@Branka-and-Silvia0 : as I note above, I am on the road more than 1/4th time and use ABBs whenever possible (it has become difficult to get some colleagues to use ABB).
Booking last-minute dwindles options and in-my-experience may lead to issues. OTOH, if I look at listings in any number of popular cities worldwide, I quickly find listings that have various frauds that I've encountered in the past -- for instance, listing a living room with sofa which must be walked-through improperly as a bedroom, with deceptive pictures, is very common in some cities.
In this case, the host is simply new. They have two reviews which may have been short stays.
They list what is a quite beautiful property with large grounds without providing pictures of what their property is-- I'd immediately fix that if I were them, focusing on the sheer beauty of the property with pictures. I'd get the address right; I can't imagine why they did that, may be dodgy (they didn't want guests to google and see a small gate in a fence), but there was no reason to do that-- proper presentation would make it clear, this is a properly with *grounds* in an urban area without many such properties.
They have two cameras, no doubt installed by their security company. They may have forgotten about them or not even understand the software to view the video and/or have problems using a site such as Airbnb. However, the security company sign on the side of the house proudly declares that video is being recorded! The cameras face the bed in the bedroom and the bed in the separate living room. One can never be sure, and no one wants to discover such coverage in the middle of the night--
I regularly stay with hosts who have hundreds of reviews and hosts who have very few reviews. I'd say that problems are rare either way, but certainly there are more problems with inexperienced hosts.
I could try to put those problems into categories:
either host does not understand some aspect of ABB, and/or ABB presentation in local language is very poor
host is actively trying to bend rules (be deceptive) or do something odd in their own interest
host has not done this before, and skips something (shampoo? did I call the appliance repairman? oh heck, I have to head to the airport, bye!) or hasn't tested something with actual guests.
A very new host is always a toss-up, but usually OK: booking a few nights before in Paris two months ago, the new host's boyfriend left the key under the doormat before heading to Morocco-- the building custodian noticed and took the key-- two hours aside, it isn't the first time I've needed to break in to an apartment in Paris-- they did a number of other things wrong (oh, that bed we pictured in the second room? It's in the cave-- just because you booked a 2BR for two, we didn't think you might be work collegues, not sleeping together, and you'd need both bedrooms).
Ah. The joys! In this case, the guy I'm travelling with is big and has a sleeping disorder which causes him to toss and turn. One of the legs of the bed last night, seems to be missing a screw or four and fell off. The host appeared to be about 5'6" and 60kg if that-- the bed frame is probably not something an experienced host would use, probably someone knew those screws were gone, but it never was an issue before.
So is this new host just in need of mentoring or someone who won't improve, out for a quick buck?
It strikes me that I stated using ABB nearly a decade ago, and when I did, a hotel out in Heidelberg's Pflaffengruende was 200E and the center, closer to 400E. Today many of the center hotels have to offer 100E and there are ABB options all over the scale.
Most of the new hosts I've encounter were genuine people, and while they had fewer problems-- this one was really about the cameras, the rest of the stuff are not things I'd bring here without that-- they were trying, the money meant a lot to them, and they were capable of change, great graciousness, and learning. Working through a few minor problems is part of the experience.
I'll also pause to note that the ABB site is often terrible in other, minor, and for instance East-Asian languages (which use page layouts for information, quite different from Western norms). This makes it hard for new hosts who are limited to these languages, to absorb ABB's rules and policies, much less customs and ways of doing things.
In particular, I've had a lot of problems with commercial operations using another person, usually a young "attractive" female fact that may not exist, as a front. Such operations can be hard to detect (exploitation of young woman or picture thereof aside; I've seen some operations with hundreds of reviews and no ID verification!) and sometimes seem to have quite mobby "entrepreneurs" behind them.
Here, the guy isn't here and his housekeeper is responding to messages-- she doesn't seem to want to come over, maybe she's not able to. Essentially there is a missing host, which is a problem and is a problem when you're listing a property for the first time which may have some issues.
Running away on vacation for one of your first stays is obviously not the best of moves-- in my experience, when I find that it's almost always a failure for new hosts. You're absent; something wrong happens; people are unsatisfied because they're in an unfamiliar environment and have no help.
ABB today, of course, IMHO, is terribly poor about onboarding new hosts-- that really should be fixed, they should do much more to send orienting messages such "don't go on vacation for your third guest!," but I don't have high expectations of the current ABB administration.
Otherwise-- shall I head on to a description of the Eastern European host next week, who wants guest to put passport, DOB, address, etc "enough information to take out a large loan" to be entered into a random, unsecure website "or I won't give you keys?"
(Ugh. 15+ reviews, most positive; one person mentioned they had a problem with the online service but it wasn't clear; place otherwise looked pretty nice and would have been my preference for location ... host seemed to get a wake-up call from the first negative review but no reform of practice, and, if an actual person and not a shill, has probably now sent me a nasty message.)
The shill accounts / questionable commercial operations masquerading as individual hosts, is also something ABB seems to be responding poorly/slowly to, though they now have separate categories-- again, many hosts, especially outside English-primary areas, seem to ignore or intentionally ignore these options.