Airbnb support to Superhosts getting worse

[Barbara798]

Hello to everybody.

Some premises:

1. We are aware of everything Airbnb, and not only we host individually, is having a bad time for Covid-19;

2. We have been Superhost continuously for 4 years, with a score of 4.9, and we now have some experience both of hosting and of Airbnb.

Having said that, we have noticed a decrease in Airbnb support for hosts, and in particular Superhost. For example:

1. There is no longer a phone number dedicated to Superhosts;

2. In the offer lists there seems to be no more attention than before to Superhosts, and by now many ads before, even if with higher prices, with lower votes, and without the Superhost qualification.

3. In the lists there are clearly irrational orders: without wanting to compare ourselves with other hosts, we have 3 apartments, connected by 5, 6 and 8 people, to the same address. Of these, if we simulate a request for accommodation for 5 people, the first in comparison is always that of 8 people, obviously at a higher price, and obscuring the tags of the other two on the map;

4. It is no longer possible to contact Airbnb by email, the Airbnb Contact has now reduced to consulting a FAQ. The telephone assistance, with long waiting times, was provided to very polite operators, but often not very useful and perhaps not well informed. E.g. the problem of the wrong overlap of our ads have not been able to solve it, and we have adhered to the Advanced Cleaning protocol the operator has been granted a blue dot on the photo, in the lists, but we have not seen it yet.

Useless to offer opportunities (such as meetings with Olympic athletes), while lowering the level of the primary mission, which is to connect in an optimal way the requests and offers of tourist accommodation, and not to leave the hosts to feel like abandoned. The period is difficult, but we are starting to receive some reservations from another manager of touristic reservations, to whom we have only registered since just one year, while with Airbnb not only do we not receive reservations, but not even questions, and the visualisations are very few.

We write this not just to complain, but to know whether other experienced hosts are suffering from our own problems, or if other hosts are living different, more positive experiences.

Thanks, greetings, and best wishes to all.

Barbara and Rino

[Huma0]

@Barbara798 

Personally, I find it impossible to judge whether Superhosts are getting less consideration/exposure etc. than before, as many of the issues you mentioned could be due to the pandemic, so it's hard to compare to previous times.

I am not listed elsewhere and have not recently checked to see how my listings are appearing in search results, so can't comment on that, but bookings inevitably stopped due to COVID-19, especially as Airbnb blocked the calendars for shared listings in the UK until earlier this month. Since then, I started getting enquiries again and one booking, so only time will tell.

From what I have read on this forum, everyone (Superhosts, other hosts, guests)  is experiencing delays and issues with customer service, so again, I think this is due to the pandemic, but you are right in that the Superhost hotline seems to have disappeared. I no longer hear the 'Welcome Superhost!' greeting when I call and, whereas in the past the rep would always thank me for being such a great Superhost, they never mention it at all now.

[Barbara798]

Hello @Huma0, and thank you for your opinion!

We agree that Covid-19 may be at the origin of all this. About the historic center of Florence (where our apartments are located), until about one month ago it was rare crossing on the streets somebody looking like a tourist, or even more speaking a foreign language. But the situation is now changing here, tourists walking downtown are now at least 20% of those in other years, same period.

We also confirm that, in the meanwhile, with a competitor company for hosting we had three reservations (no many indeed, but above zero!), and looking at their map of offers (white dots for the available apartments, red dots for other ones), the fraction of red dots is increasing more and more.

We feel closely linked to Airbnb, because we like its philosophy and we have been working with it for so many years. But we feel that hosts, and Superhosts, are not informed of the whole story. This would be bad, because we do not know how to survive, but also we do not know how we can be of help to the rest of the community.

Thank you. Barbara and Rino

[Huma0]

@Barbara798 

Yes, you are right. We are not informed of the whole story and that is worrying.

By the way, I host long-term guests (stays of weeks or months) in my own home, so I don't get a huge quantity of enquiries/bookings anyway. I only need a few bookings to fill my rooms and they are normally fully booked many months ahead.

Of course, all the bookings from March onwards got cancelled, except one who postponed her trip for later in the year. As my guests tend to book quite far in advance, I am not expecting the calendar to start filling before September at the very earliest. The few new bookings I have had have all been last minute though, from local guests needing a temporary home while they sort out a permanent one, so you never know.

However, previous guests often told me that I came out as top of their search and certainly on the first page. I wonder if that is still true given that Airbnb is encouraging all hosts to take long-term bookings. Perhaps I have more competition (for less customers) now than before.

Anyway, thanks for posting about this because it has prompted me to run some searches to see which position my listings are right now.

[Debra300]

I've called Airbnb three times in the past two weeks.  The first call, I was offered the chose for Airbnb to call me back, and I received a call within the timeframe stated.  The second and third time that I called, I probably was on hold for about 15 minutes before a person answered the phone.  The "Welcome, Superhost" greeting is gone, and the person that I speak with is really just a warm body to answer the phone, and not a problem solver.  I've never received any follow up from "the appropriate" department that's supposed to address my issues.

@Huma0,

As I mentioned in another conversation, I just did a search for listings in your specific area for August 1 to 31, and yours was the second result for a 1 guest search, and fourth in the list of search results for a 2 guest search.

@Barbara798,

I have listings at the same address, and the higher price usually overlaps the lower priced spaces on the search results map, but each listing and rates are easily visible on in search results that display pictures of the spaces.

[Huma0]

@Debra300 

Thanks again. Good to know that I am still on the first page of search results, although a lot of my guests aren't necessarily looking for my specific area, so I still need to do some broader searches to see where I come in the scheme of things for long-term guests wanting to book in London within the appropriate budget.

It's hard to know though what parameters each guest is searching for and therefore where you will end up on the search results. One might only be looking at Superhosts and another only at listings with Instant Book, for example.

[Huma0]

@Debra300 

I just conducted a wider search. I logged out and then searched for listings in London in August, putting in just number of guests (one), dates (approx one month) and a rough price range, min one bed, one bedroom, one bathroom. I did not select the IB or Superhost filters.

I was glad to see that one of my listings came up on the first page, as second or third, and the other one near the top of the second page (the third one has bookings for some of those dates so didn't show up). 

That seems very reassuring, given how many listings there are in London, and leads me to think that my visibility is as strong as it was previously. However, I can't be sure that even logged out, I am not still subject to some kind of cookies, where the browser recognises my listings as something I might be looking for...

[Debra300]

@Huma0,

Just because it's you, and I am curious also, I did the following:

1. Cleared all of my browsing data in Edge.
2. Opened Airbnb, and entered these search filter items: London,  October 4-31, 1 guest,  private room, and $50-60 range.

Your cream colored room appeared on search results page 1, number 14 out of 19 listings.  Your blue room appeared on search results page 5, number 7 out of 19 listings.

[Huma0]

@Debra300 

Thanks so much for checking! Well that is also reassuring. The results I found seemed slightly too good to be true, but these aren't bad considering the number of listings in London (no idea how many of them accept long-term guests but I imagine it's a lot more than before COVID-19).

You didn't mention the third room, but perhaps you did not recognise that one. That comes third in order of popularity as it's smaller than the other two, so was probably on a later page.

As to @Barbara798 's point, whether that proves or not that Superhost status still counts in the searches, it's impossible to say as there are so many other factors involved in the algorithms. I certainly found in the past that using IB made much more of a difference.

[Barbara798]

Hello @Huma0 and @Debra300 .

Thank you for this information!

Actually, being our apartments in the center of Florence, our targets are mostly tourists, come for 1 or a few days (another targets are American students, for 1-4 months, but they are completely out now).

Thank you @Debra300 for your search. Just a hint to both of you. In order to perform "external" searches without the nuisance of deleting all your browsing data, you can select in your browser "New Private Window", and you will then continue as an anonymous user. This option is valid for Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome (the last one under the name "New Incognito Window"). There should be something similar also on Edge. We often use this trick to check how we do appear to a generic visitor.

[Debra300]

@Barbara798,

Thanks for reminding me about the private/incognito window.