Smart pricing is still a big failure.
Your system fails to take into consideration that some AirBnB listings are much nicer than others and therefore should be priced higher.
Your Reviews system still leaves a lot too be desired even after your recent change. AirBnB Feedback requires two modifications in order to improve for everyone’s benefit:
1. Allow us to highlight and pin to the top pf Review section extraordinary, most detailed feedback from user, e.g.: our “Top 2” reviews where a guest really made an effort to be thorough to help other guests understand what it felt like. Some guests go above and beyond to write an exquisitely useful review but these get immediately lost and buried beneath guests in a rush who just say, “great stay!” which really helps nobody.
2. Allow us to delete maximum of 1 feedback per year. This will accomplish a filter system of occasional outlier really nasty, negative reviews from someone with a psychiatric issues and those who retaliate because they violated house rules or caused damage and intend to preemptively counter negative review they expect.
I had someone mentally ill violate my boundaries, upset that she wasn’t invited to my dinner and movie so she wrote a nasty review, texted me many pages of text messages on my cell and that’s just unfair even though I’m forced to write an explanation.
Finally, my biggest complaint is what I believe a mistake AirBnB has made by removing the user’s photo prior to booking. The reason for the change is admirable in its intention: to prevent racial discrimination by racist hosts. Great goal! Unfortunately, this has a very serious and undesirable problem it causes.
It makes it impossible to catch users who are mean, hateful, unhygienic, immature, or unsavory... all of which are often apparent when we’re able to see someone’s photo! People who think it appropriate to post an unhappy looking, mean faced photo of themselves are almost always mean, anti-social or disturbed.
The photo is such an easy deterrent of that. Further, of someone is racist and would just me by my color, I wouldn’t feel safe to stay with that person in the first place. Let them see my face and race so that if they’re racist, I don’t wind up there.
Unfortunately, racist people never admit this on their page so the photo is an excellent protection against this.
As hosts, we are inviting a complete stranger into our own home, sleeping in the next room, so we want to know as much about them as possible and that means at least we can see that their photo doesn’t reveal an angry, disturbed or alcoholic or drug addict. We’re Hosts not Guinness pigs, 😉.