Q&A with Airbnb Founders

[Lizzie]

Hello Everyone,

As part of the Airbnb Open in Los Angeles this year, Airbnb Co-Founders: Brian, Joe and Nate along with Aisling Hassell, Head of Global Customer Experience will be taking to the stage for a live Q&A session. 

Here in the Community Center we have been asked to submit questions for the team to answer, which is very exciting! This is a fantastic opportunity for you to ask the Founders of Airbnb questions that are important to you, so lets take advantage of this by submitting some great and constructive points. 

Please reply to this thread with your question(s) by Sunday, November 6th. We will select as many as we can for the team to answer during the live event. 

We can't wait to see what you come up with. 

Lizzie 🙂

[Anita61]

Hallo,

My question: why is location part of the heavy rating for "superhost" status? Does AIRBNB only wants toplocations with excellent service? Humor. I'm located on 100 metres from a four star hotel "Van der Valk Almere". My figures: total experience 86%, hygiene 96%, accuracy 96%, value 94%, communication 100%, arrival 98%, location 69%. Number of guests received 75. As AIRBNB indeed  only wants top 1 location then I don't have to worrying about my superhost status. Because I can't never realize that with the upcoming winter period where all the trees are bare, it is cold and bleak and Almere looks desolate by that (for those who are not accustomed). The house is located in a typical Dutch residential neighborhood, low-rise mono-familiar houses, with a calm green and silent surroundings during spring and summer. We also are not located on a beach, in the middle of the center of an old city or in a forest. The odds are not great that we get a 85% 5 star rating for location.

I would say that a four star location is sufficient in combination with an excellent service to the status of superhost.

My rooms: https://www.airbnb.nl/rooms/12930648 and https://www.airbnb.nl/rooms/7553292 (both in the same house).

With kind regards,

Anita van Breemen

[Bob43]

"...very exciting! This is a fantastic opportunity..."

Well... yeah... 🙂

Anyway, I really can't think of any other questions I would like to ask but an operational one. It is a question however seen from a guest's perspective, which eventually also influences my hosting experience.

In about 50% of all bookings I receive (on everage 28 days/months booked), guests will ask me the easiest way to get from the airport to my home. I also get a lot of questions like if my place is close to city center, or any relevant sights. And many guests will ask for specific things to do/see/shop in my nieghbourhood. Of course I am always happy to answer them. Additionally guests will ask me if they will have a private bathroom (if they know their rented space is a private room to begin with), although it is very clearly stated on my profile it's a shared bathroom.

Have you ever considered changing the way a guest narrows down its search for a place to stay from an "open search module" (in which he is able to randomly select specifics into a flowchart like search? This search option would allow guests to go through every available search option before they submit the search and get to see any results. After that, I think it would definately help guests and hosts to guide them through the whole description of a listing before they can make a reservation. After each part of the description, a button like "Got it" could appear and be clicked before they will see the next part of the description. For now, guests will be most influenced by the pictures of the listing and not be challenged to read the full descriptions. This way of searching also forces guests to at least understand the basics of travelling by Airbnb and making reservations.

However, all of these questions are very clearly answered on my profile.

[Bob43]

Please disregard the last sentence in my earlier reply. It should not have been there :).

[Harry22]

Browsing through this thread, there are a lot of requests for better support from airbnb's side.

Since this is hard to happen, will you please give us a better forums platform?

A more organized environment, with more features, available in all the forums today, for us to help eachother.

An IRC channel - sister to the forum would also be great for us to help eachother in a "non-official" way.

My 2¢s

Regards, 

Harry

[Silvana5]

My question:

What is the AirBnB's appeal process for hosts which their listing is temporarily or permanently disabled ? Thank you for considering it.

Silvana. 

[Nicky-And-Julian0]

An ability to appeal all sorts of decisions would be good rather than just a shut door - this leaves us hosts in fear of having it all shut down or refused and not knowing why.

[Jiw0]

--> "Why is it a good idea to try out policy changes in the system without at least notifying hosts?"  

Hosts tend to find out the hard way when an important policy change is being tried out. And then it's floated sometimes in only one region, so when seeking support in the community forums it just results in general confusion.   Can you please go back to saying what you do, and doing what you say?  Policy changes are natural and often necessary, but please work to a managed and transparent process.

--> "Instant Book.  Can we all stop pretending it's to fight racism? "

You are throwing the hosts who shared space in their personal home under the bus, the peoplewho made AirBnB a success but who do very much need to have a normal human interaction with a stranger before inviting them into their home. Remember when the pitch was about mutual trust between host and guest, the things that brought you success?  All of that is being thrown out.   Please note the below pop up that guests get: only one button to click, and it doesn't do what it says. At this point Instant Book listings are *already* shown.  What it does is hide listings who dont' have Instant Book turned on, or only turned on for guests with past stays.   No matter if they're Superhosts who've been with the platforum for years, with 5 star listings.  No, Instant Book is more important than everything else, to the point of hiding many of the highest quality listings.

Also note that this was not communicated.

Yes Instant Book makes you (and hosts) a little more money.  Which you then get to spend on ever increasing numbers of call-center staff to work through cancellations as a result of incorrect expectations, things that would have been prevented in a good old guest-host message chat, where the host can explain things to make sure the place is a good match for the guest.   Instead places are booked instantly without reading properly, then the guest wants to cancel, then the call center staff calls the host to push to make it a booking change from 10 days to one day, so without getting the cancellation fees that the host intentionally set for his listing.   All that aggrevation for guests, hosts and your call center peeps: why?

--> Why do you want to become Priceline.com or Booking.com, moving away from a 'travel community' feel where guests and hosts actually talk to each other and get to know each other before agreeing on a stay?   Assuming the answer is 'money', could you spin off a dedicated site for one-click booking type stays, and keep a place for an actual tracel and sharing community?   (Or the other way around, keep moving AirBnB where it's going but then spin off an 'AirBnB-Home' for the original model of people sharing a couple rooms in their own house. It's very difficult to be all things to all people.)

-->  PayPal.  Earned money can go to PayPal, but if I want to use those funds to actually travel then I cannot.    Please find a way to make that happen, and if you must charge more for that then that's fine too.

--> Message censorship and blanking of content.   I'm a superhost with hundred's of stays. Please cut me a little slack when trying to communicate with guests and help them arrange their travels.  I like the platform, the value proposition makes sense, fees are fair, I love it.  Now please let me communicate without having to do word-limbo-dancing to not see parts of my communications censored, resulting in an unprofessional and less helpful communication to my guest.

All of this said, AirBnB is still by FAR the best holiday rental platform out there.  Criticisms are intended to make it even better, and/or prevent it from getting worse for hosts and guests alike.

[Jiw0]

Racism.  Why was it a surpise that exactly the same percentage of AirBnB users show racist behavior as the general population? Wouldn't it have been far more miraculous if somehow only people without a racist bone in their body ended up as AirBnB hosts or guests?   Is Mark Zuckerberg surprised when a small percentage of his users show racism: of course he isn't. 

A year ago there was an astonishingly flawed study by some Harvard people on racism among AirBnB hosts.  

Why was it flawed: they did fake booking inquiries by non existing guest accounts without a profile picture, and then found that people named Brent White were accepted 16% more times than Abu Jamal Brown.   As a host, it would have been already strange to see an inquiry without profile picture so those inquiries would have raised some concern already. With no other cues to go by, 16 out of a hundred hosts then declined the more black sounding name.  

The researchers then proceeded to tell you how to run your business, pretty much by prevening those nasty potentially racist hosts from declining anyone altogether, foregoing the mutual vetting and chatting and trust building that formed the basis of your community and key to your success.  Which... is... exactly what you did, and named it Instant Book.

Please keep up the anti racism efforts.  I think it's the right thing to do, I fully subscribe to the policy of being an open, welcoming, respectful community where everyone belongs. I'll sign that statement right away. (Where is it by the way, it's well past November 1 and haven't seen it yet.)

But don't throw the baby out with the bath water.  A community where people interact like normal human beings before allowing a stranger into their home is a crucial key to your success, host's success, and millions of great stays by guests.    Even keep Instant Book for hosts that want it.   But don't marginalize and hide people who open their own homes to strangers by hiding their listings, even if they are Superhosts with hundreds of 5 star reviews, over some company that put up a whole apartment block for profit, just because they managed to turn on Instant Book.

[Debi1]

Brian, Joe and Nate:

I was ready to remove my listings from Airbnb in 2010, until I received an apologetic letter from Brian Chesky after a host in SF had her house trashed by renters.  I reacted to the heart and sincerity in that transmission and thought 'anyone who can be this vulnerable and this open is someone I want to associate with.  These kids are doing something right'.  

I kept my listings alive.  

It has been my honor to create a podcast meant to share the human side of Airbnb hosts.  Their stories are awesome.

Airbnb is growing so fast, in so many areas, becoming unreachable, that even I am having a hard time today finding the heart of Airbnb.  Can you tell us where we can still find the trust, the connection, the sincerity of support that was Airbnb in "Airbnb The Mega-Company"?  I am afraid we are losing you to corporate mentality which is not founded on trust, honesty and compassion.  I miss you, and I don't know how to explain the 'new you'.

[Eloise0]

Thank you, Debbie.  I too am at a loss at the  feel of an open community of the original Airbnb's mission.  I am deeply disappointed with the Instant Booking policy, and my inquiries have reflected that change in  policy as well as the caliber of the kind of Guest inquiries.  The brunt of responsibility and burden of proof has been transferred from the Guest to the Host. More and more of my inquiries do not read the house rules much less the Airbnb Terms of Service.  The Guests are not held up to the same standard of scrutiny as the Hosts with seemingly no attempt by Airbnb to correct this glaringly unfair practice.  All of the recent changes in policy have been at the expense of the Host.  Hosts' are Airbnb's primary First customer with the Guest customer being brought into the business platform by the Host.  By taking away more and more of the options from the Hosts at their expense can only result in fewer and fewer hard working Hosts to continue to be able to offer unique, authentic travel experiences at reasonable prices.  This quite simply is cutting Airbnb's nose off to spite their face. In their drive to get more and more Host listings, while doing a deplorable job of vetting and verifying  their listing has done nothing but harmed the brand name of Airbnb, while further causing, even more, damage to other Hosts.  This practice of very lax verification tactics has also shown up in the number of inquiries verification and no photos along with their first inquiry  they ask for a discount, add more guests, wanting to pay in cash, and any number of TOS transgressions while clearly demonstrating that they have not read the rules and are belligerent when asked to do so.  The reservation process has now become the most difficult time-consuming part of the reservation and then many times the Guest will not even have the courtesy to respond if they don't get their way, continuing to search for a rule breaking Host, which in turn adds just one more dimension to the level of the erosion of the Airbnb reputation.  Airbnb has caused its own vicious cycle at the expense of the very entities that made them a multi-billion dollar business, namely their Hosts. I am curious to see if any of these issues are even going to be addressed as they certainly have not given any sign of acknowledgment that I can see.  

Wishing all the Hosts good luck.  

Eloise

[Mary-Ann0]

Bravo Eloise!

[Jiw0]

Wow, @Debi1 What a super post.

I was going to post and ask for a couple Belo key chains but that feels small and selfish now. 😕 🙂

[Robin4]

@Lizzie.....As always, I would like to have my tuppence worth Lizzie:....

"Brian, Joe and Nate, 

Airbnb was born with the concept of giving both guests and hosts a fair go!

The balance has shifted with the philosophy in Airbnb that guests make money, hosts cost money!

Can you please make a commitment that hosts, who are after all the basis of your business, will receive a fair and equitable review system when things do not go as planned, rather than having to pick up the pieces, with (In many instances) no support?"

Thanks for the opportunity to make a comment Lizzie...cheers.....Rob

[Ange2]

The Community Forum is a rich source of information regarding systemic problems, frustrations,  glitches, user experience and hosts opinions, ideas, suggestions for fixes and innovative ideas for smooth running, a frustration free interaction and a general perception of Airbnb. 

What gives? Why don't Airbnb make use of  the Community Forum. You already have all the information at your fingertips on the forum, it just needs to be organized and addressed. It's an extremely simple task.

Instead, we now have three venues to ask questions and voice ideas:

1. Community Forum

2. Host Voice

3. Q (&A).

Most of the questions are the same in each because they have as yet gone unaddressed and unanswered.

Is this third time a charm?  I do hope so.

[Elena87]

Why don't you employ some staff to answer queries professionally in the forum?