Contribute to hosting development and fight against people ignorance

[Yves83]

Airbnb has an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: contribute to hosting development and fight against people ignorance.

I will take a concrete example in France and more specifically in the famous Burgundy region. This region includes four different departments: Yonne, Côte d’Or, Nièvre and Saône et Loire.

Airbnb search engine currently works on the basis of statistics highlighting the most popular areas and showing first the hosting opportunities in these areas, forgetting the others.

The outcome of this current approach regarding a search for hosts in July for a stay in August in Burgundy was this message on your screen: “85% more people are looking for homes in Côte d’Or”, the map pointing only hosts in Côte d’Or.

The consequence of this approach is both:

• To **bleep** in the bud the efforts of the Airbnb hosts unfortunately not located in Côte d’Or
• To keep foreign guests, not knowing Burgundy, in their ignorance of Burgundy and deprive them of a lot of very interesting and rich opportunities in Yonne, Nièvre and Saône et Loire.

Why not then integrating some intelligence in Airbnb search engine to provide guests with some short presentation of the region targeted and show all the hosting opportunities? I am pretty sure that the regions in the world would be ready to contribute.

[Gina32]

@Yves83 You make a very valid point and thank you for raising it. This does happen around the world and those living on the fringe of popular places are suffering by these search engine intelligence limitations.

I doubt Airbnb is going to listen though, but if they do they are slow to react or rectify.

They talk about Everyone belonging, but then make others feel they don't.

Wouldn't it be nice if they stopped doing the things which annoy us. Including the silly policy of "infants are free" and "it's a tourism industry standard". It is not in my world.

[Yves83]

Hi Gina,

The mathematical algorithms are becoming a huge threat for everybody in the world, including for those exploiting them. They are reflecting the lack of lateral vision from those programming them. HomeAway and Tripadvisor groups are doing the same and I suspect most of the RBO’s following the same route.  It is key to react in order to bring more intelligence in the search engines and encourage high service quality standards.