Interesting..

[Fred13]

After 8 years with Airbnb, being part in 2 of their advertising campaigns, Superhost forever, and invited to many, many of their workshops, I have never booked a stay via Airbnb. Maybe is because my wife is a Bookings.com aficionado and she always makes all the plans. This time on a trip to Paris (next week) I thought it would be a great idea to finally try an Airbnb. First thing I noticed...

Every place (apartments) close to the Louvre/EiffelTower, etc we looked at had no official name outside of 'apartment or condo at X address/zone'. My sister, who we are dragging along this time been an artist in love with the Impressionist era and masters, asked us what was the name of the place in case we get separated - we had no clue. We had to dig the 2-month old e-mails to tell her where it was, but to date we can't detect anything else to differentiate it by name from the zillion other similar listings in Paris. 

How interesting. I can imagine how deadpan it would be to just call our place 'an island in Belize'.

[John5097]

@Fred13 

I think they should rely on input and experience from host who consistently achieve the highest ratings. 

I'm sure as you recall and may have a different take on it, we were hopeful that the host advisory board would do just that, but instead it seemed to be another marketing campaign, and the board members were more like bots, which is also the undercurrent of the Airbnb sponsored forums. Although I liked and respected all the board members and have all been fantastic host and eager to help other hosts.

It's taken years to move past the backlash from CEO refunding guest over covid.

In a lot of ways Airbnb does have good and fair policy also and very trustworthy, yet with so many negative news stories the brand name is being compromised. To a large extent I think more host using Request to Book would help. It would need to be within reason though. Airbnb could keep track of acceptance rate and response time to accept. It would just help prevent some of the abuse from some of bad individuals.

The background check may actually help resolve a lot of that. I mean the tech companies can likely know exactly who someone is. We are seeing it play out, and bad guest may not be feel so emboldened if they know they will be banned and will be very difficult to have access to the platform again.

AI will likely also help identify what listings are doing well based on reviews and also guest feedback. As it is now, I agree that there is more risk with newer listings.

I think even here at the CC helps catch host who have been targeted by scammer or retaliation reviews.

I have a unique strategy but won't get into that but always get guest who plan way in advance but that wouldn't a policy for most.

Finally if they decide to reach out to more host, the most outstanding listings, for more insights, you should be at the top of the list! Not sure if I've ever said this but many host including me would do well to try and emulate your take on things and measured responses, which are always insightful and thought provoking.

There have been a few times my listing bookings and views really suffered, as I booked up months in advance without a single review, they all got canceled when covid hit, even before a review, so the algo thought something was really wrong with mine but was already booked up way more than most so had more cancelations. Host have to adjust and be smart but I'm not sure that's always good enough. 

Well I'm sure someone else has some better ideas! Enjoy your trip! 

    

[Fred13]

Excellent post @John5097 , I missed it at first because my crazy artist sister was dragging me around all around Paris for the last 6 straight days.

   I get invited very often to the Airbnb workshops and there I get to share not only my perspective but also those of the posters here. I do find the Airbnb representatives are very interested in improving the brand by addressing existing flaws.

    Of late I find myself championing additions to the calendar to make it a dynamic tool,  awareness of the dangers of the obvious 'retaliatory' type of review specially since some crazy  guest has so little to loose but the host certainly does,  and thirdly hold guests accountable to the same degree as hosts since there shouldn't be two separate tiers of justice between  both entities.

  Again excellent post John.