Four things that I wish Airbnb would change.

[Nicole1904]

I have been a host with Airbnb since August of 2018.  I am a super host with a 5-star rating.  Most of the time I like Airbnb but there are, currently, four things that I really do not like.

1) A laptop is required to respond to guest reviews.  What year of technology are we in?  Tablets and smart phones should be allowed as devices of communication.

2) If a guest is having a good time and wishes to extend their stay it is impossible for the guest or the host to update the reservation.  This should be easy!  It's not!

3) When a guest has agreed to pay the security deposit for damages it should be automatic that Airbnb then arranges payment with the guest but instead they go on to require the host to furnish photos and write an essay.  The guest has agreed!  Arrange payment.  Easy.

4) Hosts should be able to easily cancel a reservation, without penalty, and without blocking the calendar from future reservations.  While I'm sure that there are inconsiderate hosts I find it hard to believe that is the majority.  I find this to be too controlled.

[Alexandra199]

I like your post and I hope you dont mind me jumping on and continuing. I agree with all your point and would add:

5) If a host has set their booking requirements in such a way that the host expects a photo/government ID on the profile then guests should not be able to book unless they have both these. It is not for the host to chase this up with the guest.

6) The location and value star ratings should be removed. The value rating should at least be disabled whenever a host has had to claim for damage.

7) Host reviews about a guest should be immediately visible to other hosts. I had a guest who caused a lot of damage at her previous Airbnb. She then came to mine, but because there was a delay of 14 days before the previous hosts review was visible to me I accepted her booking. She caused extensive damage at my property too. I would not have accepted her booking I had known.

Great post x

[Nicole1904]

Thank you! I agree with your points.

[Helen350]

@Alexandra199 

7) Reviews are sometimes not immediately visible because both sides have 14 days to write one. Some hosts, if a guest was bad, leave it till the last minute in the hope that the bad guest won't write theirs. Hosts fear that if a bad guest sees a message that the host has written a review as soon as they checked out, the bad guest will think "Couldn't wait to write a bad review", & leave a dreadful one in anticipation.... Hosts hope that by waiting, the bad guest will think host has not reviewed & does not intend to.... Host writes theirs with 10 mins left to go, and hopefully guest doesn't notice in time to reply! - I've only done this once, & did feel a bit bad that they'd stayed at several more Airbnbs in the following days, (where they got glowing reviews) before my review appeared. 

[Anonymous]

@Nicole1904 I agree with you on the first point - the mobile app has always lagged behind desktop in functionality.

On 2 - I've always found it pretty easy to extend a stay by clicking Change Booking and submitting a request to change the checkout date.

On 3 - I wasn't aware that documentation was being required for resolution requests that have already been accepted. If that is the case, it does seem unnecessary.

4 - This is where we probably disagree. As a guest, I've been all too frequently disappointed by how careless and unprofessional even some well-reviewed hosts can be, and it's pretty hard to book with any confidence on Airbnb again after you've been cancelled on for a preventable or frivolous reason. I'd  prefer for Airbnb to ditch the "acceptance rate" and stop treating 4-star ratings as a miserable failure, but with so many low-commitment and amateur hosts in the mix I feel like there needs to be a pretty strong deterrent against host cancellations (excepting the reasons already covered by Extenuating Circumstances and Covid-19 policy). .

[Lisa723]

@Anonymous on 2, it has also been my experience that once a stay has begun it cannot be changed. But now I see: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1363/can-i-change-my-reservation-during-the-trip

So, possibly, an improvement has occurred?!

[Nicole1904]

Thanks for the link.  I hope that this info holds true because last summer was a nightmare for myself and one of my guests trying to extend her stay.

[Nicole1904]

On 3, I am very sorry that you have had bad experiences with hosts.  It doesn't make sense to me, though, because Airbnb makes it very difficult for a host to cancel.  There are penalties so why any host would be frivolous about canceling seens very odd to me.  Anyway, I've just had to cancel a reservation because the guest wanted to communicate solely outside of Airbnb due to the fact that he locked himself out of his account.  His messages made me feel uncomfortable.  See, it's a two-way street.

[Lisa723]

@Nicole1904 right-- Airbnb applies penalties including blocking the dates precisely to prevent frivolous cancellations.

If you are uncomfortable with a reservation, particularly if this is due to the guest violating Airbnb's terms of service, you should be able to get a penalty-free cancellation by calling Airbnb.

[Anonymous]

@Lisa723  I don't think it's a violation of terms of service to communicate outside of the platform after a booking is confirmed. But if the guest claims to be locked out of his account, that would definitely merit some intervention from customer service - and possibly a penalty-free cancellation if the guest does not cooperate. 

[Sarah977]

@Anonymous @Nicole1904  Yesterday I looked at a host's reviews- this host had started a thread a couple years ago, a thread which just got resurrected by another poster, about her poor treatment by CS and went on and on at great length, posting all the exchanges between herself and CS. She was, in fact, wrong about being right 🙂 so I was curious and looked at her reviews. She had about 300 reviews and fully half of them said the place was dirty and that the toilet flushed so loud next to their wall that it continually woke them up. She had obviously never made any moves to remedy the cleanliness , or the toilet functioning, or even mention the loud toilet in her listing. Additionally, she was firmly convinced that listing the living room as a shared space meant that she could deny the use of the space to a guest if she had a friend or family member staying over and sleeping on the couch (this was one of her battles with CS, because guests had complained that she listed the living room as common, but refused to let them use it)

Not only did she appear to be a poor host as far as understanding that her listing was inaccurate, and remedying the cleanliness issue, she had the highest number of cancellations I have ever seen on a host's profile. I didn't count them, but there had to be at least 20-25 over a 2 year period.

So I agree, there have to be consequences to cancelling on guests unless it's for a valid reason that falls under the ECs. Although I think it might be reasonable to allow one no-penalty cancellation per year that doesn't require documentation.

[Verlean1]

I have not had problems writing a review using my phone. In fact I sue my phone 99% of the time to do so. 

inalso have not problems making changes to the reservations - also using my phone. 

Maybe verify you have the latest app updates loaded. 

I agree with all the other details you provided. 

[Nicole1904]

I can write a review but I cannot reply to one to say thank you.  I was able to do it in 2018 but now I can't.  I contacted Airbnb about why I am unable to respond to a review and they told me that due to security reasons you can only use a laptop.

I expect that I am using the up to date version of the Airbnb app.  It should update automatically on both my phone and my tablet, right?

[Anonymous]

@Nicole1904  You'll have to check your device's Settings to see whether you've set the permissions to auto-update a downloaded app.

But if you want to thank a guest for a nice review, sending a direct message is the way to do that. Guests don't receive notification when a public response has been posted to their review, so unless they're looking at your listing again for some reason , they'll never see your comment. The audience for a Public Response is all the prospective guests viewing your listing, but a lot t of hosts seem to think it's an appropriate place to write a personal message to the guest. It's not.