Is Airbnb replacing Hosts with Hotels?

[Maria481]

Yesterday one of my regular customers tried to book my house for his work crew and the reservation was blocked and the guest was advised to book a hotel (with a link provided). He was booking for a whole week, had a long string of 5star reviews, was over 25 yrs old. He has a local account because he is booking for his out of town employees and he was booking the same day. This kind of booking is a significant part of our guest demographic, local people trying to find a place for their families visiting from out of town or work groups. If he had not called me to tell me about this incident and sent me a screenshot I would have never known. It's possible we've lost many other bookings for this reason. 

Particularly now that travel is restricted, the bulk of our guests would be from the local area. This is the most disturbing thing I've seen so far.

I feel that Airbnb is slowly trying to eliminate hosts from the equation. 

What's next? Airbnb cleaning crew and property managers will replace hosts and just do do direct deals with homeowners, edging out all STR managers? 

Thoughts?

[Chris13914]

I’m so grateful for this thread. We just had someone try to book. They messaged us saying that they received a message from Airbnb that reads, “we have implemented restrictions that prevent guest from making reservations of entire homes when a pattern of factors suggest that the booking may present higher safety risks.”

The request came from a local who has no reviews and described themselves as a college student.

Still, it’s unsettling that we did not receive any notification as hosts or an option to approve the request. At first I thought the whole thing was a scam until I found this thread. Thanks for posting!

[Crystal378]

I have screen shots guests have sent me who were previous guest but now are blocked.  I think everyone should keep track of all the reservations that are losing.  

I agree 100%.  Airbnb should be transparent and set a notification for host(s) to receive letting us know if a reservation has been deferred or blocked.  This is going to be a real problem.  People who want an Airbnb want a kitchen to cook, a yard, a home away from home.  Not getting that in a hotel and it's really unfair for Airbnb to be able to do this without our approval or acceptance.

[Colleen253]

@Crystal378 It's a good thing that those 'blocked from booking' returning guests can still contact you, so you can direct them to book through another platform, or directly with you 😉 

Way to go Airbnb.

[Hamed537]

this happened to me as well and im under 25. I had my dad create an account (the account im using right now) to see if it would let him book the same place and the same message popped up. How frusturating. It must have detected the same card information or something . i am calling customer service tomorrow