I'm a new host and I've spent hours, no, DAYS on making sure that my listings are 100% accurate so that guests will not be disappointed when they arrive. Airbnb, please hear my grief with the current amenities list and options under it!!!
1. ESSENTIALS - currently it shows to include "Towels, bed sheets, soap, and toilet paper". For hosts that provides towels, bed sheets, blankets, hand soap, dish soap, and toilet paper, WE CANNOT CHECK THIS OFF because I just got a text message from a guest at 11pm asking "do you know where is shampoo and shower gel?". We've had a few guests at this point and this had not been an expectation of any of our other guests. We requested honest feedback from everyone that stayed and no one mentioned this at all so we were absolutely clueless that this could be an expectation. I went back to our listing and saw we did not check off SHAMPOO under amenities, but we did check ESSENTIALS. Under essentials we assumed soap meant "hand soap" and "dish soap", but now we realize we made a HUGE mistake! Jeez Airbnb, a bit clarity please, and on top of that, what if you only provide towels, bed sheets and toilet paper - then you can't check off ESSENTIALS and therefore LOSE CUSTOMERS because your essentials only equates to 90% of what's listed under ESSENTIALS. NO BUENO!!!
2. How about adding a couple things to the amenities list? For starters: Conditioner? Shower Gel? Beach chairs? Heck these days you may even want to add Razors and Face wash as amenities! Guest expectations can only be met when amenities are made VERY CLEAR to them and we all know that guests DO NOT READ EVERYTHING on a listing. A lot of assumptions are made and to fix this, more check boxes are very badly needed!!!
3. KITCHEN AMENITIES, COOKING BASICS (Currently: Pots and pans, oil, salt and pepper) - What if you have the whole shebang of pots and pans of all sizes, salt and pepper, but you don't have olive oil??? What then? Then you can't check off Cooking Basics??? UGH!
4. SPECIAL AMENTIES, BEACH ESSENTIALS (Currently: Beach towels, umbrella, beach blanket, snorkeling gear) - In my area beach umbrellas are not something that is provided (they never last or they disappear, plus you can rent them at the beach), but we all have Beach towels, beach chairs, beach blankets, AND MAYBE snorkeling gear. Seriously man, it makes it way too specific in the amenities list, why not itemize these things like you itemize "hangers"?
TO SUMMARIZE: Bundling amenities is NOT GOOD FOR ANYONE. We can all profit more PLUS please the guest at the same time. People (guests and hosts) are bound to make certain assumptions. We all have different expectations when we hear the word ESSENTIALS for example - what do we personally find to be an essential amenity? My essentials would include Conditioner because that's me, but I don't expect it, however, others may have this expectation and would feel that "essentials have not been provided" and therefor indicate that your property wasn't accurately (e.g. you have soap but no shower gel) or just decide to give you a lower rating because they felt that it should have been included.
CHECK-IN AND CHECK-OUT: It would have been great if there was an option to set individual check-in and check-out times for individual days (like you individualized minimum night stay per day of the week) - for example: Weekend bookings are popular and Monday bookings are not, so to meet guest needs (maximize their feeling of bang for their buck without negatively affecting your own business), I would like to give them the option to check out at 3pm or 4pm on a Sunday, but if they only stay for a Friday night, I'd want them out by 11am on a Saturday! Sure you can just tell the guest this, but what if you want your guest to KNOW THIS before they book or request to book? Transparency is key in providing spot on expectations. If this cannot be done, in the least give an option for the host to add an individual check-in and check-out time note that is clearly visable on the monthly calendar view. Right now you add a note to day 1 and it auto-populates for all the days - why? It would also be nice to have a better view on blocked day notes - half gets cut off, why not wrap the text? Seems like an easy fix. This entire paragraph may seem odd to many hosts, but when you are on an isolated island with only one or two travel options to/from the island, check-in and checkout times are something that NEEDS to be flexible, but you can't be flexible all the time, so the next best thing would be to provide hosts with the option to individualize check-in and checkout times by day of the week!
Hope to see an improvement on the amenity options soon!
