@John5097
“It could start a new trend of disregarding the host and house rules”.
This is already a thing, thanks to Airbnb’s long standing tradition of discouraging guests from reading the house rules. It’s intentional....why risk a guest changing their mind and not booking a listing, after reading the house rules?
Remember when the house rules used to be buried at the very bottom of the listing? Then they made an improvement by moving the rules to the top, with a banner that read “make sure this host’s house rules work for you before you book...’click for details’”.
Not long after that, they quietly edited it to read the way it does now, burying the house rules well and good, once again.....“This host doesn’t allow pets parties or smoking...’click for details’. Well, no one is going to click for details, because that tells them all they need to know, right? They are clueless to the fact that there is a whole lot of unique info behind the link.
In my rules I ask the booking guest to supply me the full names of everyone on the booking (because Airbnb doesn’t share other guest info with hosts). I can tell you that 9 out of 10 guests aren’t reading my unique house rules because 9 out of 10 booking requests arrive without this info.
Then, at booking, the rules, cancellation policy, etc. are well hidden again, behind tiny little links that look like fine print. Things are certainly not set to improve, as we see in the video how fast and easy it is for guests to go from choosing a listing to booking. We have Brian himself setting a lovely example for guests by skipping over clicking the house rules when he was booking to stay with the alpacas. And he certainly wasn’t into sending a first message. Never mind those pesky extra steps, guest! Just book! A perfect illustration of the disregard Airbnb has for its hosts. Tone deaf comes to mind.
@Emilia42 I’m curious, with your recent experience booking as guest, were the hosts house rules included in your booking confirmation email? How were they displayed? That was another improvement they supposedly implemented and I'm wondering if it quietly went away or changed, too.