Hi All,
We’ve been following the discussions around Airbnb Plus with great interest too.
When it was first announced back in February, our first thoughts were: We have to be on this too!
But now: 7 months later, We’re certainly not that sure anymore.
We expect, the introduction of the program in ‘our’ area, to be announced any day now.
There used to be a button in your listing, and when you pressed it. It would come up with the message: The program is not yet available in your area.
Nowadays, you seem to have to request an invitation to be on the program. And when you press that button. It’ll tell you, the Plus team is too busy to on-board new requests.
From what we have witnessed this far:
- Airbnb had a very slow start (the original number of Plus listings actually went down from about 2,000 to some 1,600 – in Spring 2018).
- The number of Airbnb Plus listings do seem to start growing steadily now, Including in cities/areas, which were supposed to be in the second or even the third ‘batch’.
- On-boarding the program seems to take at least some 3-4 months (from request to join to publication of a Plus-listing. Or could take even longer).
- Hardly any text left in the listings itself (Is Airbnb recognizing the fact of guests not to read anything?).
- Some photos are quite small.
- Various hosts did mention, they no longer had any (or hardly any) control on their pictures and/or listing, after joining the program.
- And especially Letti (can't tag here) mentioning, Airbnb will also control your price. That’s an absolute no-go area for us (Please also bear in mind, Brian C. mentioning a typical Plus listing would cost less than $ 250 a night. And we all know what it means, when Airbnb is mentioning certain thresholds 😞 ).
- The program seems to have been welcomed with mixed feelings. As we’ve seen comments here where only a few hosts were happy to be on the program. But quite a large number of hosts, want to either opt out or at least had negative feelings on the program (such as @France45). Obviously the program is still somewhat in an infant state.
- The Plus team seems to be overwhelmed with requests and does not seem to be very well organized. As in: On-boarding and follow-up certainly does not seem to be a smooth process.
We’ve even seen comments, where it was mentioned: The project to have been restarted some months ago. - Financial impact: What value is in there doubling your page views, and cutting down your bookings (that’s been witnessed too)?
For now, we will most likely wait to join the program, when it comes to ‘our’ area.
And we will keep a very close eye on what our competition does (the problem of course: Throughput time). I.e.: For quite some time, nothing will seem to happen. And then all of a sudden and in a couple of weeks’ time. You will see them popping up, all around you.
It’s funny to notice that potential guests would value a listing higher, when having been ‘verified’ by an external photographer. Whom did not even sleep there, to begin with. Just walking around with the camera and the 100-bullet list of Airbnb. Obviously most guests won’t know this. And will tend to think that Airbnb management has stayed at the place and carried out the inspection themselves.
But maybe guests just want to be fooled, by marketing 🙂