Responsibilities of Airbnb...?

[Michael481]

Afternoon everyone,

I'm really here to vent a little and see what other hosts' thoughts are in terms of recent experiences; as Airbnb seems to get more popular, commercial, mainstream, call it what you like, we've had a massive increase in enquiries that are blatantly copied and pasted by people who are sending them out to numerous hosts at a time, without even bothering to read the vast majority of details on our listings. This is increasingly annoying on two fronts; one is that you end up having to type out information that is already on your profile, numerous times a week, to numerous enquiries, when people can't spend the time reading the info that's already there, the second is that they are potentially sending out these enquiries to that many hosts that they are wasting so many peoples' time on things which would literally take a sensible, well meaning person minutes to do themselves. I've just stopped responding to ones with a list of numbered questions...and don't get me started with ones that are blatantly aimed at pitting hosts against each other in bidding wars for further reductions and special offers. So basically I'm wondering if we think Airbnb should emphasise to people that they really should make an effort to read profiles, and listings carefully before sending pointless questions, and if they should limit the amount of enquiries that people can send out for the same city, over the same duration to avoid us all getting flooded with time wasters...?

Cheers,

(a slightly grumpy) Mike

[David126]

Use a standard response referring to your listing and ask them if they have any specifcic questions.

[Michael481]

Difficulty is when the mundane questions vary enough to require a different responce! 😕 Parking...check in times...directions...price...availability...facilities...etc...all of which are on the listing! The standard responce covering all of these is the listing!

[Eva140]

Hi Mike

Yes this is a little irritating. I constantly get asked if my flat comes with parking despite it being mentioned on my page several times that there is no parking available. Often people ask me the question after they have booked my place.

I don't understand it as when i'm going away on a trip, one of the fun parts of planning is looking at great places on Airbnb and reading about the accomodation and the area it's in. I wonder do newer users just use Airbnb as a cheap alternative to a hotel rather than a way to get to know a city better and meeting new people along the way. 

I'm not sure that there is much hosts can do to stop it though. 

Best

Eva

[Michael481]

I am getting the impression that people are treating it as an alternative to a hotel. We've had people turn up 5 hours late, because they blatantly took detours along the way to do touristy stuff and didn't bother updating us, so I was waiting around, worrying for that whole time! Then they just turned up and were like 'thanks for waiting'...'sorry no phone service'...they were in the mainland UK, if you can't get phone service you don't have a phone! Some people have no concept that they aren't paying for your time, you're not staff, they pay for the space, and they pay a lot less than a hotel! I've had people paying less than they would in a hostel dorm room being critical about our home, which if you look at our listing(s) are quite nice. I don't think Airbnb manage expectations at all. You get what you pay for in this life! All these people and requests that come without any bookings are really starting to get on my wick...:/

[Lisa293]

On Stayz, they drop your position on the list for every enquiry that does not turn into a booking.  If you do not have a 25% conversion rate you really drop down the list and with a low enough conversion can be delisted.  People asking if they can have pets at a clearly non pet property or sending 3 enquiries one after another then actually affect your business.  At this stage, these are just annoying on airbnb and we should be glad for that!!

[Michael481]

No, I'm sorry I'm not on Stayz, I don't agree that we need to put up with little support because other sites are worse. I don't think that's a good justification. Airbnb staff are actually almost impossible to talk to, I tried going through official channels to ask some questions of them and all I got was referred to community/superhosts for advice. We've made Airbnb 1000s of £s this year and yet they won't respond to enquiries from their hosts, while they demand hosts respond to every mundane enquiry from guests, most of whom seem to be wasting peoples time...how can that be fair? We, the hosts are paying Airbnb, just like guests do, albeit in a different way, yet you can't even contact them for help and advice...?

[David126]

1. Providing proper support is very expensive and they do not want to do it.
2. You can find their telephone number if you try, I suppose they think by making it hard many of the calls will go away.
3. In an ideal world they would have enough hosts to keep guests happy with the choice and enough guests to keep hosts busy. My impression is that they have plenty of hosts and not enough guests so they focus on guests.
4. They are not interested in being fair, it is a business.