Host Advisory Board - Top 3 Suggestions

Mike-And-Jane0
Level 10
England, United Kingdom

Host Advisory Board - Top 3 Suggestions

As The host advisory board members appear to have been instructed to engage with the official Airbnb Community Centre perhaps we could suggest the top 3 concerns for them to take forward to Airbnb. Not an ideal method but it may encourage them/Airbnb to actually do something more efficient to canvass hosts.

 

My top 3 are:

 

Reviews - Allow hosts to remove the star rating of 1 review per year. Comments would stay.

 

Cancellation policy - Apply the hosts cancellation policy EXCEPT where it is inconsistent with the law in the host's country.

 

Payment - Take responsibility (ie pay) if a guest is introduced to a host but their payment method falls over at a later date.

129 Replies 129
Paul1255
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Sounds like a proactive and sensible idea @Mike-And-Jane0 and a good top 3 🙂 

Clare167
Level 10
United Kingdom

How about: ascertain, and provide to the host, the (real) name and address of the guest.

Great idea @Mike-And-Jane0 

Emilia42
Level 10
Orono, ME

I would like to see longstanding hosts with perfect track records not be put in Airbnb Jail because some first-time user reports them out of retaliation. 

 

Guests should not be able to rate a host on cleanliness, location, value, or location when they never set foot on the property. The same goes for hosts. Hosts should not be able to rate guests on cleanliness or observation of house rules when they never actually hosted the guest.

 

Also, where is the adding a Pet Fee capabilities?! A simple explanation as to why this is not possible would be nice.

I would like to see longstanding hosts with perfect track records not be put in Airbnb Jail because some first-time user reports them out of retaliation. 

 

that is my biggest fear. Literally the biggest fear. I am less concerned with a house being burnt down

@Inna22 Me too!

John5097
Level 10
Charleston, SC

I agree removing a star review once a year from overall rating would be a needed counter balance. If ABB isn't willing to do this because they think it would compromise their credibility, they could allow the average of the sub category review to override if average is higher than the guest overall review. This would be more accurate, as an overall one star review would imply that all of the sub categories were also one star, that would avoid a retaliation when the guest may be hot headed and upset over one single instance, often times as a result of the host having to intervene when the guest isn't following the rules, for example checking out late and host has limited time to get it ready for the next guest. The review would still be published and the more accurate sub catigory review would then override the overall review. Furthermore if guest doesn't include a reason for lower than 5 star on each subcategory review then it also wouldn't count towards the average if it is below 3 stars. This would go a long way when new guest are confused and don't understand the basic rules or don't bother to read the listing at all. 

Bez8
Host Advisory Board Member
Vancouver, Canada

@Mike-And-Jane0 @John5097 @Paul1255 @Clare167 @Emilia42 

 

Mike and Jane beat me to it! hahaha

 

We will have a formal process that will be communicated in the near future. But in the mean time, this is excellent 


My personal 

 

1 - Retaliatory reviews - We need to put more emphasis on established and experienced users of the platform. This could come into play in many ways. But I would like to see superhosts being able to remove one review per year. Or perhaps have the review worth less in the overall rating calculation. Lots to talk about on this. 

 

2 - Better customer support and training for hosts in tough situation (kicking out guests due to house violation, parties and others)

 

3 - More actively protecting hosts against proven guest offenders. If proof is documented and provided to airbnb, then a more urgent reaction to protect the host community. 

Robbie54
Level 10
North Runcton, United Kingdom

@Bez8 if the review system was fair and better thought out we wouldn't need to have an option of removing 1 review per year. It's just papering over the cracks. 

Bez8
Host Advisory Board Member
Vancouver, Canada

@Robbie54 

 

I agree. However "fair" is difficult to get right in a 2 sided market. Fair is one of those subjective terms that can have a different meaning from person to person. The risks can be mitigated through a second line of defence. Experienced and proven hosts should have a bit more flexibility in a trust economy.

 

Trust is built over time. I'd like to see Airbnb put more weight on that when it comes reviews.  

Bez8
Host Advisory Board Member
Vancouver, Canada

I have tagged this thread as HABF (host advisory board feedback)

 

that way all members can look it up quickly 

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Bez8Some thoughts on your 3 points.

 

1. While hosts being able to remove one review per year would be a good step, there are changes that could prevent these retaliation reviews from ever happening in the first place.

No guest who has caused damages or snuck in extra guests or a pet, thrown parties, etc, backed up by documentation, photos, submitted to Airbnb should ever be allowed to leave a review. Of course, if a guest, when asked to pay for damages or extra cleaning responds by apologizing and saying of course they will pay and do, that wouldn't apply.

 

2. I composed a post here a year or two ago outlining how CS could be improved, which I can't find now. My suggestion was that instead of having the front line staff deal with all sorts of different issues, that CS staff is thoroughly trained in only one type of issue. 

So when calling or messaging CS, there would be what other companies do. Press 1 for reviews, press 2 for cancellations, press 3 for technical issues, and so on. That would be answered by the dept. that is specifically trained to know all the ins and outs of that topic, be fully versed in all the Airbnb policies regarding it and have those policies close at hand. 

That type of revamping of CS would largely eliminate hosts and guests being given false information, having to wait for days or weeks to get an answer, and having the responses they are given be unclear and confuse them even more.

 

In other words, each CS rep would be an "expert" in the issue they are presented with.

 

3. Absolutely. And Airbnb should never contact a host to see if they can accommodate a guest last minute because the guest has for some reason been kicked out of the place they had booked.

 

Another thing that seriously needs to be addressed- Airbnb needs to stop changing the layout and features of our hosting pages without host consultation and without any instructions as to where things have been moved to. It's so disrespectful to expect hosts to spend hours trying to locate something that has been changed, eliminated, or hidden without warning or explanation.

 

Bez8
Host Advisory Board Member
Vancouver, Canada

@Sarah977 

 

a lot of valuable information here. I couldn't agree more. 

 

I like breaking down the issues prior to speaking with an agent. 

@Bez8  I've only ever called Airbnb twice. I normally use the messaging.

 

I really haven't ever had any issues with my guests that I had to contact them about (lucky, I know), it has been tech issues or clarification about a policy, etc. 

 

I've found that it works best to start off stating the type of issue, not in a sentence, but "Tech Issue" or "Trust and Safety Issue".

 

That seems to streamline the response I get. I think a lot of hosts, when communicating with CS just start writing long paragraphs, often with extraneous information, that the rep has to plow through to try to decipher what the user is on about and may be why the responses they get aren't on point.

 

@Sarah977 I second the issue with constant page changes. One more detail- there should be an easily searchable database of known tech issues. Most of the time reps do not even know themselves that something is a known issue and I find out from here... after wasting hours trying to fix whatever that is and after calling to find out what is going on