My bookings have dropped more than 75% in the past 10-14 days. I was puzzled as to why that was because May is normally a busy month for us. Last night a previous guest messaged me to say they wanted to book again, but could no longer find us on Airbnb. So I switched to traveling mode and searched for properties in San Mateo, Rizal, which is the city where we are located in the Philippines. Normally when I do that about 20 listings appear, two of which are the two rooms in our house that are on Airbnb. But when I searched for San Mateo, Rizal last night, more than 2,000 listings appeared from all over the Manila metropolitan area - some of which are more than two hours drive from our place. I determined that we were still listed, but because we were now buried in more than 2,000 listings over a vast urban area of more than 12 million people, it was little wonder that the guest couldn't find us.
Our property is located up on a hill outside the urban area of San Mateo, close to the boundary of another city on the hill called Antipolo, and I know that most of our guests find us when they search for Antipolo, Rizal (because San Mateo is not well known for having hilltop propoerties, whereas Antipolo is). So I then searched for Antipolo, because normally when I do that I see that we are listed on either the first or second page because we are very close to Antipolo and we have SuperHost status.
I was shocked when I saw that ALL of the properties listed were not in Antipolo, but in another province called Laguna about 4-5 hours drive away. I checked on my desktop and on my phone app - there was not a single property listed from our province of Rizal at all.
So this explained why I was getting very few new bookings (in the past few days new bookings have dropped to zero).
I immediately messaged AIrbnb customer service to advise them of the above and to ask what was happening. Normally if I email customer service I get a reply in 10-15 minutes, but last night I got no response. This morning when I awoke I expected to see a reply, but still nothing, so I assume this must be an issue they are investigating before replying. It's now been 15 hours since I messaged them.
I am wondering whether hosts in other countries are having the same problem, or whether this breakdown in the search function is happening only in the Philippines. If it has happened elsewhere, have you received any feedback from Airbnb yet?
