Glut in the Market!

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

Glut in the Market!

Many hosts here complain that the service they are receiving from Airbnb is not only lacking, but deteriorating.

Consider this, all business run on supply and demand! When there is an over-demand for a product the price will rise and the desirability and availability of that product will be sought after and protected.

When there is an oversupply of product and not enough buyers, the product becomes the focus of sale pricing and poor service.

Can you see a parallel here?

Have a look at these recent Airbnb statistics released by IProperty Management.

I Property management.png

 

The telling statistic there is that only 11% of US properties had a guest on any given night throughout 2018. For every 100 Airbnb properties 88 of them did not have occupant through Airbnb.

The company have an oversupply of hosts and it is killing them. Local governments are not interested in how many guests are using STR’s….. they are concerned that the oversupply of STR’s is irreparably damaging the traditional rental market and so they are putting the screws on the STR platforms.

 

Any analyst worth his salt would tell Airbnb, they need to get rid of 50% of their host base!

 

As hosts we need to work smarter, we need to be more adaptable….great hosts will always survive, but poor hosts are killing it for all of us….they are clogging up the market with problems.

This is not the ‘good ol days’……..Customer support are possibly drawing a harder line here. We are the problem, not the company. We need to take a bit more control over what we do instead of expecting Airbnb to be our personal dust pan following behind and cleaning up after us!

We are seeing too many posts where Airbnb are letting us down, and in some areas I agree, but I love this company and if we are going to survive I think need to be the architects of that survival.

 

Cheers……Rob

 

14 Replies 14
Branka-and-Silvia0
Level 10
Zagreb, Croatia

@Robin4 

yes, 11% is bad... but a lot of them are seasonal units and they are open a few months only. The rest of the year they were always closed. 

 

And you are right, STR market is growing every year but everything was good until a few months ago when Airbnb allowed hotels and hostels to join. From that moment our booking rate and views dropped significantly and we will have to advertise on other booking sites as well. 

 

The market regulates itself - here in Zagreb for example new ABBs open in the city center and old ones, outside the center are turning back to the long term lease. (Airbnb map view prefers the city center so other hosts have no chance to be seen)

 

The sad and unbelievable thing is - when Airbnb decides to unlist xx % of listing at some area then they don't unlist those of poor quality but completely random.

 

@Robin4  Maybe there is more detail at the original source, but on first glance I'm interpreting that figure quite differently. 500,000 appears to be the total number of listings in the US, but the majority of them are not available 365 days a year. That figure would include listings that are inactive, listings created only for a short sublet, listings that are replicated on multiple platforms, and listings by casual hosts who aren't oriented toward a full-time operation. 

 

The data point that would confirm your point would be: what percentage of nights available on the Airbnb calendars of active listings are booked?  I don't know the answer to that (Airbnb doesn't tend to release data like that, and external analysts can't differentiate between blocked dates and booked dates).

 

That said, local governments (and voters) probably do often use misleading data to draw their conclusions about what's going on in the STR market.

 

 

Kimberly54
Level 10
San Diego, CA

Hi @Robin4, you are correct in some of what you say, and also Airbnb is not a consistent "product."  You are completely right in that we as hosts, have to take responsibility for what WE do, but we are just apples in a big cart which is hitched to a very large team of untrained horses.  Schooling fish would make more consistent decisions. This is a MASSIVE organization with so much potential (going back to the original vision).  Too big, too fast, and no brakes.  No controls, no way to guide or slow down.  There is no one who actually has any control, no one empowered, the corporate culture is nearly completely disabled... If they could take just one (metaphorical) hour to slow down and LOOK, this could be a Cloud 9 Dream!  But it's run by algorithms and largely manned by drones or people who behave like drones.  

 

I love the concept of the company beyond words, and truth is, it's a hot mess.

 

They are also constantly tweaking/changing their systems/procedures which only adds to the confusion/frustration. 

 

Two days ago, I became two people. (?) Really.  I've been on SNOOZE too long, so I was reclassified.  I did want to clear this up.  I will not go into the level of detail this set off--including letters to me that had NOTHING to do with the identity issue ("they were sent as a courtesy") (?) and finally, Airbnb hires an outside service to monitor/rate their drone-people!  Now, this is horrific.  I can't rate an employee for customer service when they're acting within a broken system.  (Our Lizzie was actually a great help.)

 

I sent a message directly to the survey service--the questionnaire is faulty.  The employee I spoke to did the best she could, given rotten circumstances.    I doubt that any real human will read or care about it.

 

@Branka-and-Silvia0and @Anonymous also make some very/super valid points.

 

Best,

 

 

 

Kim
Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Robin4  Well, if the market is glutted with hosts, it seems really stupid for Airbnb to have now gone to listing all these hotel rooms. According to my Porter App reports, there were about 150 listings in my area and my category (i.e. the filters) 2 weeks ago, then suddenly there were over 500 a week later.

Alexandra316
Level 10
Lincoln, Canada

@Robin4I have to agree that the numbers are probably skewed. Out of my two listings, one is only open for 6 months of the year because it's located in a seasonal community. Then out of those 6 months it's open, I block off all dates in July and August, because Airbnb won't let me have a cancellation policy that's enforceable and I can't afford to have it sitting empty during prime months. So between days blocked off for my personal use, family use, etc. There are less than 100 days available per year on that listing. 

 

We also have many listings in my local market that are still technically active listings, but there are no bookable days. It does make me wonder how they came up with this number. There is also information that directly contradicts itself (how many cities does Airbnb list in?) so I'm not sure how accurate these numbers are. 

 

I can tell you that in my market, the host base is small and unstable: very few end up sticking it out. I have seen many, many hosts come and go in the year and a half I've been hosting.

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

My occupancy rate hasn't really changed even with more places available here, either. I block off about 6 weeks in the summer (which is low season here anyway) for my own annual holiday, may block off dates because friends or family are coming to visit, and have never had more than one or two bookings from May-Oct, as that is low season here. I also have 1 day prep time in between bookings. So if they aren't factoring in blocked dates, the info isn't accurate. 

Paul154
Level 10
Seattle, WA

"There are three kinds of liesliesdamned lies, and statistics."

Susan151
Level 10
Somerville, MA

I have to ask, who is IProperty Management and why do you/we believe any of their numbers? It appears, via LinkedIn, to be a small real estate company with one owner and one employee.

 

Sorry, just can't take this particularly seriously if for no other reason than their mailing address is a UPS store.

 

@Robin4 Perhaps you have experience with these people and they are more knowledgable than their online presence indicates. If this is the case, I would love to know their sources.

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Susan151   Yes, and "In the rare event of accidental damage, the property of every Airbnb host is covered up to a million dollars" we know to be a pack of BS. 

These statistics seem somehow to be plugging Airbnb as a great investment opportunity once they go public.

Kelly149
Level 10
Austin, TX

statistics are open to manipulation of course, but as one aside to the 11% of listings are booked per night: I can make all my monetary goals for my space with only weekend rentals. So, I may only be booked 2 nights out of 7 but for my goals and my market that is just great for me.

I don't need to be 100% booked to be 100% happy with life at the Barn.

Elena87
Level 10
СПБ, Russia

Earn 7,717₽ for each new host you refer

 

 

That's the first thing I see when I open my inbox.

Airbnb does not seem to agree there is a glut of hosts.

 

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Kimberly54  @Elena87  @Kelly149  @Sarah977  @Susan151 

I just stumbled across that site while I was looking for something else and there was a lot of Airbnb statistics on it so I thought I would save it to go back to at times.

 

@ Paul's comment here is the best....Lies, damned lies, and statistics!....hey, how come that got through the sanitizer!!!

We can mount a statistical argument that black is actually white. But I didn't just look at that 11% figure in isolation!

 

1/.....If you take note of the volume or traffic here, customer host support does appear to be on the decline!

2/....Authorities around the world are putting more and more restrictions on short term rentals.

3/....Airbnb are spending exponentially more on advertising and guest promotion.

 

It is probably right that more than 70% of Airbnb listings are, Snoozed, seasonally unavailable or simply not active on any given night, but that is not the way the rest of the world sees it. They just see that there are 660,000 Airbnb listings alone in the US....more than 1 million between the United States and France.

Obviously there are always going to be turkeys who will say...'You can never have too much of a good thing' and yeah, as soon as you complete a review, that page comes up telling you to earn extra money by getting more hosts to climb on the Airbnb bandwagon.

 

In 2014 Airbnb was seen as a major tourist aid, a funky but respectable hospitality adjuct.

Now its just seen as a massive corporate steam roller destroying the balance of affordable housing!

A crunch will come, Airbnb cannot keep going the way it is....if it does it will be regulated into extinction!

 

What all of you say is absolutely correct, but look at the bigger picture, look what is happening!

 

Cheers......Rob

Sandra126
Level 10
Daylesford, Australia

Maybe it isn't less hosts that is needed, but more guests?The thing is that Airbnb HAS changed the world, has changed the rental situation. It has happened so fast that it took a while before legislation against started to happen. The avalanche of hosts was rapid, I don't think anyone predicted the speed or tactics would have been implemented from the get-go.

And a positive word re CX: I was contacted by them recently regarding an issue which comes up from time to time on the forum, so having read about other hosts I was prepared for the worst but I was floored by the extremely good help I was given without even asking for it. Awesome.

Alice595
Level 10
Concord, CA

@Robin4 I agree half of your comments. The other half is AirBnb's system, screening, reviewing, customer serice training, and rules and policies etc.   

 

(1) I am not aware of a standard screening of guests that AirBnb uses to check guests background when a new guest register at their site and makes a new booking. Therefore, there are a few trouble maker guests who have caused a lot of supporting issues. One guest who has 4 criminal records and 2 bankrupcy records later I found had caused me a lot of trouble to deal with and involved AirBnb to deal with him. Just the time spent dealing with him was more than half of the efforts I made to the rest of all guests. He was later kicked out by AirBnb.

 

(2) AirBnb support does not enforce rules and provide wiggling room for guests. For example, I have a restricted cancellation policy. A guest canceled a booking she made two weeks ago just because her sister who will travel with her preferred booking a hotel instead of AirBnb. And she asked for a full refund. And she called AirBnb support and AirBnb support called me to pursuade me to give her a full refund. Strict cancellation policy is an option made by AirBnb. Therefore, it should be an easy answer for the support to say No to the guest when she called AirBnb. The support should ask the guest to respect rule during their conversation instead of calling me. This guest would definitely call AirBnb support again next time when she wanted to cancel another reservation. 

 

(3) AirBnb now hides guest profile info before a booking is confirmed with so-called guests privacy protection. This has caused more trouble to hosts. And definitely these troubles would eventually invovle AirBnb support to resolve.

 

(4) AirBnb flawed review systems. I have seen many complaints from hosts about reviews they receive. Reviews are very important for hosts because of AirBnb extreme high standard in the star rating for maintaining superhost and listings, >=4.8 for getting/maintaining superhost status, and >=4.6 for keeping a listing active. Therefore, hosts have to deal with guests and call AirBnb in order to resolve issues when a review given to a host is in circumstances like fairness, mistakes, cancellation, etc.