Hosts receiving inquiries and bookings from Airbnb Newbies are seeing multiple guest's hometowns as "Lindenwold, NJ." This seems to be a new phenomenon, probably an artifact of an update.
After opening a ticket w/ ABB Superhost support, I was told that it is a default setting that has to be changed by the guest. The advice was for me to remind them to do it. Now, it is optional, and if they don't do this, it still shows up under their name and profile pic even after they book, which is confusing.
I think that's backward. Hosts should not have to add to their instructions to Guests — especially Newbies — a reminder to do something they should be required to do.
Instead, Airbnb, please fix this so that everyone must enter their hometown before making an inquiry or booking request.
Patti
Response from Airbnb
Status: Fixed
Thank you for alerting the Airbnb team to this bug in our system. We fixed the underlying problem on August 9 and corrected the hometown location on affected guest profiles on August 16. The issue was being caused by a quirk in our system that automatically added a hometown location if the guest didn’t provide one. We’ve switched to a more reliable way of getting that information, so you shouldn’t be seeing this problem anymore. However, if you do, please let us know!