Step down Brian Chesky, petition by hosts

[Jasmin483]

Please support or decline to support the petition for Brian Chesky to step down for:

1. For overriding the cancellation policy and forcing hosts to act as travel insurance and fully refund guests from mid-March to mid-April

2. For extending the full cancellation policy to end of May.

3. For calling the miserable 10% help to hosts as "25% refund". The 25% of 50% of the reservation, minus Airbnb fees is not the 25% refund!
4. For now calling to extend the ever changing cancellation policy until Jun 15.

5. For directing the Customer Support to keep call us in order to refund guests our share, for all the reservations prior March 14, and putting blame on hosts.

We need consistent and reliable CEO who stands by his hosts and super-hosts. Without us there is no Airbnb.

If Brian Chesky does not step down by end of May, on June 1st, let's all deactivate our listings for one full day. Let's show him our power, and these Airbnb billionaires and venture capitalists idea what might come next.

[Melodie-And-John0]

Wow @Jasmin483 , dont hold back, just let it out, it will feel better even if Brian being replaced wont change a thing for us as hosts.  With all due respect Jasmin, I and all other hosts feel and have been experiencing all the things that your saying and more but expecting that Airbnb/ Brian and his teams to be firing perfectly on all 8 cylinders during a once in a century pandemic or off with his head seams like a very high expectation.  Nations, States and our local governments arent getting everything right at this moment, few if any have a background in anything resembling this, couple things to remember-

-these arent really cancellations of choice by our guests, they really are cancellations due to extenuating circumstances and those circumstances are still extenuating (hence the extended dates of the EC policy).

-  Hosts requiring payments for guest stays that couldn't by law and or shouldn't due to no fault of our potential guests is akin to theft.

-  We all lost some, quite a bit or lots but many people are losing everything to include their loved ones or their own lived due to a pandemic, losing money we didn't actually earn by providing a  service to receive is the least worst thing that could happen to us.  

Im sure you will get signatures but honestly, your only vote that matters at this point is with your feet, if you choose to stay or leave is your choice.  I bet most of us will still hosting using arguably the most successful lodging/ hosting service of all times, Airbnb.  Just my POV, stay well, JR

[Jasmin483]

By directing guests to ask for refunds prior to March 14, this CEO created so much tensions between us hosts and guests, and tensions between hosts and Customer Service representatives. This representatives are also put in the middle trying to defend something they don't believe in, and offering fake compassion by copying & pasting  in our exchanges always the same paragraphs given by their executives.

Most (at least 99%) of the guests had a single reservation cancelled. They would have financially survived in their single reservations was 50% refunded. But instead of that Brian Chesky forced us, hosts, to act a travel insurance and refund our 40% (50% - cleaning, Airbnb fees), and forced us to go bankrupt.

If he is not replaced by end of May, let's show this billionaire and venture capitalists our power and on June 1 suspend our listing for 1 day only! If they know we can unite, they will listen to us in future.

If this topic is deleted, we'll find a way to organize. Don't be discouraged by hosts defending this CEO in this topic. These are probably his people acting as hosts.

Full disclosure - I am just a host and working in NYC in totally unrelated industry. I don't represent any other organization, or being paid by it. I was planning to invest into Airbnb once it goes public, as I loved Airbnb until the moment Brian Chesky made one bad decision after another, divided hosts and guests, and us and customer representatives, fueled anger and hate with these 5 missteps.

He thinks he only need Airbnb guests to keep Airbnb alive. Let's show him he needs us hosts too!

[Fred13]

If you feel anger & hate, that is your choice and baggage to carry, and whoever you find to act as a porter of some of that baggage the more power to you. Certainly, not everyone is of the same mentality.

I been saying for years here;  Airbnb is only a booking service that -

1. Created an easy-to-use 'front end' program. In the gaming industry,  games with the best easy-to-play GUI's (Graphical User Interface) are always the most popular & profitable.

2. Airbnb has charged hosts a low minimal fee of 3%, and no what they charge to the guest is not really our business. I am a host, not a guest, nor a champion of economic justice. If the guest is willing to pay what they indeed charge, all is good, and guests sure found their charges more than acceptable judging by their numbers. 

3. They advertised like crazy in every avenue you can think of throughout the world, no wonder they became #1 with hosts, that advertising brought in the numbers. Unfortunately, the Airbnb model was/is risky: lay it all on the line all along the way till the finish line (IPO); but also no wonder a mere 2-3 month stoppage forces them to borrow money after 10 years in business at a usury 10%-11% rate. But hosts benefited greatly from all that spending (while charged only 3% to have your place advertised all over the world) and they did even the money collecting and payouts. 

As is always the case, some people took things for granted, and some even went 'wild', with some setting up 'STR empires' via risky LT sub-leasing and even building anew multiple dwellings just to 'Airbnb' them.  And then another virus came from China and panic spread throughout the land, who would have thought.

In a nutshell, Airbnb gave the world an extremely lucrative option to independent folks to make money from extra spare rooms in their private homes to even those aggressive enough that got into multiple dwellings. There were no guarantees that the gravy train would last forever without a hitch. The association with Airbnb has always been a symbiosis but not a partnership since neither party is compelled to be in business with one another. 

I wish them the best. 

[Sarah977]

@Jasmin483  What makes you think anything would change about the way Airbnb deals with hosts if Brian Chesky stepped down? He isn't the only one running the show.

[Jasmin483]

I cannot blame the customer service repesentstives or programmers, or even other directors. All the major decisions end with him. He put the people around him, and he should be the one responsible for listening to them.

A good CEO is always surrounded by people smarter than she/he.

I used to love Airbnb, but not sure any more. Hopefully the new CEO will regain our trust, be consistent, and rebuild the reputation they had before this crisis.

In good times it's easy to be good, but the hard times is when the real face is revealed.

[Sarah977]

@Jasmin483  "Hopefully the new CEO will regain our trust, be consistent, and rebuild the reputation they had before this crisis."

 Airbnb has been shafting hosts and making guest-centric decisions long before the COVID cancellations. If you think they had a good reputation before this, with all due respect, you're pretty naive.

[Fred13]

Good reminder @Sarah977 , they been guest-centric for quite a few years,  and we have had endless posts on this reality here. If any calamity was to happen, they weren't about to switch gear. That is why I subconsciously started shifting my bookings to 'direct' via my own web site for the last 3 years (today 50% Airbnb, 35% direct, 15% VRBO). Just in case, #1 reason? - Airbnb's EC policy.

[Fred13]

@Jasmin483 Didn't mean to come across as the 'heavy' above, but wanted to just illuminate why most of us are probably still with Airbnb, despite their shameful $1m Host Guarantee bs program,  PC mentality and of course their infamous EC axe which is always held above every reservation and decided by their all-over-the-place CS department. That is 7/10; I covered 4/7 good points above, give me sometime to up with 3 more. 😉

[J243]

Brian is probably the best hope we have in maintaining the integrity of the company. If he steps down it would likely be taken over by corporate overlords, investors, etc. I really think he is doing all he can to help hosts and guests equally within means while also maintaining safety. This isn't easy for anyone. However I personally got 25% of my cancellation fees and was happy with it. I understand if other people have different experiences. 

[Jasmin483]

It's not 25%. Do the math. It's about 10% of your reservation or less. They made up that 25% of the 50% payout minus cleaning fess and Airbnb fees, to make it sound it's more. It's politics and dishonesty.

And with 10% in NYC you cannot even pay the utilities bills, and forget about paying the mortgage or rent, or feeding your family.

I was happy to refund half to my guests and share the hardship in this crisis, even though it's only a single reservation for each of my guests, and I'm affected by all of the reservations. But, Brian Chesky and his genius team decided that we hosts has no say in this, and took all our money. 

Not only that, he apologized for doing this in March and April, but then continued to take our money in May, and also in June. But now you are not getting the pocket change of 10%.

When you contact customer support, they just copy and paste some nice message of fake compassion composed by their executes, which only makes you feel even more miserable. 

He showed zero leadership,  zero accountability, zero compassion, and zero vision. Brian Chesky, step down and save this company! You still get to keep your billions.