Dear Airbnb Plus Customer Service, I'm Francesco, the owner of Margherita a Chiaia apartment in Naples, Italy. Recently I've been invited to join the Airbnb Plus program and luckily everything went well so far. I'm currently at the last step, which involves the final publishing of the apartment as a "Plus Ad". Unfortunately, for some reason, I'm experiencing technical issues completing this process, plus I'm very disappointed with the pictures chosen. They're just few of them (in my opinion not enough to show my entire place) and also look very washed out, with no details and no right balance between highlights and shadows.
Here's a detailed list of the issues I'm having:
- There are no washing machine's pictures associated with my apartment, therefore I'm not able to upload them in the "laundry section" where they're required. I'm 100% sure that you have these pictures as the photographer took them on the shooting day.
- I'm not happy with the overall quality of the pictures. They all look very washed out, with no details and are also very strange in colours. I don't know if you had the opportunity to watch the pictures I previously uploaded in my ad, but from these you could see the real colours and tints of the apartment. It's not just about colours, it's about the "final look". They really don't look professional or as detailed as they should be. I'm also pretty sure that the photographer uploaded both RAW and JPEG images to your platform, which means that you should be having the original files with "more natural" colours. I understand that your program involves extremely bright pictures (which is a good thing by the way), but there's no reason to open the shadows so much and make the photos look very unrealistic.
- I think that some crucial parts of my apartment are missing: sofa-bed and washing machine, for example. I also think that I should be given the opportunity to choose between the multiple shots taken by the photographer as I'm the owner of the apartment, therefore I'm the only one who knows how it is inside. I'd like to get at least one picture of the giant mirror in the master bedroom also.
- I think I should be given the opportunity to choose the "cover picture", as the one already chosen it's not really attractive. A sofa is definitely less attractive than a wide angle view of the living room. Just compare my previous cover pictures to understand what I’m saying.
- There are a lot of other pictures/view that are missing. I don’t understand why you decided to crop almost half of the images and made them look so washed out and with no details. In the kitchen pictures you can barely see what’s in there. Everything is blown out. I’m a photographer and I personally know the guy (Diego) who took pictures in my apartment. I helped him during the shooting and I’m 100% that the pictures he gave to were way better than the ones just modified by your team.
- I also think it’s pretty unfair that I’m the only one receiving this bad treatment, while, instead, all of the others Plus ad look pretty nice or even better compared to the previous pictures.
- I'm experiencing severe issues while trying to add services to each room. For some reason I get an "error message" that won't let me go ahead in the process.
As an attachment you're going to find screenshots of the errors mentioned above, plus the bad looking photos that compared to the previously ones are tremendously washed out for no reason:
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The first pictures was shot taken by me few months ago when I uploaded my listing on Airbnb. The second one, instead, is retouched by the Plus Team. I understand that the second one is brighter (which is what you’re looking for with your “design program”), but it’s too much. Everything’s blown out, blurry or with no details. Also all the colours are fake. The real colours are the ones in my first picture.
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Are you serious? Do you really consider the second picture “professional”? Colours are fake and everything’s blurry and blown out.
It’s really a shame that a program based only on images is lacking on images quality.
I hope you can help me to solve the problems.
Dear @Donna240,
yes, the advertisement was finally published and thanks to the emails previously sent I was able to get more pictures, even though they still look washed out.
I don't like the lacking of details or that most of the scenes are extremely zoomed in.
The apartment's building is in Chiaia, which is one of the most elegant and charming districts in town. The apartment is just 10 minutes walk from the seafront.
I know that prices may seem too low for international standards, but there two other things to notice:
- the price itself changes accordingly to the number of guests
- the price may change also depending on the period (I've set higher prices for the summer period)
- the average flat for 4 people with 2 bedrooms in Naples is around 120€-140€ per night, which means that my apartment is following that trend
Dear @Ange2, thanks for your reply.
Here's another comparison between one shot taken by me few months ago and the image that the Plus Team recently processed:
I really don't get why they decided to boost the highlights so much and to crop the beautiful doors. It really doesn't make sense.
