New category honoring Airbnb's original intent

Leslie7
Level 10
Port Angeles, WA

New category honoring Airbnb's original intent

With specialized collections like Plus and Family, I wish that Airbnb would create a new category for the unique, individually owned types of listings that started the whole thing. It appears that the majority of listings are now investors and people with multiple properties who have no real emotional connection to hosting. It seems more and more the personal appeal of staying in a unique, individual space is disappearing. The advent of Instabook, professional management hosts, and people buying or building places specifically to be vacation rentals, has changed the culture dramatically. My husband and I travel a lot, and we use Airbnbs for the experience and feeling of being a guest in someone's home, rather than the impersonality of a hotel. We usually like to stay in a place that is a whole house type listing, but it used to be that meant a little guest house on someone's property, a basement apartment, or possibly a little place that someone rents out because they got married and combined households. Now it's getting harder and harder to find places like that having to wade through listing after listing of professional rentals. I wish Airbnb had a category for listings that still reflected the sharing economy that started Airbnb. I'm not doing a very good job of explaining what I mean, but I'm pretty sure most of you know. Maybe someone will start a new homesharing platform that honors that smaller, personal feeling, and will strive to be more like Airbnb was in the beginning. If so I'll be the first in line.

72 Replies 72

Sadly, a few years would be a very optimistic timeframe @Miki5. And cruel, certainly, but also illegal - in Europe at least, and very possibly, in a lot of other jurisdictions too. 

Susan1028
Level 10
Oregon, US

@Miki0,

This is an issue across businesses and populations because of the inherent bias built into the systems that have created the world as we know it, and if we look at the larger picture, how's that working for everyone, really, in terms of suvival, distribution, and human and  environmental needs?

I chose airbnbn first because it seemed to fit who I am best, seemed different and more personalized than the wholesaler approach, more "grass roots" offering an alternative to the 'status quo.'

Airbnnb has joined the status quo, so the most logical choice for each of us and our businesses is to study all of these booking platforms (because that's what airbnb is) and choose the one(s) that will serve each of us best based on at least 4 criteria:

 

1- Safety/integrity/accountability

2- Comprehensive and consistent services (platform features, customer service/support, user-friendliness, responsivenes, exposure, ratings, access to needed information, protections, legal issues)

3- Does it work for our business and sensibilities? How comfortable is it, in which ways and why? Does it make it easier for us to do business and feel good about it in comparison to others?

3- Profit potential/actual/net/gross across each platform.

 

I put them in this order because that's how I view who I want to do business with and how, at all levels.  If I feel good about things, business flows beautifully.  If not, it's time to take a fresh look, learn, and make whatever change(s) will make it so.  Everything evolves. It's working well for me, and my preferred way of doing business, and I look for good matches for that because then, it becomes a "win-win" that benefits everyone involved rather than an extraction of profit regardless of how it effetcs the whole.

 

Here's a question for another thread: How would we all rate Airbnb compared to other platforms in terms of the above criteria?

@Susan1028

 

How’s it working- awfully badly, I’d say.

 

To your list I’d add:

Respect for the quality of life, as well as the social and political values of the places/cities these mega corpos financially exploit.

 

If ABB had respected the places into which they stomped, how different things would be. If they had understood municipal leaders’ legitimate concerns regarding effect on housing prices. If they had be willing to pay their fair share of taxes instead of being dragged to pay the absolute minimum. And if they had believed in supporting the original hosts, instead of allowing a corporate wave to turn this business into just another mega brand.

 

Another host did a search of my city, and of the first fifty listings, 60% were run by corporations.

 

Half of the 60% were brand new on the market. And this is the low season.

 

That tells me everything I need to know about ABB.

 

I too, first joined a believer. But as the business morphs, I am becoming more disheartened each day. And you know, I bet they don’t care at all, and would be very happy to get rid of us. Why deal with a bunch of pesky individual hosts, on a daily basis, when you can roll up to your monthly mega meeting. If anyone knows of another platform for hosting one room only. I’d love to know about it.

Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

How about these:

 

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or

 

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@Ben551 Not too fond of either of those. I don't think Classic Collection would say much to guests as far as a description, and Personal Touch sounds like some concierge service. But keep the ideas coming. 

And not that font- looks like a wedding invitiation or a a funeral announcement 🙂 We're likely just talking to ourselves- it remains to be seen whether Airbnb would even consider givng small on-site hosts a leg up. But if they did, I'd prefer a name which easily conveyed what was represented- something like Homestay With Local Host (that's too long, but I think it has to be something along those lines that is self-explanatory).

Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

Roger that @Sarah977 I'll keep tinkering with fonts and words when the mood strikes me 👍

Miki5
Level 10
Montreal, Canada

I don't see the need for a special category, as I feel it gets too confusing for the guests, with too many choices to make. Why not simply tweak the drop-down menus? For a private room you could have one that says, "On-sight hosting provided in the home of a local resident. " Or something like. The other private room could be "Off-sight hosting provided by a management company."

 

Entire listings are less my concern as it’s not my market, but I’m sure they could be tweaked also.

Exactly @Miki5

The very last thing browsing guests need is any more "collections" to make searches even more cluttered, convoluted and time consuming than they already are.

 

It's very simple really - only two categories are required, as determined by recent  EU legislation. One category (Home Hosts)  for homeaharers and small, hands-on entire place hosts who have personal interaction with their guests, still believe in old-school hospitality, and are actively involved with the day to day running of their listings. The second category (Pro Hosts) for the hundreds of thousands of professional operators, commercial entities, VRMs, PMCs, real estate agents, wannabe property  tycoons, developers, builders, slumlords, corporate letting agents, foreign speculators, vultures etc, plying their wares on the platform. Two very different animals, by anyone's standards. 

 

Airbnb officially states that hosts must have 6 listings or more in order to be permitted access to the "Airbnb Professional" area of the site, complete with its exclusive range of Pro perks and benefits, and special treatments. Therefore, it stands to reason that the company's own  definition of "Professional", is a host with 6 or more listings. 

 

 It would seem a very straightforward task to just separate those with 6+ listings into the "Professional" category, and everyone with fewer listings into the "Homes" category, in line with the benchmark Airbnb has already set to delineate the two. Then each of the two categories, Airbnb Home and Airbnb Pro, could simply be further divided into subcategories - Private Rooms and Entire Place. What could be easier?  

 

And of course, Airbnb would then (finally) have the regular host vs professional operator figures at its fingertips to hand over to local governments around the world who have been asking them to provide this exact data for their towns and cities for a very long time now. Two birds, one stone. 

Then all they'd have to do is bring back the "keywords" function that they got rid of several years back (in favour of clearly not very successful "deep learning", AI and "best matching efforts). That way, guests just might be able to go back to quickly and easily finding the listings that are pefectly suited to their needs, instead of having to wade through a sea of uninspiring dross that some random bot decides would be best for them. 

@Susan17 Home Host and Pro Hosts. Simple. Perfect.  And 6 plus puts you in pro. Love this, and so esy to do! 

Alon1
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Susan17 & @Miki5 

 

I entirely agree re 'only two categories are required, as determined by recent EU legislation.'

 

I don't know how long Airbnb can ignore EU directive?

 

But so long as they do, perhaps one might at best suggest in feedback to Airbnb an introduction of colour code in maps-search to designate the two categories.

 

Personally, I would suggest one other sub-division in first category: between 'Live-In Hosts' and 'External Hosts', advertized next to the type of listing: 'Private Room', . 'Entire Flat', etc. Again to be differentiated by colour-code.

 

   This isn't based on feedback from Guests, but my extrapolation during Guest stay. Some -  only a few - evidently resent any interaction with Live-in Host, and I feel awkward as if I'm imposing, though only do so when necessary. Still, I hate feeling awkward in my own home, and can't wait for this type of guest to depart. So I would like an extra filter that will likely stop them even coming in the first place. 

.

Consequently, In Review I don't suggest 'better suited to hotel', rather better suited to 'studio-flat with absentee landlord'. 

 

 

Ben551
Level 10
Wellington, New Zealand

@Miki5@Susan17@Sarah977@Leslie7@Susan1028  - taking @Susan17's suggested wording, how about this?

 

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Pia116
Level 2
Cairo, Egypt

I completely agree! I also have a solution, a new category to be called: HOMES. 😉 Homestays. I also very much prefer this type of lodging for my travel or holidays. Uniqueness and personal touches, staying in someone's home.