Community Support during COVID-19

[Aisling]

Hello everyone,

My name is Aisling and I manage our global Community Support Team. Over the past three months, we have been hit by an unprecedented wave of challenges due to the spread of COVID-19.

My job is to ensure that you and the rest of our community have the support you need, especially at this difficult time and make sure we have the resources in place to do so. However, at a time where support is needed even more than ever, our team has been faced with some of the hardest challenges we’ve ever experienced.

In light of this, I wanted to share some of these experiences with you and most importantly what we’ve been doing about it and what we are currently working on.

Sudden and unprecedented volume of calls

As you may know, we have offices and support centers in locations across the world, but we rely on all of them to help with the volume of support we receive. The challenges we’ve seen here are:

• Our China team was the first to be impacted, dealing with volumes 600% above what we had planned for. The quarantine shut down our China office and one of our Customer Support sites.
• Once the WHO announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic, our global ticket volumes rose 400% above what we planned.

What’ve we done:

• The China team contributed over 100K of working hours during the Lunar New Year to manage the call volumes. We also built a self-solve and chat bot tool to manage the volume in just two weeks
• Our teams rallied and formed a task force, covering operations, engineering, legal and partner management teams, that met multiple times a day to tackle the issue

Office shutdowns

As the virus spread, all of our internal offices were required to shut down quite abruptly and all of our teams had to change to a work from home mode.

• Our partner sites where we manage the majority of tickets were also required to be shut down by the government and local authorities. This meant we temporarily lost almost 80% of our global community support network within days.

What’ve we done:

• We had to get laptops enabled and distributed to 7,000 specialists across 25 sites around the world.
• Within a matter of one week, we had moved around 70% of partner specialists to working from home

Where are we now

We’ve done a lot in a short period of time, but as you can imagine we are still working through our backlog.

• We are currently working through technical and regional constraints to enable all of our teams to connect to the phone lines.
• We are under pressure on our phone lines, in particular English and Portuguese.
• As a result, we have shortened hours of operations temporarily, but are working to get them back to normal hours as soon as possible.

We also launched a new initiative that temporarily redeploys Airbnb staff to the Community Support team to help us more quickly meet your needs. Things are moving rapidly and so we hope you see a difference in response time very shortly.

Finally...

I am incredibly proud of how our teams have rallied together in such a short amount of time to serve our community and we are all working around the clock to continue to support you.

I can’t imagine how difficult it has been for all of you with these unprecedented changes. We are here to listen and support you as much as we can. Please continue to share your feedback here in the Community Center and also through the listening sessions, I've been receiving regular updates from the community team. I will keep you posted with further updates.

Thank you for your support and patience while we get our team back on track and adjust to this new world.

Aisling

[Jeffrey-and-Sandra0]

Jeffrey & Sandra0

7:57 AM

My wife--74-- and I--80-- joined Airbnb as a host about one year ago. We had completely remodeled our basement with a private entrance to accommodate our future guests at a cost of over $75,000. We quickly acquired Super Host status and have maintained a five-star rating for almost a year - airbnb.com/h/thebluedoordenver. Unfortunately, it appears we are going to be ineligible for the $5,000 grant program based on the initial criteria. However, we need it more than most simply because we just got started and have not yet been able to begin recovering our investment. We now have our construction loan costs of about $2,500 per month with no revenue to support them. Is there any way Airbnb can offer flexibility in its qualification requirements - Super Hosts for a full year - and offer us eligible status?

[Ron-and-Andrea0]

I would like to add that as Superhosts, we appreciate any and all help Airbnb is pledging to make, however, there is one scenario I have not seen addressed.  Cancellations are all referred to as those made by guests, but what about hosts who have made the difficult decision to cancel a reservation due to their high-risk status?  Are these to be treated the same?  I would be very surprised if we were the only ones it that category.  

[Aisling]

Hello @Ron-and-Andrea0,

Thank you for your comment. The safety of the whole of our community (guests and hosts) is really important to us and as a host myself I would always advise you to make sure when you are hosting it is safe for you to do so. Airbnb's Extenuating Circumstances policy actually covers both hosts and guests and so if your situation fit into the requirements then this should help you in these difficult times. You can read more about it here: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/2701/extenuating-circumstances-policy-and-the-coronavirus-covi...

Take care.

[Anthony1100]

Thank you for all that you're doing! Will we have a link with instructions on how to access funds that have been set aside for hosts impacted by the Virus so far. Can you help point me in the right direction?

[Lizzie]

Hello @Anthony1100,

Great to meet you and thanks for your kind comment to @Aisling. My name is Lizzie and I am a Community Manager here. I just wanted to provide you with an update on the $250M program. Here is the latest:

Pay outs to eligible hosts begins on Thursday April 16th and we will be continuing to make these disbursements throughout next week, reaching hundreds of thousands of hosts around the world. If you are eligible but have not yet received a notification from Airbnb, you are likely scheduled for the coming days.

Just to add, there is no need to contact Community Support to check up on the status of processing. If you are eligible, you should receive a notification soon. 

So basically, you don't need to do anything at the moment. 

I hope this helps. Stay safe.

Lizzie

[Angela-and-Ian0]

@Aisling Thank you for the clarification, Aisling, I do appreciate what a complex and difficult time this must be for AirBnB as a company. There are a couple of questions I still have, however, that I haven't found good answers to. I have several cancellations currently pending, so I hope to get an answer soon.

1) We're receiving cancellation requests from guests, asking us as hosts to cancel them and agree to a 100% refund, rather than them, as guests, simply canceling on their end. If we agree to their 100% refund request and cancel them, does that mean we're essentially agreeing to forfeit our usual cancellation policy, and therefore forfeit the 25% (of the 50% refund) that we will receive? What happens when we agree to their request to cancel and agree to the 100% refund?

2) If we simply do not respond to the request, which essentially forces the guest to cancel on their end without any explanation from us as hosts (and makes us look as though we don't care about their situation), do we jeopardize our Superhost status as we normally would for not responding within a certain timeframe? By the way, oddly, we do not get notifications about these messages, because for some reason they go to my traveling profile.

3) When the guest cancels on their end, is there a simple way for them to request 100% refund as part of the Extenuating Circumstance Policy?  Can that process be shared with us as hosts, so we know how to instruct them?

I find that we as hosts are in this uncomfortable situation of explaining to guests that we can't accept their request to cancel, and that they should instead cancel. It makes us appear uncaring and cavalier about the global situation, when in fact, I want them to be able to claim at least a 50% refund, and of course, I also want to protect as much of my income as possible, because we rely on it.

Any help on these questions is MUCH appreciated!

[Norene1]

Hi Angela-and-lan0

This is what I'm struggling with. I have a strict no cancellation policy. If I ask the guest to cancel will they get actually receive a 100% refund under a new clarification and that I would receive 25% of that? If that is so, I would be most happy to do that. Would I be within my rights as a host to ask a guest to cancel with that understanding? If my guests were to receive 100% for cancelling they would be thrilled I'm sure and I would be more than happy to have 25% of that. Just want to be absolutely clear about my rights here. I must cancel my entire 2020 season. I am not able to return to take care of my property and I am at risk due to my age and will definitely not risk my health to clean after guests all summer. 

[Danielle619]

Hi there! Thank you for taking the time to help me in this time!

I watched and listened carefully to Brian’s message to us hosts carefully. I need some clarity on two things upcoming.

The first thing is: we have many guests that are cancelling outside of our cancellation policy and thus to receive their money back are using the “canned covid-19” response and cancelling through admin so that they receive 100% of funds back. But we also have tons of guests that are still within their cancellation window and don’t have to use that terminology to receive all their funds back so they are cancelling like normal. But these guests are still canceling due to the covid-19 virus. How will we receive 25% back on those guests that are simply cancelling an easier way and still receiving their funds back in whole? Do I need to message each guest and have them put it in writing on the dashboard that it is indeed the reason they are cancelling? Please help so we can be helped!

My second question is: should I put one of my listings into inactive? We currently have three superheat listings and have lost over $25k in bookings in just the last two weeks due to the covid-19. We are going to lose our homes. We need to be able to receive the grant money to help possibly hang on. We only have two homes and two of the listings are in the same property which is our primary residence. When it’s cold in Franklin, TN we have to leave due to my emergency health issues and at that time we rent out the main pet of our home. Then as soon as it’s warm enough to go back home for my health we will not be renting out the main part anymore and only have the two listings. We are in desperate need of help. Do I have to delete one of them to qualify. This grant can mean the difference of me getting medical care during these times along with us keeping one of these homes from going into default... please help me know what to do!

Thanks soooooo much Bryan and team for helping and supporting us hosts... we work really hard to book up and offer amazing spaces to each of our guests! We need supported back like this!

Mahalo, Danielle Pratt and family

[Luu13]

the message from airbnb CEO talks about paying hosts 25% of the fee they would have received normally if GUEST makes a cancellation.  What about host making cancellation? My guest requests me to cancel the reservation and airbnb still said I will be charged cancellation fee.

[Vitalia5]

Hello  @Aisling23 want to ask about grants - how Airbnb team could know that my place is a main source of income ? I am a superhost from 2017 and working only for AirBnB , can I expect for grant?

Regards,

Vitalia

[Lizzie]

Hello @Vitalia5,

Lovely to meet you. Since you have posted there has been a few updated to the Superhost Relief Fund and more details about the eligibility. Have you seen this Answers to your questions on the Superhost Host Relief Fund? article?  

All invites to eligible Superhosts are starting to go out and all of them will be sent out by May 15th. 

I hope this helps. Stay safe.

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Adeline239]

I have an Airbnb in my home. A private bedroom and bathroom with access to the living room and kitchen.

PA Gov Wolf has declared all of PA to shelter in place until the end of April, maybe longer.

I do not want to lose my Superhost status. Is it best for me to block all if April out or decline requests? 

Addie

[Lizzie]

Hello @Adeline239,

Good question. My name is Lizzie and I am a Community Manager here. Due to the current situation with bookings and travel in general, the Superhost team made some updates to the requirement for the April assessment period. You can read more about this in this article: Answers for Superhosts about the Coronavirus

I hope this helps. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Courtnay0]

Hello all!

I hope this post finds you all healthy and we'll. I live in New Mexico and like many hosts, have lost 100% of my reservations.

I currently have an inquiry from a guest coming from Florida. He states that his money is available on the 3rd which is his requested check in date. I don't really understand why his inquiry directed this information to me in the first place. Is AirBnB instructing guests that they are now in charge of paying hosts? It is quite confusing. Also, New Mexico has a 14 day required quarantine for all out of state travelers and the people they come in contact with. AirBnB is messaging me to respond to this inquiry to retain my response time as a Superhost. How am I supposed to deal with this? I desperately need the money from this 58 day reservation request... I am frightened to jeopardize my own health accepting this guest from Florida. I must respond in the next two hours.

Please advise!

Thanks all & stay safe!

Courtnay

[Sarah977]

@Courtnay0  Absolutely do not accept this reservation. Everyone is desperate for money right now, but we can't be making foolish decisions which endanger not only our own health, but the health of others (how is this guest thinking to travel? how many people is he going to come in contact with on the way? He obviously doesn't care)

Just message back saying you can't accept bookings at this time due to containment regulations for COVID. You don't need to either pre-approve or decline an Inquiry (as opposed to a Booking Request)- just messaging back within the 24 hours stops you from being penalized in any way. Also I'd click on the report button and report this guest. His message is bizarre- he wants you to accept a booking for tomorrow, that he says he will only be able to pay for tomrrow- chances are his payment method would bounce, he'd already be at your place, and you wouldn't be able to get him out due to quarantine restrictions.