Search "Instant Booking" + "Host recommendation required" related bug

[Michael5689]

I sometimes do searches in a separate browser to check where my listing is showing up in the search results.  I'm not sure when this behavior changed but it looks to me like a bug has been introduced when you search with the "Instant Book" filter toggle button on.  I've been seeing some complaints from user about not being to find their home ever in the "All" category so I was doing some digging and this is what I found.

The bug is basically that an "unknown user" on the website (not logged in) will not see a home show up when the "Instant Book" search criteria are toggled on in the Filters and IF the host has Instant Book turned on AND the toggle button for "Host recommendation required" is turned ON.  I call this a "bug", because I tested this and it isn't affected by whether the "Government-issued ID required" or "Pre-booking message required" selections are toggled on.  This ONLY occurs if the "Host recommendation required" button is toggled on.  I know that as recently as March when I did these searches as an "unknown" and not logged in user that I could still see our property even with Instant Book turned on so it's a recent change in behavior.

I see no logical reason why this would be designed behavior.  If the intention was for unknown users to not the be able to see hosts that offer Instant book, then any of the instant book settings turning on would make it invisible to this search.  Also seems to really be against AirBNB's strategy to encourage as many hosts as possible to use Instant Book.

I saw this behavior on my desktop on  "Microsoft Edge Version 101.0.1210.47 (Official build) (64-bit)"  I don't think it's a browser related bug however as I also checked on my cell phone through Chrome where I had logged out of AirBNB and the same inability to find the home with "Instant Book" set in the criteria occurred if and ONLY IF I had the "Host recommendation required" toggle on.

@Pat271 I thought this one was an important enough bug that I'd report it through this forum anyway 🙂  AirBNB really needs to work on it's testing and not rush out a release just in time for the summer season with too many new features.

@Emilie I'm curious if there is a way to report bugs in a better defined intake form than this forum?  I've found a few others that don't rise to this level of importance and don't want to clutter the board with rather technical bug reports that might not add much value to most of the audience here.

[Christopher1417]

I've been complaining to AirBnB about this for at least a month.  They refuse to acknowledge the problem whenever I point it out to them.  I send them screenshots of how a property will just disappear from the search results when you turn the Instant Book filter on, even though the property has Instant Book turned on.  This "bug" along with their sketchy launch of the new category filters show how unreliable their searches are.  Their categories should have been tested and probably reviewed by hosts before rolling out to everyone with inaccurate results.

@Jenny 

[Michael5689]

@Christopher1417 Can you do the check of what happens if you toggle on and off the various criteria inside "Instant Book"?  I think the particular bug is related to the "Host recommendation required" criteria only.  But if that's what it's based on, I'm sure it hitting A LOT of people.

If I turn that criteria off, but leave the others on, I show up in Instant Book, but of course...I'm not willing to turn that criteria off.  I don't think this is a case of AirBNB surreptiously doing something as they want as many people to book Instant Book as possible but the other extra criteria don't turn off Instant Book capability.  I think it's a straight up bug.

[Michael5689]

@Christopher1417 @Pat271 @Emilia42 @Debra300   @Helen744 @Kristina46  @Ann72 It looks like this behavior has been "fixed" or changed depending upon your perspective now.  When I do an inCognito search when not logged into my AirBNB account my house is showing up in search listings again even if I have all the extra requirements turned on.  Seems AirBNB probably heard all the complaints by quietly fixed or adjusted the algorithm.  I believe this sort of behavior is back to the behavior I witnessed in the previous 2 years.

[Ann72]

That’s great @Michael5689!

[Ann72]

@Michael5689  I think it's always been true that a user who is not logged in will not see Instant Book properties, because don't you have to have an account to IB?  

[Michael5689]

@Ann72 I don't think so.  I've been doing that search for years while not logged in on a different browser and I've always been able to find my place.  Note that you can still find my place if you search filter for "Instant Book" even if not logged in.  Even with the "Government-issued ID required" or "Pre-booking message required" are toggled on for the "Instant Book" filter search setting the listing will show up.  It's only if  "Host recommendation required" is toggled on that it doesn't come up in search. 

It just doesn't make sense.  It would make sense if it didn't show up if  "Host recommendation required" OR "Government-issued ID required", but that's not the behavior I observe.  It's probably just some logical bug in their new code.  From a business strategy point of view it doesn't make sense for AirBNB either since they want owners to turn Instant Book on and they don't want to stop new users who haven't yet created their account from seeing the Instant Book properties that they could immediately book if they just created an account.

Mike

[Ann72]

Oh I didn't know that @Michael5689 but it's good to know.  I did that search years ago for my place with InstantBook filtered and didn't find it, and someone mentioned I wouldn't if I didn't have an account.  But your details make more sense.  It makes some sense to me that a listing requiring host recommendations wouldn't show to a non-registered user, because the algo would assume you didn't have an account and would therefore have no recommendations, no?

[Kristina46]

@Michael5689 I am in Hawaii. Last night I did a search for the west side of my island to see if my listing would show up and I found this. (screenshot attached.) All listings for Kailua-Kona contain the caption "Beans Beach." Now, having lived here exactly 30 years, and as a writer for Fodor's Travel Big Island of Hawaii print books since 2011, I can assure you, there is no such named beach anywhere on the island. If there is such a place, it's a little known nickname of a small beach and as such it would not be accurate to tag all of Kailua-Kona this way. So why on earth are listings turning up like this? Another bug? 

Continued searching and found listings for Waikoloa Village being identified as 49 Black Sand Beach, which they are not. 49 Black Sand Beach is a VERY exclusive area where Lisa Marie Presley once owned a home. It's not where most of the little people book a vacation rental. Yet it's tagged on listings in Waimea, Puako, Waikoloa and Waikoloa Village. 

What's going on? 

 

[Michael5689]

@Kristina46 Bean's beach shows up on a google map search, but yeah, it looks like it's well away Kailua-Kona from town without any homes near it.  The fact that it's in a google maps search means that beach is probably noted in a GIS database somewhere that these companies with a mapping function use.  I'd guess they changed AirBNB GIS data source or they are exposing some of the location tags on the GIS areas that they hadn't previously and hadn't realized until now something is inaccurate in their data set.  Or...their evaluation of longitude/latitude is seriously screwed up somehow and more of a bug on their end and not just peculiarities in the GIS database they are using.

[Kristina46]

That's what I figured.. Nickname on a google map perhaps? In any case all these hosts are going to get inquiries that ask, 'how far away from Beans Beach are you, is it walking distance?" 

Sounds like they need to hire locals to help them sort out proper locations. Google maps is not the definitive way to locate something, especially on an island like ours. 

[Michael5689]

There's definitely some potential for AirBNB to work more tightly with it's suppliers to help refine the product.  I haven't seen much evidence of that yet, but I could be missing something. 

[Kristina46]

Here's one I found this morning. This little house is located in a very remote section of the island with no good access to beaches. Yet here it is HIGHLIGHTED in the BEACHES category, tagged with Pohue Beach. Pohue Beach is not accessible except by 4WD and with the permission of neighboring property owners, whose land you have to cross.  It's a tiny sand spit of beach. Probably not much bigger than "Beans Beach." 

Are guests going to scream when they check in, realizing they are nowhere near any beach, let alone Pohue Bay?   Leave a bad review, demand a refund? These geotags are literally giving the wrong information about where these places are located and what they have access to. 

They should hire me to do a check on the Big Island listings' accuracies. Don't know a thing about IT like you do, but I do know where the beaches are and exactly where the properties are in relation to the beaches they are tagged to. (Except for "Beans beach," I have never heard of it! Yet it appears hundreds and hundreds of Kailua-Kona listings are now tagged to the infamous Beans Beach. Wonder if it was named after the now defunct sunset booze cruise called Captain Beans?)

 

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[Michael5689]

@Kristina46 I just did a live search to check out what you are talking about...yeah, that's hilariously bad.  For the Beans Beach tag, they are equating a beach 6 miles away from the Holualoa properties actual location when there are 10's of other closer beaches that it could have been mapped to.  That's really bad...

Even worse, scroll your map up the coast a bit with the "Beach" category on and zoom in on Kalaoa.  They show a property that the owner even notes as a 10-15 min drive from the closest beach.  The owner is even up-front and says Ocean Views in the title without claiming it's on the beach.  This AI is going to cause that home owner lots of problems for the people that don't read carefully when booking.  There's a freaking airport in between that place and a beach.

I can't believe they have left the entire category classification up to AI/ML.  The owner has taken some very nice photos and I see why the software classified it as beach, but I don't think the owner has taken misleading photos.  It's just a crappy algorithm/software that hasn't been trained on enough pictures...so bad...

[Michael5689]

I'm beginning to feel a bit sheepish about complaining in the heading of this post about a potential bug in an obscure corner case of Instant Book when orders of magnitude larger problems like this are out there 🙂