My listing has suddenly disappeared from AirBnB

Adrian32
Level 2
Rio, Brazil

My listing has suddenly disappeared from AirBnB

Hi guys,

We have been hosting our small Rio de Janeiro flat through AirBnB for the last two years and we have hosted more than 40 guests in the last year alone, we have 35 or so reviews (99% of which are very positive) and our response rate is 94%. November to April was excellent with almost 100% occupancy and usually several inquiries per day. In may, the activity suddenly dropped close to 0. June has been even worse. In June we have suddenly no bookings and no inquiries. 

 

Some people have been saying that it is because of many new apartments entering the market, but the change is too abrupt for this to be a reasonable explanation. Entering the vacation season in the Northern hemisphere and 2 months from the olympics here in Rio?. It just does not sound right that the activity level should be 1/10th of what we have in a normal "low season" month. 

 

When I have tried to look up our ad, searching for our neighbourhood (Ipanema), it does not show up at all. 

 

Can anyone help me explain what is wrong? 

 

Thanks a lot,

 

Adrian

12 Replies 12
Dede0
Level 10
Austin, TX

@Adrian32 I found your listing after searching with a lot of filters (because there are literally hundreds and hundreds of similar listings in Rio). I hate to say it, but I suspect your sudden drop-off in inquiries is due to two unrelated factors. Yes, the sheer number of competing, similar listings is one, because there *are* a lot of similar listings. But also, simply: Zika. No one that I know is talking about going to Brazil for now. That's probably the case world-wide. I suspect that at least 75-80% of the demand, if not more, has dried up. Sad, but probably true.

Dede,

 

At a first look both seems reasonable explanations, however, I cannot believe that the number of listings in Ipanema has multiplied from one month to another. Many of the listings that come up in a search for Ipanema (arguably Rio´s best neighborhood for visitors) are in Copacabana and other areas of the city, while our apartment is suddenly waaaay down on search page 15. This "downgrade" of our apartment does not make sense to me.

 

With respect to Zika, I don´t believe that is a big factor either. Firstly, the mosquito is mainly present during the summer months, when we were fully booked. Zika continues to be mentioned in the news because of the oncoming olympics, but I don´t belive it is affecting tourist flows more than in the summer months. Also because Ipanema is full of tourists still. Secondly, many of our guests (70%) are from Brazil and Argentina. This group would definitely not be particularly scared of the Zika virus now in June compared to when it was raging in November to February.

 

To me, there must be a technical issue on AirBnB´s side...

Florencia0
Level 6
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hi Adrian,

 

I understand what you mean. You have describe (almost exactly) what it is happening to me too. 

My activity went from healthy inquiries/bookings to no inquiries/no bookings. I always expect a variation on the activity depending on the season but on this case the change was binary (going from "all" to "none"). And despite I have dropped my price it doesn´t pick up.

 

I wish you get the bookings you need 🙂

 

All the best,

Flor

Is there a way to have someone from AirBnB to look into this?

Florencia0
Level 6
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Particulary I guess that an oversaturated Bnb market isn´t convenient to anyone. At some point it doesn´t matter how cheap you are, how great is the quality of you offer, how well located your place is, or how excellent is your service. If no one is able to see your place you are going to fall into the dark. A natural response to this will be that host will start prefering longer stays aginst the shorter ones because those gaps between stays are just impossbile to fill with so many listings available and besides there are many hosts that prefer to sell their available nights for a a few cents than to have them free. So the business will slowly move towards a long term residential stay (for work, study, etc) and less and less traditional vacation rental. The thing with Airbnb is that from my opinon Airbnb it is more suitable for a vacation rental than for a long term stay were the host and the guest would probably want to know each other before signing a long term lease.

 

 

You have a good point Florencia. In our case, our apartment is a budget offering with very good rating in one of the best areas of Ipanema, which is one of the most sought after neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro. This has been a very successful combination until very, very recently. It is a "side activity" for us, but we have had 40 visits and probably 200+ guest nights during the last year. This is why I find it difficult to believe that it is suddenly a question of oversaturation. I feel like it is a simple answer from AirBnB, but have a strong feeling that it is a technical issue causing the listing to suddenly appear last in line or not appear at all. 

Air BnB has no way to contact them other than an email. I sent 3 emails this morning with no response.

Coco5
Level 1
Brewster, MA

I am a first time host this year, in Cape Cod, MA. Beginning May, I've been booked through to most of August, 5 stars, great reviews, location etc. My reservations stopped coming in weeks ago and my listing has disappeared.

Has there been any solution to this problem as I see you had this happen as well, over in Rio.

Airbnb really should have live tech support when there are serious issues at hand. Thank you for any suggestions!

Coco

 

Nathalie-S-0
Level 2
Austin, TX

Same exact thing happened to me. I have had a steady stream of reservation requests for two years and then suddenly last November hardly anything in the last three month. I can't shake the feeling that Airbnb has an algorithm that will automatically rank new host listings higher for a couple of months (maybe two years) and then will drop the listing to a very bad ranking to make room for new hosts. I am in Austin, Texas and yes there is competition, but we are supposed to operate on Short Term Rental permits since 2015 and now the city has closed down new permits because they are opposed to Short Term Rentals (they also kicked out Lyft and Uber because they don't see the sharing economy as important for Austin ). So if there aren't any new permits given out, how is the market more saturated than when this was still legal. Something just doesn't add up. 

Tamara188
Level 2
Novi Sad, Serbia

I have the same problem.It has desapeared from listing.I made many filters with only 5 pages and it does not exist.Very frustrating

@Tamara188, when I look at your profile, I do not see any listing.

 

Are you sure your listing is active?

 

Cathy224
Level 2
Athens, Greece

Same problem here for me in Naxos, Greece. Suddenly, after two years, booking inquiries just abruptly stopped. My listing does not appear on phone app at all. And I am a "super host".  And this year is suppose to break records with tourism.  Does  Airbnb give preference to newcomers?

Very frustrating, and unfair,  for hard working hosts who have gone the extra mile to offer an excellent product.