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

[Sarah977]

@Lai-Yuen-Jean0 When your host refused to accept the cancellation, you should have contacted Airbnb- I can't understand why you agreed for her to send you $ outside the platform. It's hard to reach Airbnb right now, but keep trying, and explain to them what happened. As soon as they hear she asked for your banking info and to send money ouside the platform, they will probably pull her listing down entirely and ban her. And I think they may also make sure you are refunded properly- they seem to pretty much be refunding everyone right now.

BTW, Oaxaca City is on total lockdown, so you wouldn't have been allowed to travel there anyway. Tell Airbnb this as well.

[Lai-Yuen-Jean0]

@Sarah977 yes, i did contact Airbnb support right away and they did not take any action!  on top, my host claimed she does not know how to refund money via platform as there is no support from platform...  i also messaged (as impossible contact via phone) to the Airbnb support about price gouging and malpractice from the host and support center "helpbot" closed my thread!  

Look like this host will get her way in this chaotic period!  it is sad to see people/company turn their heads other ways when things getting tough and difficult!  

I was there for school and really sad to leave!  Glad to hear Mexico/Oaxaca is doing something!  i am in end of 1st week self-quarantine in my apartment, still stand for my decision to come back NY despite staggering case/death here, instead stay put in Mexico as there is so much unknown what is going on and will happen in Mexico!   

[Lizzie]

Hello @Lai-Yuen-Jean0,

Lovely to meet you. Ooo this sounds a little complicated, but I'm sure we can get to the bottom of it. @Sarah977 is completely right, it is taking our Support Team a little longer to get back to all tickets at the moment, due to the sheer volume, but as Aisling says here, things are improving a lot. 

In general, all payments should go through Airbnb to prevent you have to share any bank details or receiving the incorrect amount. 

If you have already contacted the team and are waiting for a response they will get back to you. I'll also flag it to my colleague to make sure that all is well. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Lizzie]

Hello @Lai-Yuen-Jean0,

Just to get back to you here, I've check on this and the ticket is open and will be looked at soon. 

I hope this helps.

Thank you,

Lizzie

[Lai-Yuen-Jean0]

Noted and thanks @Lizzie!  Waiting the team to get back to me!

[Nina69]

Mine too, March 14 and I have spoken to 5 different people who have ZERO answers.  WE should be getting our 25% at least in a timely manner and we are not.  Has ANYONE reading gotten anything?

[Betsy13]

Airbnb, please educate guests about the impact COVID-19 is having on hosts. 

Airbnb guests are notoriously entitled, rude, and more demanding than all of my other guests.  But they are taking it to the next level on COVID-19.  They expect us to behave like large, deep-pocket corporations and offer 100% refunds on any date, regardless of Airbnb's emergency policy.  They are either ignorant or don't care about the fact that most hosts are small-business owners who count on this income for their livelihood.

I am doing my best as a host to be kind and accommodating, but am shocked at how rude and demanding many guests are.  Airbnb is a community of guests and hosts - this platform is a two-way street.  Just as guests expect hosts to honor their commitment to offer their home on the agreed date, hosts expect guests to honor their commitment to pay the booking fee according to the agreed terms.  Hosts have already given up 100% of their income in March/April due to Airbnb's emergency COVID-19 policy (which was implemented without notice or consent of hosts).  This isn't extra money that we were using to take a holiday.  It is money we need to pay our mortgage, our water bill, our electric bill.  

Many guests assume that Airbnb is covering our losses - not true. 

Many guests assume hosts are being greedy and taking money for doing nothing - not true.  

Many guests assume that hosts don't care - not true.

We are bending over backwards to help our guests during this time, despite suffering huge losses (even if we refund according to the terms of cancellation policies we are easily losing 50% or more of our income). We are simply trying to stay afloat. 

We know guests didn't expect to have to cancel.  Hosts didn't expect it either.  Cancellation policies are written in a way that is meant to protect BOTH sides.  (Although, even honoring cancellation policies right now is disproportionately detrimental to hosts - because they are written in a way to protect hosts from the OCCASIONAL cancellation, not mass cancellations like we are being asked to cover now.)

Please, Airbnb.  Guests take their cue from how you handle these situations.  And so far, the message they seem to have received (and frankly, hosts also feel that this is Airbnb's view) is that hosts are disposable doormats.  

[Frank35]

Hey Betsy,
thanks for your posting, a very good one!

I share your opinions and as I said in one of my posts from a few days ago: if AirBnB is a community, AirBnB has to figure out a way to share the (financial) burden. Because as you say: for a pretty large group of hosts, it would be absolutely devastating to be forced into accepting 100% refunds (and not even having a say in the decision process).

Being a community means sharing the burden and the solution is simple math: if a group of ten people book a long weekend for EUR 1000 and are only being refunded with 50%, they end up paying EUR 50 each. Which is a bummer but its not the end of the world.

But if a host loses the full amount of EUR 1000 and this happens over a period of lets say 3 to 6 months, we will not have a community of hosts anymore, because a lot of these hosts, a lot of US will be gone and out of business.

[Alicia718]

@Betsy13 airbnb is literally telling guests the company can not help them and instructing guests to work it out with the hosts. Airbnb is treating the hosts like they are the $30 Billion Corporations by routing customers complaints about the extenuating circumstances policy to the hosts. 

[Joanna39]

Hey Betsy13

Thank you for your post, I totally agree with the experience you have shared. Like many hosts, I lost almost 100% bookings in the EC dates and this hit us hard. I am now receiving cancellation requests for dates that fall way outside of the EC dates and guests demanding 100% refunds. When I refer them back to Airbnb's EC policy and offer them 50% refund as per our strict cancellation policy, guests have become incredibly threatening, rude, personal and then use bullying and harassment to try to get what they want. Airbnb has done a disastrous job of educating guests and supporting hosts and they have made this situation as unbearable as possible. Not only have we lost income but the bullying and harassment is making life incredibly stressful. I'm sure like me, many hosts are ready to go elsewhere once all is said and done.

[Trudi15]

Well said. 100% agree. 

[Aisling]

Hello @Betsy13 ,

Thank you for your message. I'm sorry you've received rude comments from some of your guests, I do hope this is the minority.

We know that this is a difficult time for all hosts and guests, with all the uncertainty that lies ahead. After the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, we updated our Help Center and added disclaimers to the booking flow to inform guests that reservations booked after March 14th will not be eligible for our COVID-19 extenuating circumstances policy, since its consequences were no longer unforeseen or unexpected.

We have created a resource center at airbnb.com/covid19 to help everyone stay informed, which has designated sections for both hosts and travelers.

Last week Brian announced that Airbnb will pay hosts a portion of what they would have received for COVID-19 cancellations, and we'll be launching a new program that makes it easy for your previous guests to send financial support directly to you later this month.

We hope these changes help to ease the burden hosts are carrying, but we will continue to look for additional ways to support both sides of our community as we navigate this crisis together. We appreciate your patience with us as we refine our approach.

-Aisling

[Paolo-and-Cristina0]

@AnonymousGood evening everyone. Certainly this pandemic is an unexpected situation for all sectors and it is not easy to manage it better. I identify with both the guests (we are too and at the moment we find ourselves stuck, unable to travel due to the restrictions implemented during our trip and we are paying for accommodation that fortunately can accommodate us, given that many countries have ordered closure of many structures) and with hosts since in our case, we are professional hoteliers.

We are aware that the health situation is much more important than anything else and protecting travelers and hosts is obviously important.

But we believe it is equally important that Airbnb find the right solution, to protect guests and hosts. Guests in this situation are receiving full refunds for the inability to travel but it is the hosts who have found themselves in the situation of being overwritten by the cancellation terms from Airbnb, which has not protected in the least, the hosts, who are the pillar of this platform , which would have no travelers if there were no hosts with their houses.

We believe a 50% refund would help all Hosts to cover their employees' wages costs, taxes, mortgages they are paying. Perhaps splitting the costs in half would have been a more acceptable and reasonable solution for everyone.

We had to close all our 5 structures, now having zero income, 34 contract employees to be supported and paid and with the repayments due in total.

This pandemic is certainly not the fault of the guests but neither is it the fault of the hosts. We wish Airbnb will agree to review the imposition of cancellation terms from April 14th. This method has become a weapon for guests, who do not take in consideration, the proposed date change, without time limits, given that travelers are aware that Airbnb will soon change the terms for mitigating circumstances again. Certainly Airbnb has many more means than us 'small entrepreneurs' to cope economically with the losses of this emergency. Many of us risk not being able to reopen their homes/hotel. Thanks for your kind consideration. Wish Airbnb can support us.

Keep safe : )

Cristina & Paolo

[Joško5]

I am already 72 hours waiting for Airbnb support. Still no answer. 

[Dina548]

Ne ocekujte pomoc uskoro,  ja vec 9 dana cekam na bilo kakav odgovor.