Plus - has destroyed my forward bookings

[James261]

Anyone else noted a drop off in bookings, if you are not a Plus home this is likely the reason.  Our Plus listing has been an on going issue from about the start of march. We have been told it could be another 12 weeks. Are you friggin kidding me. As a super host with rave reviews we used to be up the top of the listing for our suburb. On page one out of 136 listings. Now because of Plus we have been bumped to the last page, page 8 and the bottom of 136 listings, not only that if any one does a search for our suburb they see at the top section all the featured Plus homes. Then if they scroll down they see experences featured. So any one looking for homes to rent would stop scrolling at that point. BUT our house is dumped into a bottom section of 'other' homes. When I have repeatily coplained that this has seen our bookings drop off a cliff and is hurting us finacially they simply DON'T care and won't help. Two responses that I keep getting - "for Airbnb all problems big and small are treated the same way". and "I need to manage your expectations" - seriously is this the training they giving these people - how to really piss people who are already annoyed.Airbnb case managers have lied to me and stopped responding. It is the WORST customer service I have ever recieved. They simply don't care, and they are not empowered to fix stuff. I'm in Australia and we are a very big important market for them, but they are trying to customer care/support on the cheap from Asia, not even in our time zones.

[Pete28]

I thought this was by design - plus goes first, then everyone else is left chewing dust ? Of course in the manic world of Airbnb you have to compete to keep the 4.8avg while juggling the ever more picky / crazy guests. 

Might i I suggest competing on price ? The plus listings tend to disappear when you dial the price down. I know it might not be what you want to hear...

[Rebecca160]

My bookings dropped off rapidly, as well, when the new design came out. Sadly, my place will never be in any of the special categories ( work, family) as I do not have a TV and will not get self entry. I have to introduce guests to my dog, so I cannot have guests just walking in without me around and guests enjoy having a quiet space. If they need TV, they logon to the internet! I used to get a lot of temporary workers, too. They are always great guests. I imagine that it will only get worse with more collections coming out that I will likely not qualify to join. Sigh... have you submitted this issue to the Host Q&A?

[Sean119]

  "dialing the price down" is exactly what ABB want you to do.  If you charge $1 a night they still make more than if you didn't book, so few remaining options exist (by design) for hosts.

This summer we have 5x more bookings through HA/VRBO than ABB.  I've effectively priced our lisiting where it is above the radar of bargain hunting ABB guests...an ever growing population in the ABB customer base.   At this rate we are considering dropping ABB inthe future because of all the new bs.  With HA we still have a 30-day cancellation (their "firm", they also have a 60-day "strict") and the 50% deposit is sent to my bank account within a week of booking, and the final 50% (and damage deposit) are received before the guest arrives.  There really is no comparison.   

[Sean119]

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