A message from Brian

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a great day.

I just wanted to let you know that Brian Chesky, Airbnb's CEO and Head of Community, has sent out an email to hosts outlining some exciting updates on what the team is working on.

In his message, shown below, Brian has provided a lot of information, nearly all of which is directly related to what we talk about on a daily basis here in the Community Center and so I also wanted to share this here with you. I do hope you will find it an interesting read.

"Dear Hosts, 

From the very first days of Airbnb, hosts have been the heart of this community. You’ve welcomed strangers into your homes, and made deep, meaningful connections. You’ve housed victims of natural disasters—and refugees from war-torn nations. And in doing so, you’ve transformed what it means to travel and have enabled tens of millions of people to find a sense of belonging in places they’ve never visited before.

Without you, Airbnb would still be a couple of guys renting out air mattresses in our living rooms.

That’s why every step we have taken as a company has been informed by the experiences—and opinions—of our host community. Listening to you has always been, and will always be, one of our top priorities.

To that end, earlier this year, I met with hosts in eight cities across the world—from New York City to Cape Town; London to Delhi. At the beginning of the trip, I made a series of commitments to the host community: we pledged to create 1,000 Host Clubs worldwide; announced the expansion of the Host Advisory Council; committed to quarterly live chats with hosts; pledged to invite several hosts to a portion of one board meeting a year to make sure they have a seat at the table; and changed my title to CEO and Head of Community.

Each and every one of these changes was meant to increase the voice of our host community—and in just a short time, I have already seen some of the positive impact it is having.

Even so, as I made my way from country to country, I continued hearing feedback from you all. And I knew there was more we could do to make the hosting experience with Airbnb as seamless and hassle-free as possible. Based on your feedback, we made some changes:

• You can make your listing stand out by being able to more clearly describe your home with new categories and a more detailed amenities list.
• Our new dashboard makes it easier to track your earnings, ratings, reviews, and more in one place.
• We redesigned the Airbnb website to make it easier to navigate. Learn how your feedback helped lead the way.

Of course, there’s more to do and going forward, we’re making even more improvements. In the year ahead we are:

• Launching upwards of a dozen feedback panels with community members from around the world. This way, we’ll get more of the type of invaluable feedback I received during my world tour on a regular basis—and ensure that hosts from every corner of the globe will have their voices heard. We’ll keep doing these panels each year.

• Improving calendars so you can update your calendar availability and custom minimum night limits in the same place and designate which days of the week guests can and can’t check-in to your listing.

• Enhancing accessibility. We’re currently building systems that will ensure that hosts and guests can easily reach our Customer Experience team. Those efforts include making our phone number, other contact information and messaging easier for everyone to find.

Every single one of these changes were inspired by you—and, as always, we are nowhere near done yet. So keep sending us your ideas, sharing your feedback, and helping us figure out how to make Airbnb work even better.

When I was on my tour, the hosts I met made me feel at home wherever I was in the world. So it’s the least I can do to make you feel at home in the Airbnb community.

Talk soon,

Brian"

If you have any thoughts on this, please feel free to share these here.

Thank you for your time.

Lizzie

[Regina38]

Fix the Children policy:

1. Allow hosts to charge for all guests including children. I am not a Holiday Inn making millions of $$$ with 100's rooms. The property belongs to the host and they should be able to charge what they want. Saying you can raise your rates is not an answer because then you are charging everyone whether they have children or not extra. I have 4 children and 5 grandchildren and love them but they make extra work cleaing, use more water for laundry bathing ect. they also addd more wear and tear to a unit. When hotels allow children to stay free they are not adding any additional linens or bedding to the room. I am not a hotel and I do allow addtional guest but when I have them I have to set up an extra bed and provide linens and extra towels.  

2. A two year old is a toddler not an infant. An infant is 0 to 3 months. 

3. Why am I getting requests from people who have children and they have noted it by selcting from the drop down? This rquires me to turn them down or my calendar stays blocked and then it looks lie I am turning down too many reservations. 

The most important issue is that you have decided that I must allow children to stay free. You do not own my property and I do not work for you. If a host wants to charge for shildren they should be allowed to . Hotels allow children to stay free not because they like them but because it i a marketing ploy. Guests with children complain all the time that there are not enough units that accept childern. The reason that is true is becaue Airbnb is trying to give away our accomodations. This needs changed immediately. 

[David126]

Never stayed in a Hotel that charges by the person, just by the room. I do that, children or adults does not matter to me.

[Ilse-and-Sander0]

Thank you Lizzie, please tell Brian that this new update is a terrible mistake when it comes to the multi-calendar. It lost all its functionality now that you can't see the names of your guests anymore in the overview, nor the notes (which we use to state why or for whom we blocked a room).

With multiple listings this overview is an essential tool and to be honest I am at a loss for words for such a lack of insight from Airbnb!

I'm sure I'm not the only one...

[Lauren7]

There are still three functions missing from the new multi-calendar:

1. the profile pictures so we can tell all the Toms and Susans apart.

2. Notes need to show on the calendar, or at least an option to hide/show notes, as was well implemented in the fix to hide/show prices. I use notes for info on disabilities that require special attention, accommodations for early arrival, extra bed, late departure, etc.

3. Reconsider putting "Accepted" in the title bar. What are the status' available? Accepted, Cancelled, Completed? Use color coding instead of valuable text real estate. The number of guests would be more valuable, for example.

I am very distraught about the unannounced changes. Your user base was blindsided, and the less savvy had nowhere to find out what to do about it. Please let us know it was an accident, and let us know what you are doing to prevent such drastic impact without notice. Two words: beta test.

On the plus side, I like the streamlining of the multi-calendar. With the price option turned off, more days are shown and rendering is pretty fast. Perhaps there are several options that can be turned on and off: price, number of guests, Notes. Base display would show picture and name.

[Joy-and-David0]

What HAPPENED to the website?

We can no longer access reviews we've written.  The multi-calender listings page has been stripped of critical functionality. 

These are serious, almost fatal, problems

[Hugh0]

I would appreciate a clear policy on guests who checkout without leaving the keys.

The Airbnb call centre consistently advises hots to change the locks and lodge a claim for the cost. This makes sense to protect the host or future guests from unauthorised access resulting in theft, assault etc.

Unfortuately the Trust and Safety team does not honor these claims against the security deposit and does not explain the reason for contacting the advice given by thecall centre

[David126]

As a matter of general principle I do not see how you can be concerned about security and give you key to strangers, keys can be copied.

I would expect any clain against a security depost to be the cost of the missing key. That is what has been lost.

Call Center well they are not paying the cost so I can see if somebody asks they would take the safest option and replace.

[Joy-and-David0]

AirBnb did honor a claim we made for $30 for an unreturned room key, as we explicitly post that cost in our listing.  

We've had a lot of success using a digital lock, a Schlage keypad, in which we enter 8-digit passcodes for our exterior door.  We ask the guest to give us a code that they can remember, and then input that for the duration of their stay, deleting it when they leave.  This way they can't copy a physical key, and don't need to worry about getting the key back to us.  They also seem to like the "personalization" of having their own code entered.  

8-digit codes have such a low probability of being hacked that we feel very comfortable with this.  Plus the lock blocks attempts for a certain period of time after a certain number of unsuccessful attempts, if someone's trying to figure out a code, for example.  

The one weakness to this approach is that we still have physical keys to individual rooms, which could be copied/lost.  It wouldn't be cost effective to put a digital lock on each bedroom door (>$200 each).  But this is a much smaller security problem than leaving the exterior door lock vulnerable to copying.  

[Kat60]

In my reading it said payment would be sent 24 hours prior to check in. I had a huge delay with the first one and called. I was told the first payout is always delayed but the rest should be fast. The second payout was also very slow and I was told they were "experimenting" and it caused the delay. Experiments with someone else i thought. Well I am now on my 5th guest who is to check in today and still the payout does not show up 24 hours in advance as I read. I am wondering what the heck, when should i expect payment? I'm just trying to plan my budget.

[David126]

they pay the following day.

[Lydia40]

What happened to the ability to reply via text? I have it set up that I get a push notification if a guest messages me or I get a reservation request etc.  I used to be able to quickly reply to that text by hitting reply, AirBnb presumably did the magic of sending that text to the guests phone number..... now this has to be done by me through the app.  Why?  Very inconvienient!

I thought I was going crazy! I used to be able to text reply!  I send a reply to a guest that was checking in last night and they never got it because I just relpied to their text in messages rather than opening the app and going to messages etc.  I dont always have time to do that and there seems to be way more of a delay of loading their message too.  It says I can text the guest directly via SMS but those text incur charges for international texting from my phone company.  Also, there isnt an easy way to get their number from the body of the AirBnb instruction text to the To: in the new message without cutting and pasting.  All things I dont have time or sometimes the ability to do in the moment I get a question from a guest.