HONEST QUESTION, what is the challenge as a host?

[Mohamed242]

Hello everybody,

I hope everything is well. I am new to this platform and just wanted to know a couple of things. What is the biggest challenge that you face as an Airbnb Owner. Would it be dealing with clients? Getting bookings? Scheduling conflicts? Cancellations?

I Just wanted to hear it from you guys/gals since you have way more experience than me and actually have to deal with these kind of stuff.

Thank you so much!

Mohamed

[John2355]

How is that you have it where people can stay for months?

People actually do this?

[Celia160]

Airbnb have charged a guest less than stated on my calendar. How do I contact them about this?

[Stephanie]

Hey @Celia160 ,

Here is the toll free number for the French Airbnb CS team: +33-184884000

Many thanks,

Stephanie

[Kim610]

For me, it would be guests that entitle themselves to an early check in and late check out without ever asking if it would be something I could accommodate. It's a big issue when I have back to back bookings and my cleaning folks get put in the middle of the problem. The cleaning people get frustrated with me and the guest get frustrated with me (how they can be frustrated with me on this, I have no idea).

The biggest stressor for me though, is when an appliance breaks during their stay: i.e. water heater stops working or the air conditioner goes out. Guests have very little patience for big items such as this. I do my very best to get a technician there as soon as possible but I can't always turn on a dime. But guests expect instant correction. I usually end up  partially comp'ing their stay. How much, you ask? That's the million dollar question. It varies from situation to situation.

[Mohamed242]

Yess I can imagine! I hope things will keep rolling well for you. 🙂

[John2355]

Yes, I've always wondered about this thanks posting about this.

[Paul1553]

Hello - All good shares on your experience. airbnb customer service can be rigid, unempathetic, and resistance to evolve. For instance, guests book for one only and show up with two, or guests who say book for two and show up with four. Fire code in one of my units permts two max and for security only the people identified prior to occupancy. airbnb agents would suggest to modify the booking and you will have to point out fire code as in the listing descritpion already. This also neglects the premiss of transparency and utmost good faith, meaning the community will only work if bookings give the host ALL pertinent information needed to decide if he/she will accept the booking or not. airbnb and will then give the offender who did not use tranparency/utmost good faith a public platform to slander, libel, defame the host. Yes even though the guest broke the rules. 

I had to go through countless agents and point out that airbnb own policy (cut and pasted from airbnb site) to get somone to delete the review. Big props for airbnb that an agent actually listened. They would say reviews are to give ithers a true perpective of the experience. Then when a booker does the same again, book 2 and show up with four. You will have to go through the same process again. This is a form of blackmail/extortion, allow me to enter with four even though I booked for two or else I will malign host publicly. 

I am impressed that 2 agents have listened and used common sense so far and after 100+ reviews i am not superhost because of mainly fraudulent libel, slander, review blackmial and rating. 

Amount to .03% of booking as I am still a 4.6. 

airbnb needs to support us and place prminently on their site, break the rule, do not use transparency, NO platform to malign/extort.

This is my first post to the community. Thanks for all your support.

At least we have each other.

[Mike1034]

@Paul256 I agree with Paul in terms of the review system AirBnb has. Even you have just one bad and lying guest who give you one star rating, your entire ratings fall sharply. And AirBnb has a very strict rating for becoming/maintaining a superhost status at 4.8. This means that you will need to have 20 ratings with 5 to offset a 1 star rating in order to maintain at 4.8.

AirBnb says that they tried to keep their rating system fair and transparent. But with a bad guest who breaks rule and still able to leave you a 1 star rating, how can his review be fair and can justify?

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

Completely agree with @Sandra126 and  @Sarah 

Changing the platform without notice.

Changing/implementing policies that are very disrespectful of or harmful to hosts & homeowners. 

Overall lack of consistency in the way issues/problems are addressed and handled. 

Lack of reliability of the platform. (lots of bugs, errors, data not showing properly etc.)

The totally condesending & rude tone of most ABB notices and announcements.

The fact that a lot of ABB CS will break ABB's own rules/policies in order to satisfy a guest. Most frequent being, ABB CS "reaching out" to hosts on behalf of guests who cancel last minute and are NOT eligible for a refund, nagging/pressuring/guilting hosts into issuing a refund saying it's the "right" thing to do, even though the cancellation policy very clearly states the guest gets no refund if they cancel X days before the intended check in date.

I've hosts a lot of great guests, and this is because I did a good job of screening even though ABB did not make it easy.

[Marie21]

for me, the biggest challenge is guests who don't read your listing and expect to have items u never mention or even offer in our listing.  And think when they book an entire apartment they can invite anyone to stay  with them

[Mike1034]

@MarieLaure3 Indeed this is not only an issue of guests, it also is the issue of AirBnb to allow guests breaking rules without penalty. And even AirBnb allow them to leave a bad review on guests. Therefore, many guests are afraid of getting a bad review and tried to accommodate guests unreasonable requests for something not on the listing.

[Mike1034]

@Mohamed242 Here are the major issues I have encountered

1.  AirBnb review systems has big flaw. It encourages guests to break rules without penalty since many hosts are afraid of getting bad reviews from guests and would allow guests to abuse house rules.

2. AirBnb as a company supports and protects guests more than hosts. Just a couple of examples:

(1) AirBnb recently implemented a new policy to hide guests' information before the booking is confirmed. When a guest is booking a room, only a first name appears in the booking which a host can see. There are no full name, no photo, no location, and no other profile related information about the guest. This protects the guest primary entirely, but expose the huge risks on hosts because hosts don't know who they are going to accept and stay in their home. Most of AirBnb hosts just rent a room or two in the house where they live.

(2) AirBnb customer service fights for guests no matter if a guest request violates rules and policy set on the listing. e.g. a strict cancellation policy is a guest will not get a full refund after 48 hours from booking. But when a guest complained to AirBnb customer service, the host will get a call from AirBnb rep asking to provide a full refund to the guest. 

3. AirBnb searching algorithm does not return location relevant results. Normally about 50% of the listings appear on the first page are not at the location you enter in the search field. Some listings at or very close to the location entered are pushed back to the second, third, or even further down.

4. A very small percentage of guests don't respect house rules and hosts' property. They hide their intention for hosting a big party with cigarette smokers, weed smokers, and trashed hosts' properties, damaged furniture, stealing etc. This can be attributed to screening process which AirBnb has. 

[Ann72]

@Mohamed242 So what is it you're selling?