How to call AirBnB

Dede0
Level 10
Austin, TX

How to call AirBnB

This information is available elsewhere within the host forums, but because AirBnB seems to be making it ever-increasingly difficult for people to find ways to contact them, I'm going to start posting this list of phone numbers once a week or two.

And, yes, there are other ways to contact AirBnB (sending DMs to their Twitter account, @AirbnbHelp, for one), but many people want a freakin' phone number, so there they are:

 

Argentina: +54 11 53 52 78 88

Australia: +61 2 8520 3333

Austria / Österreich: +43 72 08 83 800

Brazil / Brasil: +55 21 3958-5800

Canada: +1-855-424-7262 / 1-855-4-AIRBNB (toll-free)

Chile: +56 229380777

China / Zhongguo - 中國 / 中国: +86 10 5904 5310 or 400 890 0309 (shared-cost)

Denmark / Danmark: +45 89 88 20 00

France: +33 1 84 88 40 00

Germany / Deutschland: +49 30 30 80 83 80

Greece / ελλάδα: +30 211 1989888

Hong Kong / Xianggang - 香港: +852 5808 8888

Ireland: +353 1 697 1831

Israel / Yisrael: +972 3 939 9977

Italy / Italia: +39 06 99366533

Japan / Nippon - 日本: +81 3 4580 0999 or +81 800 100 1008 (toll-free)

Mexico / Méjico: +52 55 41 70 43 33

Netherlands / Nederland: +31 20 52 22 333

New Zealand / Aotearoa: +64 4 4880 888

Norway / Norge: +47 21 61 16 88

Peru: +51 1 7089777

Poland / Polska: +48 22 30 72 000

Portugal: +351 30 880 3888

Puerto Rico: +1 787 919-0880

Russia / Rossiya - Россия: +7 4954658090 or 88003017104 (toll-free)

South Korea / Hanguk - 한국: +82 2 6022 2499 or +82 808 220 230 (toll-free)

Spain / España: +34 91 123 45 67

Sweden / Sverige: +46 844 68 12 34

Switzerland / Schweiz / Suisse: +41 43 50 84 900

United Kingdom: +44 203 318 1111

United States (USA) / Estados Unidos de América (EEUU): +1-415-800-5959 (local San Francisco number) or +1-855-424-7262

21 Replies 21

The How to Contact Airbnb Community Help Guide is posted right at the top of the Community Help Forum.  in my opinion, it's not difficult to find at all.  And anyone who uses the search function, it comes up as the first result.  

Probably should be a sticky in all the forums.

David

It's not easy to find when using the app. Plus I'm always supportive of someone trying to help and make information more readily available, so thanks 

@Alice-and-Jeff0 By "Community Help Forum", what precisely do you mean? (Obviously, I know what the host forums are.) Can you provide a link and/or a screen capture? And by "The How to Contact Airbnb Community Help Guide", ditto. (Where's that text? Where's that link?) And by "anyone who uses the search function, it comes up as the first result", ditto. (Which search function and where -- AirBnB or the forums? And show me the result you speak of.)

I want to reiterate that I, personally, know all of the ways to contact AirBnB. What I'm bothered by is that the ways for new, clueless, or panicked hosts (and guests, I suppose) to reach AirBnB seem to be either very obscure or often, circular dead ends. (I could point you to many of those.) In so many places, if one searches on "contact AirBnB", the result displayed is a set of self-referencing links, or a short list of issues that often don't have anything to do with the searcher's issue.

Granted, there are a few places that lead to an actual contact method, but there are many that don't, and end up merely frustrating those attempting to seek help.

So, I guess my gripe is more with the large number of useless links and references than with the fact that a few functioning references exist. AirBnB needs to fix all of the duds by correcting them or removing them. And, would it KILL them to simply add valid, current contact links to every single page that's ever displayed? It doesn't have to be huge and prominent, but WHY do they continue to avoid doing that? I think that says a lot about their strategy and priorities.

I find it sad and disappointing that the best comment about this issue has been to Google "contact AirBnB". Yeah, that sort of works (if you want a phone number), but why is it easier to find a contact point through Google than from *every* single page rendered by AirBnB?

Support is expensive. AirBnB, by and large, tends to avoid that expense as much as possible by a) making it hard to obtain, and b) off-loading the burden onto these forums, where people like you and me provide answers for free.

 

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Dede0 It does seem that ABB are, in some ways, hiding behind more of a cloak of secrecy but, it doesn't matter how prominently you display those numbers, there will almost every day be someone who three posts down will say 'Airbnb is uncontactable, how can I find some way to contact them'. 

You Dede, and I and every other regular has answered a post just like that hundreds of times, haven't we...it doesn't make any difference, people won't look! And I can understand that in many instances, the wheels have fallen off their hosting wagon, they are upset, and just want a quick answer....they don't want to play detective!

What I would suggest, there is a considerable amount of vacant screen space on the right side of these pages! Why can't that worldwide phone number information appear, just as you have posted, on the right side on the top of every  conversation page....a default setting! Programming it in would be a piece of cake, and it would save over a third of these unneseccary posts.

The other aspect of doing that would mean the phone information would always be current.

Cheers.....Rob

@Robin4 I couldn't agree more that AirBnB could very easily post contact info (directly or as links) on every single page in these forums and every single page on their website, and a link on every single screen in their phone apps. But they've made their position quite clear by NOT doing that and by going even further out of their way to make it nearly impossible to find ways to contact them.

Want a good laugh? Go to their Help system and type in "Contact AirBnB". Take the link(s) provided, then click on the links within that.

Another host recently mentioned that when they'd managed to contact AirBnB about an issue, the support-line person expressed "surprise" that all hosts didn't add AirBnB contact info to the host's listing. That gave me quite a laugh. AirBnB employees suggesting that hosts make the effort to provide contact info for AirBnB, when AirBnB could, with about 10-cents worth of effort, slap that exact info onto every single page ever viewed within AirBnB.

AirBnB doesn't *want* to provide support. They want, more and more, to position themselves as mere "facilitators". Middlemen, without any customers who might require support. Guests are customers of the hosts. Hosts are suppliers to the guests. AirBnB merely *facilitates" and doesn't owe anyone any support. They're reluctant to even support their website or their app. Those are simply "services" that one can choose to use or not. (Never mind that their entire business model depends on both guests and hosts being able to use the site and the apps.)

I'm getting pretty sick of AirBnB's attitude. Not because I, personally, need much support, but because it would be SO EASY for them -- like most application providers -- to provide assistance to users who need it. Users who make the company's success what it is.

Yowza - okay, @Dede0 - let me show you the multiple ways to find this information easy and quickly without posting it over and over and over and over..... 

This is the first page any user comes to on the forums.  This box is right at the top.... 

community page.jpg

Here is where you would enter "Contact Airbnb Community Help Guide".  It's referenced so much here that it shows up in over 20 returned options.  Sorry my clipping tool will not allow me to capture this for you, but you can test it yourself.  

 

You can also hit the "Get Support" tab: get support.jpg

Which takes you right to it: community help guide.jpg

If you end up at the "All Discussion Rooms" page, https://community.airbnb.com/t5/All-Discussion-Rooms/ct-p/host, this guide is found in "Community Help" and is the second, post.  It's sticky and remains there at all times. discussion rooms.jpg

 

Even from the landing page here you can Search.  This Search bar is at the top of each and every forum as well. search function.jpg

 

Problem is, that many of the questions we answer are not critical or even very important.  Most of the guests just need support and that's what forums are designed for intentionally.  You certainly do not need to keep writing answers and, as someone who has been around for quite some time, you know that the same questions come up over and over and over, mostly out of stupidity and because they are lazy and don't look in the Help Center.  By adding to the "noise" of repeatedly posting the same thing, it doesn't make things get clearer here and certainly by jamming up the help lines with stupid questions like "when do I get paid" or "why are my dates blocked because I cancelled" or "why can't I see my listing", we obscure what little resources there are for real problems like "my guest just had a heart attack, can you contact their next of kin" or "my guest pulled a gun and I had to call the police, what now" or "the power lines are down in my neighborhood and the power company won't have them back on for 48 hours and I have guests - help me rehouse them".  

We will probably have to disagree here, but I think having it obscured is helpful because it requires people to learn to seek out answers for themselves and to learn before jumping on the phone and tying up resources that need to deal with world-wide problems.  Could this be better - the help line and their support - abso-f-ing-lutely!  But blasting them with calls will not improve something they have no intention of improving right now.  Just think about some of the decisions we've heard hosts talk about recently, they have some real problems to resolve, that's for sure. 

 

@Alice-and-Jeff0 I'm sorry if my questions seemed overly dry or even "hostile"; they definitely weren't meant to be. I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing, and that I understood exactly what you were talking about.

You were talking entirely about the CC forums, as was pretty clear before, and totally clear now.

My beef and my suggestion are directed at the AirBnB website (and app), NOT at the forums. I have NO issue with the forums, but I don't think that any of the access points for information within the forums have anything to do with my issue.

AirBnB could, and should, provide a simple "Contact AirBnB" link on every single page within the AirBnB site and every single page that pops up during guest or host interactions with the AirBnB website. Doing that would be beyond simple. The link could pull up a single, simple page that listed all the ways to contact AirBnB, and even explain AirBnB's preference/suggestion for order of contact.

The fact they've not only chosen NOT to do something like that but, in fact, have slowly but surely made it harder and harder for most guests and many hosts (either of which might be first-time or infrequent users of the site) to find that information, speaks quite clearly about AirBnB's priorities. They know that if they make it hard enough for users to contact them, those users will turn elsewhere for support, which AirBnB doesn't have to staff for or pay for.

I agree that most of the questions guests/hosts would contact AirBnB about are simple, repeated, minor stuff. But most other companies deal with that by having a call center (or interactive message center, etc) and have that staffed with people who have 99% of the answers at their fingertips, in boilerplate or scripted responses. The confused, upset, or even just dumb, user gets a quick answer that works and they go away satisifed and calmed down. AirBnB, on the other hand, hangs those people out to dry, to "find their own answer". Which often means they find their way to the CC forums and generate the very noise here that you, rightly, point out, buries the really critical questions under the piles of repeated questions whose answers are quite simple and *should* have been supplied by AirBnB in the first place.

I have a lot of empathy for the confused, the frightened, and even the "dumb" guests and hosts. Most of their issues could be dealt with by a 2-5 minute communication with AirBnB. Instead, they spend hours trying to figure out what's gone wrong or how to fix their booking, listing, etc, and they often don't find the information they need.

I feel like I either need to spend a ton of time contributing to the forums (to help people), or abandon the forums altogether (to help force AirBnB to provide the answers themselves). Neither approach feels good. Right now, though, I'm inclined to bail out, let the freaked-out users "work harder" for the information they seek, and let AirBnB eventually step back in with a more proper level of support. Cynical? Probably.

AirBnb do not want to be called, that is self evident.

 

I would not expect that to change.

 

I tend to stick to the more interesting threads, I have seen a very high burn out in those who answer the basic repetitive questions.

David

@Dede0 - As a Business Process, I understand what you want.  You want a call center, manned 24 hours a day doling out details to hosts on demand.  For a moment, ask  yourself how much of a cut you'd be willing to give up to get that?  How much of the money you earn are you willing to use to pay for this service? Because a 24-hour, international, multi-lingual, bank of call center employees is not going to be cheap.

And what platform upgrades will you be willing to wait for while they add a dynamic link to each and every page of the website?  They are already using a platform to provide content in hundreds of languages worldwide.  I want you to imagine the enormity of this... every time you click on a page of text and it renders to you in English, it renders in French to someone in France, it renders in Spanish to someone in Mexico, it renders in Arabic to someone in Syria....  It's not "simple" to add a link of text to each and every page, it takes work, lots of man hours and programmers in Silicon Valley do not work on the cheap.   https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Airbnb-San-Francisco-Salaries-EI_IE391850.0,6_IL.7,20_IM759.htm

Putting priority on an "easy to find link" means other upgrades and fixes do not get done.  The software changes so often now that we've all exprienced code pushed to the site practically on a daily basis.  I certainly can't imagine the backlog of programming work to be done there. These delays come at a price, listings get forgotten in search results, hosts get bookings they need to cancel, guests get stuck in endless loops of payment that don't get resolved, and the time of the users..... all costs.  

That being said, from a software perspective, I want to point out that almost all the answers we provide to questioners showing up in the forums are found in the Help Center.  You can follow my posts, I link to the Help Center articles constantly as a way to showcase that if a user has a question, the answer is already there if they spend some time looking.  Now, is their search function failproof - no and, personally, I think they need to get help from real users here on improving their search results.  Because of this inefficiency, users get pushed to the Community Forums in multiple ways to solve their problems.  Landing at the very first page as I've described above happens easily.  Users are so easily guided to the forums that we, as forum contributors, are often letting people know that Airbnb isn't going to show up to hear their problem.  So getting to the information I showcased is really easy.  If you'd like, I'd gladly work through the website to show you how many steps it takes, but from experience, it is typically one step to get to the forums, which is where the Contact Airbnb information lives.  

If the problem isn't with the forums, posting the phone number over and over in the forums isn't really going to solve anything I'm afraid and I feel your frustration!

My suggestion would be to take a break.  You don't have to keep banging your head against the wall here - this is a volunteer situation.  Perhaps crafting a Host Forum suggestion regarding a way for Airbnb to resolve this issue might feel like time better spent? It's not clear to me why being aggressive on the forums manned by other hosts is going to solve your malaise.  You're clearly a regular contributer and your contribution is necessary to help guide new users, so doing this doesn't really solve a problem, it creates a bigger one in my eyes.  

 

@Alice-and-Jeff0 While I concur with most of your comment, I want to add something about how large/small the programming effort would be to add the link in question.

Every page on AirBnB is either rendered on the fly (assembled via database queries upon request) or dynamically updated in part as necessary. If you click around while in "host mode" and examine the "footer" area (stuff at the bottom of each page), you'll find that there are only 2 (maybe 3) variations of that footer. Likewise if you click around in guest mode, you'll see 2-3 variations *and* you'll find that 1-2 of those variations are simply limited versions of the host variations. So, we're talking at most about 3-4 variations.

To make this even more fun, you can find (by a little experimentation) that half of the variations are rendered anew upon a page request, but the other half aren't even re-extracted from a DB, but are left in place while the main body of the page gets updated. (The calendar is an example of the latter behavior).

My point is that the *programming* effort to add a Contact link to very single page of the website would be miniscule. LIke maybe 20 minutes, with some time for coffee thrown in. Programmer checks the 3-4 page fragments out of source control, adds minor text and link to each, then checks the fragments back in. Done. Now, repeat that, over time, for each language AirBnB supports. (They don't even have to do all that at once; we're all familiar with AirBnB "rolling" things out, country by country and so on.) Add in a bit of the boss's planning time and a little coordination, maybe some QA time (oh, wait, ignore that as this *is* AirBnB we're talking about) and maybe we're talking about a handful of hours of work at most.

Now, the issue of a 24-hour, multi-lingual call center or chat center is, truly, another matter, and I get that. I don't personally think AirBnB needs to provide 24/7 call center support. But they are a huge global company, and many other huge global companies manage to provide accessible support during large parts of the day.

Back to the gist of my original suggestion: AirBnB needs to make it effortless for guests and hosts to find contact information. Anything less (even having people wander over to the CC, or conduct searches and make 2-3 additional links to arrive at the answer) is simply throwing up roadblocks. Which, agreeing with @David126, is basically what they're doing.

Yes, the pages that are rendered are not static and are utilizing a Digital Asset Management system.  They are template-based and crafted on a platform that supports both desktop and mobile technologies in 2 operating systems. Changing a template for rendered digital content and ensuring that said contact registers in 30 languages appropriately, while seemingly "magic", certainly is not.  Altering every template to include a link for contact and then testing it without ever taking down the site is a large endeavor.  Technology makes our lives easier but people have worked for thousands and thousands of hours to make, what seems trival to us, a reality.  Trust me, I'm a Business Analyst who works directly with technology solutions and business needs.

Even in the best of systems, the digital templates they are working with will require hundreds of man hours to alter, certainly not anywhere close to the 20 minutes you think it would require including coffee.  Having worked in digital content management for many years, there are no less than 25 templates in this system that I can determine by sight and just dropping in a link or text render box (I-frame or otherwise), even on the Help Center pages alone, requires expertise and time.  Frankly, there are likely far more templates based on language and reading options including the necessity to accommodate larger character languages like Arabic, Chinese, and Korean even if they are using a dynamic rendering option.  This would also include some intern creating this text to be available on every web interface in the world include making sure it could render on every web service in the world - believe it or not, Korea and China have their own home-grown browser services that are not Explorer or Chrome if Airbnb is supporting them.  

Airbnb clearly uses an Agile methodology when developing code and implementing it.  This is strategic for them with the multiples of iterations they roll out, however, it still gets QA'd, defects get logged and errors get corrected all while working on the next set of code. While it would be ideal to believe that Airbnb built their cloud to accommodate hundreds of thousands of hits every day, repeatedly going to the trough for one particular set of data, such as phone numbers, might tax the current capacity of their platform.  I don't know, I'm speculating, but I'm also trying to set some reality here on the scope of work you are suggesting takes as much time as ordering a Mocha at Starbucks.  

And being the American-centric idealist, please remember that what is the bulk of our "day" is the middle of the night in China and we don't even SEE their Community Forum needs on our site. So there's no such thing as a "bulk of the day" with a global international call center that speaks enough languages to actually be of help to anyone.  It's 24/7 or it doesn't exist.

And, agreed, Airbnb has strategically put up roadblocks.  I'm in favor especially since I spent over 2 hours today responding to questions in the forums easily answered by the Help Center.  You can think it should be changed.  We will have to disagree.  

It's very easy to imagine that it's easy to fix if you've never tried it.    

Lesley53
Level 2
Brodick, United Kingdom

I have beeen tearing my hair out trying to find a contact number for Airbnb so thank you Dede! As for Alice and Jeff do you work for Airbnb?

@Lesley53 This is a forum for Hosts and Guests, nobody on here is employed by AirBnB.

David