I wanted to post a little of my experience with the Plus program. I’ve been a Superhost for a while and we take a lot of pride in the unique home and guest services that we offer.
When I was first introduced to the Plus program I thought it was a very good idea and I was interested in it. The more I looked into it and the more time that I’ve invested in it I can tell you that I feel that I’ve wasted a lot of my valuable time and resources. The program does not seem ready for prime time and the implementation of it is lacking, in my professional opinion. It’s easy to get pulled into this program, especially if you are a host who really cares about offering a top notch listing, but then you realize later that the program runs contrary to your goal of being a great host. If your goal is, like mine is, to have a top listing with good photography and great descriptions and excellent reviews, you might want to look elsewhere.
To be a great host you need to really think about what makes your particular listing unique and special and market it accordingly. The Plus program, on the other hand, is simply a forms-driven website and interface that is more focused on trying to shoehorn your listing into a format that likely won’t represent your special property in the manner that you feel comfortable with. So much of the inner workings of Airbnb is forms-driven to the point that the organization looses perspective of what makes good common sense. I’ve seen thus over and a very in my communications with Airbnb.
The Plus program really needs to be thought through better and needs a lot more flexibility. Just read many of the complaints that other experienced Superhosts have been providing here. I wished I would have studied the community forum posts before getting involved with this program.
I could think of a number of ways that this program could be improved:
+ the experience of working with the Airbnb assigned photographer really needs a considerable makeover. Much more flexibility is needed here to ensure that the host gets a good set of photos that he/she can really use. Most hosts just need a little help with their photos. What they don’t need is someone to come in and take over and produce a set of photos that don’t authentically represen their property. This certainly happened in our case. It’s not just an issue of are the photos simply good or bad. The real issue is that to do marketing properly you need photos that tell your authentic story of your property and listing, and not a “fairytale” version.
+ Airbnb needs a much better communication system to explain how the program works and what is really involved in the review/setup process. We had a number of surprises along the way as we went through the process, most of them not at all positive. The process takes a lot longer than mist people think, it takes up much more if your hosting time, and it is desruptive,but not in a good way. If you do decide to go forward with this program, do expect to invest more time and resources than you might at first think.
+ Airbnb needs to be careful about how it markets this program. It is marketed to hosts and guests as a “premium” product/service but in actuality it is more of a search engine and listing format that strips the flexibility from a standard listing. What makes Airbnb work well for many good hosts (over other competitive listing services) is the flexibility and uniqueness of their listings. The Plus program, in the way that it is implemented, turns the clock back and makes a listing less flexible.
+accuracy. We found that going through the process of having new photos taken and new formats made avaialable for our text descriptions shoehorned our property into a format that made the listing less accurate and far less authentic. For example, our property is a unique art-filled, stand-alone guesthouse and the listing conversion to the Plus program almost made the listing look like a room in a house—not at all what we are offering.
+ impact on reviews. We realized that if we went ahead with the conversion to the Plus format and listing that the quality of our marketing and accuracy of our listing would deteriorate and likely our future guests would not be happy and we would get some negative reviews. As a guest I would not be happy. This runs contrary to the type of tools and resources that Airbnb needs to be providing to us as hosts.
+ does the program really increase bookings? At the end if the day, this is the question we all have. Airbnb likes to market the program as a revenue enhancer but I really wonder about this. Just commonsense business experience after a lifetime of running very successful high tech businesses tells me that if the quality and accuracy of my listing deteriorates, that I’m going to loose business over time. Also the quality of my reviews will go down. My customers will simply have expectations that can’t be met due to the misleading format of the Plus program.
I also believe that Airbnb puts out statistics that can be very misleading. The statistics show that Plus listings achieve x% higher bookings. I’m sure however they are comparing this to the bookings of all lustings overall, many of them just average or may be poor listings. Now if you compared the actual bookings of reformatted Plus listings to thise offered by good performing Superhosts (who through their experience have learned how to make good listings), I bet the stats would look quite different. Don’t be mislead into making a decision by misleading data.
In summary, I would give the idea of the Plus program 4 or 5 stars. I would give the implementation of the program 2 stars.
I do believe that Airbnb needs to involve more experienced hosts in this process of trying to create a program like this, instead of simply relying on the expertise of a set of software engineers. All of the clever programming hacks and latest AI algorithms simply wont get the job done. Trust me, I have a lifetime of experience at this game.
i hope these notes help other hard working Superhosts take a more informed crit al look at these programs.