Listing photo

[Stanley19]

Okay, here's the problem. When someone searches for a property in our area on the main Airbnb page, the photo that is displayed for our site is of our apartment's bathroom—not a very appealing sight for people searching for a property. The photo we would LIKE to have displayed is of our gorgeous flowering tree-lined driveway, which is the first photo in our listing's series of 49 photos. If one searches for our property directly, THAT's the photo that appears. THAT's the photo that's supposed to appear, according to everything we've read or heard on this (almost useless) help site. We did NOTHING to change photos except add some of our new 2nd bedroom in the property (which are in the middle of the series of 49 photos), so we're wondering WHY the bathroom photo shows up as the primary one when our listing is featured by Airbnb. It's a cute bathroom, but it's not the first thing we want folks to see. If it were possible to actually get in touch with an ACTUAL Airbnb person to discuss this, perhaps we could solve the problem, but instead, we're forced to go through this ridiculous "help" site, which is almost worse than useless. Can anybody help?

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

@Stanley19 - when I click through to your profile, I do not see a property listed so I can't try to troubleshoot this for you.  Is your property snoozed?  

[Stanley19]

No, the property is not snoozed. Search for properties in Newberg, Oregon. We're "Arbor Grove Country Cottage." The photo that will appear is of our bathroom, but that's not what we want to show as the first photo (obviously).

[Stanley19]

If you click the right arrow on the bathroom picture, you get to the photo we WANT shown, which is our flowering tree-lined driveway.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Stanley19 your property-s are not showing under your profile, so if you did not snooze it than you should contact Airbnb to see what happend

[Stanley19]

I'm a co-host; perhaps that's the reason the property's not showing on my profile? Again, try searching in Newberg, Oregon! The picture that is posted for "Arbor Grove Country Canine" is a bathroom, not the picture we'd like to feature. If you click on the right arrow on the picture of the bathroom, you get the photo we want. Why is this so hard to understand?

[Stanley19]

And...why doesn't someone from Airbnb itself monitor these discussions? Why is there no direct line to the people who actually write and maintain the software, so that issues like these can be handled by people who know what's going on? Why do we have to rely on "members of the community" who may or may not have an understanding of the technical issues involved?

[Annette33]

true, @Stanley19 , we community members here don't have the technical expertise you are looking for, we are just trying to help each other with our various issues, and mostly, you can actually pick up some quality advice here.
We all know how difficult it is to get in touch with Airbnb. The frustration on how impossible it is to contact them is voiced here daily. So you call them (use the search form here to find the number, or google contact Airbnb, ) or twitter them @airbnbhelp . That still might not get you anywhere, so best is to solve your own problems as much as possible.
As far as your specific issue, I might have some good news for you:
As you didn't give a link to your listing, I did spent some time to find it in the Newberg listings. If you check yourself you'll see that anybody's sub title (yours:Arbor Grove) is not shown with the first picture of the listing- it only gives the base price and the generic "entire home" or  "private room" info. 
So all I had to go on was looking for a bathroom picture - that didn't get me anywhere.  But then I went through all pictures again, this time looking for a tree lined drive way - and there it is! see my screen shot above.
So, who knows what kind of fluke you encountered with the bathroom pic: my hunch is that the bathroom pic is the picture someone from your device or computer must have last looked at and that info got picked up in the algorythms, or whatever, and it brings it up to you next time you look at your listing as the first picture.
In any case, to me, a potential guest without a direct link to your listing, just searching for lodging in Newberg, I was shown the tree picture, not the bathroom picture. Makes me think that all other potential guests will see the same thing, and that all is well with your listing and you can save yourself the phonecall to Airbnb. Hope that makes you feel better!



[Stanley19]

Annette, thanks. I hope I wasn't too cranky in my postings...I appreciate the Community's efforts to help out. It was never a knock against the people who post here and try to help out. It just seems that AirBnB should make a slightly greater effort to connect with the folks who host for them, rather than relying on other hosts to do the work for them. Believe me, I'm grateful for the expertise that the hosts who take the time to post here provide!

I finally did get in touch with someone at AirBnB who attempted to help. It appears that the issue has something to do with the history cache or cookies on individual computers, not necessarily the AirBnB web hosting site. When I cleared the cache on MY computer, the proper picture was eventually displayed. However, once I'd accessed the site a second time (and my cache had info from AirBnB in it again), the bathroom picture re-appeared. So it looks as if it has something to do with those two things on an individual's computer: cache and cookies. Hopefully, people searching for our property don't have that issue.

[Annette33]

@Stanley19, great that you received some explanation- the thing with hitting the refresh button or clearing the cache came to me later also. glad to learn that that seemed to have been the issue, as you heard that other people (me) would actually see your listing with the desired cover picture .
As a regular contributor here, believe me, we hear the complaints about Airbnb every day, every 2 minutes. It just gets kinda old, because it is what it is - and we are just making the best of it. Not defending Airbnb's lack of support in any which way, but it is also true that the are many hosts and guests out there who have never ever studied anything about how Airbnb functions, and they should! When you look around a bit, you will come across some rather very basic questions or complaints that are easily solved with just a bit of common sense.
Anyhow, it is a good idea to occasionally come back to the forums here - lots of things to learn and discuss, and we all are a friendly bunch 🙂 When you answer someone, you may want to highlight the name, just like I did yours above, or give the poster who helped you out a thumbs up - those are the things that we get notified of or that encourage us to keep on helping people.

[Elizabeth348]

I have the same problem with my listing, just today. 

  https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/8670131

I have an attractive photo of the front of my house as the cover photo in the listing.  It shows on the listing page and it has always shown on the search results.  I have not added any photos recently or made any other changes.

Until today.   If you search Chapel Hill entire house on main airbnb page then my house comes up with a photo of the office, not nearly as attractive!  I do not see any way to change this since on the listing page, the first photo is the correct one. 

I cannot find anything in Help Center on this, since my photos are already in the correct order, I have not changed anything.

This is especially important to fix because my reservation for UNC graduation in two weeks has just cancelled, so airbnb has pushed my listing up to the top of the search results when you go to Chapel Hill, I guess to help me get a replacement reservation.

Thank you

Elizabeth

[Stanley19]

Elizabeth: your problem seems to be the same as mine. When I click on the link that you feature in your post, I see the proper "front of the house" picture displayed. Try clearing the history cache on your browser, and/or disable cookies for AirBnB. That might solve the problem for YOUR computer. Apparently, it doesn't exist for others.