What's new in the Community Center

[Stephanie]

Hi everyone,

The Airbnb Community team is very excited that we have launched our updated Airbnb Community Center. 

To celebrate its 7th year, the Community Center has undergone a significant upgrade based on feedback from you, our Hosts. The update not only includes a new lick of paint, but we’ve simplified it, so you can connect with other Hosts and hear from Airbnb with greater simplicity! 

The update aims to improve areas such as finding inspiration, mobile experience, and more seamless navigation. 

Over the next few days, we will be migrating conversations to the new Community Center, so you may notice some content takes time to re-appear. We have also paused notifications until Friday. If you have any feedback, please share it here.

Here is a quick summary of what is new and what we are most excited about! 

• Find inspiration and starting a conversation: Conversation Boards now have a clearer purpose and are more specific. Within each board, you can use tags to filter topics down even more to find specific content that is right for you. Here are main boards to find inspiration:

• Managing listings: All things hospitality, from refining your listing to discussing Airbnb products to suit your business.
• Improving spaces: Let your creativity shine and take inspiration from your Host community on sprucing up your space, honing your hosting checklist and exploring sustainability.  

• Hosting guests: Share about how best to optimise your space and business for the types of guest that best suit you.

• Handling finances: Think about your business, learn about different tools and strategies to fill up your wallet.

• Community Cafe: Talk about anything and everything you want to with community members from around the world.

• Just for Hosts: A private board where only logged Hosts can read and write posts. This board does not show up in search engine results and never be viewed by members that are guests.

We have also improved the navigation so that it is easier to start a new conversation and to respond to existing ones! 

• Mobile-minded: Over the last 2 years,  53% of Hosts on average used a mobile phone to post on the Community Centre  - and we heard from a lot of those posters that the mobile experience left a lot to be desired. With that in mind, our new design makes it seamless to navigate from Desktop to tablet to mobile phone. 

• A quicker read: We’ve reduced the amount of clicks you need to do to find content that’s relevant to you. Whether you’re searching for something specific or what to find inspiration within a specific category, you’ll find it easier than ever to get to what is relevant to you.

So with all the changes we’ve shared, I’m sure you’re keen to get stuck in and explore.

What do you like about our redesign?

We loved consulting with you during the process and look forward to hearing how the wider Community takes to the upgrade!

Thanks,

Stephanie

[Deb216]

@Stephanie   I personally love love love being able to use my cell phone (an Android) to update my calendar.  Now I'm able to see the nightly rate on each day as well as block or unblock a specific date.  In the past, I had to run to my desktop to be able to make changes.  So, I Thank you and your Team for these changes.

[Gordon0]

@Stephanie's post is about the CC update, @Deb216, not the Airbnb app itself, unless I'm mistaken?

Personally, I'm not loving it. Attractive design, but it's all a bit messed up now. Not sure where I'd go (it would normally be the 'top posts', but this view doesn't show the full story anymore) for the stuff I'm interested in seeing. 

[Stephanie]

Hi @Gordon0 ,

Thanks for the feedback - we're still moving over the recent October conversations which is probably why you're not seeing everything you'd like to. Everything will be settled by the weekend so if it's still dodgy, please let us know!

Thanks

[Mark116]

@Gordon0  Yeah I feel the same way, okay its nice, more white space and more open, but now everything is in a silo.  Isn't 'greeting guests' part of 'growing your business' and managing your listing'?  These designations seem very arbitrary and overlapping.  It is very difficult to find any previous discussions unless they are in your personal notification list. It seems like many, many more clicks to me.  But, whatever, Airbnb always does whatever it wants and always claims everything it does is a fabulous success.

[Stephanie]

Appreciate the feed back @Mark116 and by all means, keep it coming. We will keep iterating and adapting this space. A lot of content is still in the process of migrating so conversations you're missing will all be available by end of Friday. 

The names of the boards was devised from a taxonomy report - we looked at all the majority mentioned terms and keywords, tags applied and also how Hosts speak in customer support tickets too!

From that we broke the terms into major areas of Hosting without being over the top with the number of boards we show. Looking into the tags on the board makes it clear what type of content we expected to see in there too!

That being said - we can absolutely add, remove and rename those tags on a board level if you think overlap is needed, tags are missing or something doesn't fit right.

Thanks

[Gillian166]

@Gordon0  I think they did something to the phone version, but I can't tell what! looks like the same changes there too.

[Gillian166]

What is actually new? it's all just moved around. 

What was taken away that we haven't noticed yet? 
seeing who has a liked a post. is that gone now?

Another place I contribute to did a forum redesign and also make categories, and nobody could find anything. A year later and contributor engagement is still  way down on what it was the year before. 

Are there any actual new features? I'm not sure I think that "fewer clicks" is correct. eg, now to see Top, Recent, Unanswered, it's TWO clicks, not ONE. 

It looks prettier, but I didn't mind what we had. 

[Gillian166]

what else is gone....

In addition to seeing who created the post, we used to be able to see who  was the last person to comment.  Had this feature been removed too?

[Mark116]

@Gillian166  Yes that is gone, and also gone is a way, at least I can't do it, to click on the poster's listing.  I click on profile and it only shows me the postings in the CC, but won't take me to their listing.  Making much of the questions various people have about using the service impossible to comment or help with anymore. 

[Gillian166]

@Mark116  yes I brought this up, and others have noticed already. 

So far i'm seeing some cosmetic changes and 3 functions removed.  

This feature was really handy to recognise spammers, and to offer help. it also kept everyone honest about their listing. If you want to be anonymous: go to other forums. 

[Mark116]

@Gillian166  Yes, but more than that, if someone comes to the CC and says 'this listing was inaccurate XYZ' or help me with my listing, or I had this problem, there is no way for anyone on CC to check anything. 

We can't offer any advice or guidance if we can't see what either the host or guest are talking about, can't help with house rules if we can't read them.  It takes the most useful actual function of the CC [guests and hosts helping each other] out of the equation. Very strange, especially since customer service is so terrible.

[Jenny838]

I LOVED to lurk this forum (it’s my secret favorite pass time), but will no longer be a part of it. I hate this update and it does not seem to work on my mobile device. I had no issues with the old layout working on my phone.  This one makes me type blind as the reply topic disappears as I type. I wish Airbnb would STOP making these useless and frustrating changes. 

[Joelle43]

Hello @Stephanie and everyone else,

I've been reading the various comments and it seems more of a case of "what don't you like about our redesign?"😅

I like the fact that I can add emoji's at last on my Mac!  The font seems larger too

I don't like that the fact that the @+name of person is in black especially when you are replying to several people.  it was a fast way of checking that you had entered the name correctly. It's all very monochrome now I feel.

The other thing that is going to get some getting used to, is the fact that the last message added comes up on page 1 so you have to go backwards to see how the very first people responded to get a better idea of how the conversation evolved.

I really liked seeing the name of the last person who posted on a thread because this allowed me to see if someone new had posted for exemple.  Now you have to click to check if something new has been posted to your last reply.  Not great for those that help out regularly on the CC

The obvious glitch with not being able to view the profile of the various contributors but figure that will be quickly resolved because that is a biggie!

All the best

Joëlle

[Katja202]

@Stephanie Oh this looks very very nice. I like it a lot. Of course, we have to adjust and find our way again, but that is with all new systems. He we are hosts we can adapt to everything 🤣🤣😎

One thing I saw was that @Mark116 is right. We can not click on someone's profile anymore. If you click on a profile photo you get to a screen whit all of someone's posts. Then you can click on the photo again (in that screen) and you get a roll-down menu. This menu has the choice to go to someone's profile. That button isn't working (yet) 

And it is really easy to put pictures in your posts now .... yeahhhhh!!!!! We can spam each other with pictures now!