Every day I see a decrease on bookings all over Airbnb. Mostly hosts of single rooms or shared spaces as it was originally intended. Allowing massive "corporate hosts" and hostels have really brought a huge impact on home owners that rented out their extra room.
Furthermore, with so many listings and hosts and the growing wave of new guests (and the lack of returning guests) there are now horrible guests and hosts roaming around Airbnb.
I have just decided to unpublish my listing as from being booked solid for 3 years in a row I went to no bookings at all, even constantly improving my room, area, photos, descriptions, etc.
The lack of returning or experienced guests intrigued me for the last 6 months and I can now start to see why, with so many of us posting listings Airbnb has no way of knowing the kind of things that make a guest leave to never return. Today I'm sharing my side as a GUEST.
I am planning to spend next weekend away in another city, as an Airbnb host I usually use Airbnb to travel. Looking at the places available I noticed a sneaky host with almost perfect reviews. However, one of them was a simple line "if you want to be conned, book this place". As a fellow host I know that there are some crazy guests that can leave insane reviews but still I decided to investigate a little, and after a while reading every part of the listings description I found, very well hidden, a note saying that you wouldn't be given the keys to enter the place (it was a whole house) unless you paid in cash, upfront, $400 pesos (around 20 USD) for each day you would be staying (day, not night) so for checking in on Friday and leaving on Sunday once would have to pay, in cash, at the gate of the property, $1,200 pesos (60 USD).
I wrote the host saying that there is absolutely no justified reason to charge additional money not considered during the booking unless done through the resolutions center and having a reason for it (like loss of things or damage on property). I kindly reminded her that this was against Airbnb policies and unethical as she was already charging a cleaning fee. This "extra cost" is because there at the house is a live-in-maid and grounds-keeper, and those are their daily rates and non-optional. She replied she would "take it into consideration".
So this long post is for two reasons:
a) If anyone out there is doing something similar, to remind you (or letting you know as you may not know this) that this is completely against policies, a guest should not be asked to pay for anything else unless you provided additional services during their stay or they broke something.
b) To ask fellow hosts and the general community, what can be done about this host? I have already clicked on the flag and reported the listing and the message from her saying that it was requesting money outside of Airbnb but I can't seem to do anything else. Is there something else to be done?
These are the types of hosts that are killing Airbnb (as well as the new wave of unknowing guests). I wish something more could be done.
Thank you and sorry for the long rant.
