@Sarah977 @Ian-And-Anne-Marie0 @Heidi588
So investors and regulators just take a CEO's word for something, they don't do any fact-finding research themselves?
And therein lies the crux of the matter.. Airbnb obsessively controls the narrative of all the information that's available about them in the public sphere with an iron grip, and unless a person is fiercely, fiercely determined to get to the truth, they'll very easily be swayed by the Airbnb fairytales being perpetuated and celebrated all over the global media.
We only need to observe the goings on in this Community Centre to see how shrewdly and slickly Airbnb orchestrates the flow of information, manipulates the narrative and diverts user attention. Catherine Powell's carefully choreographed 'Host Updates' are meticulously timed to drop in perfect sync with the global Press Releases Airbnb will have typically issued just hours beforehand. Invariably, there are plenty of little anomalies and discrepancies in these updates to cause mass chaos and confusion - chaos and confusion that neither Catherine nor Airbnb ever seem to be in any particular hurry to clear up.
Meanwhile, as hosts scrabble around like headless chickens trying to work out what, exactly, the latest convoluted, ambiguous 'host update' will mean for them, or tie themselves in knots worrying about how they can possibly avoid being delisted for non-compliance with whatever onerous, farcical (wholly unworkable and unenforceable, btw) PR-stunt diktats Airbnb has concocted to further enslave them with this week - their attention is totally and completely diverted from all the really egregious stuff stealthily taking place in the background. Stuff that will very soon have an infinitely more detrimental and catastrophic effect on the viability of their hosting futures on this platform than any crazy cleaning protocols or sneaky policy changes (like Airbnb systematically promoting hotels, hostels and serviced apartments over the listings of homesharers and small local hosts in searches, for example)
Also, they'll be conveniently distracted from picking up on all the complete and utter falsehoods currently doing the rounds in the media, such as this little gem from lats week's sycophantic, whitewashed puff-piece in the Wall St Journal, no less, with our conquering superhero Brian on how he single-handedly rescued Airbnb from certain disaster, just in the nick of time (and respected publications like the WSJ are where many investors' impressions are formed)
How Airbnb Pulled Back From the Brink - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-airbnb-pulled-back-from-the-brink-11602520846
"He [Chesky] also sought to make amends with hosts angered by his refund policy at the height of the pandemic shutdown by allocating funds from the money he raised to reimburse them for a third of canceled stays"
Reimbursed hosts for a third of cancelled stays..?? I'm pretty sure hundreds of thousands of hosts around the world would beg to differ on that little stat.. but still.. true or not, that's now going to be swallowed by all who read it.
From the outset, Airbnb has been notoriously secretive and covert with any and all information relating to its inner workings - to the point of spending hundreds on millions (if not more) of dollars/pounds/euros on legal battles worldwide to retain the rights not to have to hand over the relevant stats and data to regional and national authorities that would give them a clear and true picture of individual vs. commercial Airbnb activity in their towns and cities, and allow them to draft fair and equitable regulations for all. And we all know how that turned out - with armies rogue and illegal mega-operators running rampage all over the platform, and small, local independent operators being pushed out of business in thousands of markets. But yet, even as every dog on the street gradually became aware that the majority of Airbnb listings are now offered by 'property management companies' and commercial entities, the 'live like a local' myth still somehow abounded.
As regards the (hilarious) speculative financial analyses and hyper-optimistic (read, delusional) projections of Airbnb's 'path to profitability' that are currently flooding every media outlet on the planet - the vast majority of that is being fed directly from the the company's gargantuan PR machine, and simply being regurgitated, word for word, by all but a few (a very few) tenacious and intrepid investigative reporters. Unfortunately though, more often than not, the dissenting voices just get drowned out by the cacaphonous noise of all the triumphant 'miraculous rebound' stories and the glorious 'Heroic Brian saves the day' tales that have been swamping most publications over the last several months. Makes one despair for the future of truth and journalistic integrity.
And then you have the likes of Business Insider printing the most jaw-droppingly inaccurate and erroneous analysis to date of Airbnb's current state of play and future projections (astoundingly, compiled by the usually very savvy market analyst and commentator, Prof Scott Galloway of NYU Stern), you suddenly realise just how brainwashed and hoodwinked even the most experienced investors have been by the Airbnb Hype Machine. (There's some excuse for Business Insider printing this BS - their parent company, Axel Springer, is an investor in Airbnb - but one can only assume that Prof Galloway must have ingested some potent hallucinogens recently, or something)
Depressing beyond words to see this calibre of misinformation/disinformation being freely peddled ad infinitum, but once you start to see it everywhere you look, it does become crystal clear how/why such a complete shambles of a company still somehow manages to maintain something of a noble, positive, successful image in the collective public consciousness
Penelope