - nebulous words; they could mean anything to anybody. In law, such words are never used because they are an open invitation to be used anyway one wants to.

    Besides, what are we in high school again? Who really talks that way in the real adult world? 

P. S. I could hear one of Barry Manilow's cheesy songs in my ears whenever I hear any of those terms. 

[Inna22]

They have no time or money to send us an update when there’s a known glitch and thousands  of hosts do not get paid for several days yet somebody’s job is to come up with the email I got