I have had on going issue with Airbnb for around 6-8 years where airbnb support seem to have no clue how to respond when the app is stuck in a repeating technology loop related to tax or regulation and instead parrot, the same line I must fill in appropriate data only to repeat in a never ending tech loop.
I have 8 listings across three legal jurisdictions, held in a mixture of my personal name and various companies.
the issue is that airbnb keeps on rolling out not fit for purpose technology that easily gets stuck in a loop.
It is like the developers of the tech seem incapable of comprehending that an airbnb host might have more then one property, held in different structures in more than one country.
This structure came from Airbnb’s insistence on one profile per person historically, and airbnb insisted there was no other way, which meant airbnb tax payments into completely wrong business accounts because it had no capability to route tax to more than one correct account
At the end of 2023 I was part of the botched KYC implementation and my bookings have still not recovered - I am down nearly 50% income level on one property
I have repeating the same comments to airbnb for at least 6 years:
”I repeat the solution I gave you circa 6-8 years ago and knowledge that has been available to you for many years - it is completely not true that having to identify who owns what properties and how is some how “new”.
1) stop asking questions at profile level: and instead ask them at the property level(or country level)
2) stop doing piecemeal regulatory implementations with a frantic push so you can be compliant to a specific deadline (KYC Q4 2023) start architecting dynamic and flexible solutions for recording this regulatory information on ongoing basis
3) acknowledge we live in a globalised world and thus regulations might appear similar but will actually be slightly different and capture this nuance at least at the country level so you can ask for the correct info and store it in the Corte t location
4) acknowledge that our world is not static either, I.e. the UK government has made a big push to move property held in personal capacity into company structure (with the appropriate penalties for retaining property in a personal capacity) thus the responses to these types of questions have to have the ability to be modified.
And I absolutely assure you that the multiple answers to these questions even in one country will be far more commonplace because of these changes
5) please stop pushing out knee jerk technology that has not been thought through - it is an insult to your clients
6) and get airbnb support staff who have the capability to comprehend the problem(and potentially see it) - do you have any idea how patronising it is when you have spent an hour explaining the problem three times only for the support agent to be unable to resolve it, kick it into the long grass of no response for a few days and then they just quickly contact you expecting a response in 30 minutes and then close the case unresolved - I literally have 100 of these types of cases.
traditionally it usually takes me 20 separate cases until I get any from of resolution.
it doesn’t have to be this hard!!
David Flood
