Things we’d like to see on Airbnb

[Oad0]

We have 3 asks on our shortlist:

1. Special accommodation for business travelers, like stocking the fridge with food and beverages for breakfast. Providing Housekeeping services every other day, fresh towels, garbage, similar to hotels. This will increase the rate slightly - but will cater to busy folks. Which many times their employer is picking up the tab.

2. Airbnb doesn’t check the method of payment for guests. Only at booking time, and will block host calendar for 24h, until guest resolves or does not resolve the issue. The guest gets a confirmation for the booking, and then a note that payment didn’t go thru. Which many don’t check. Please fix.

3. For long term stays - guests often ask to “Try it before buy it”, please find a way to arrange for a showing, like hotels and motels offers to guest.

Thanks 

[Ann72]

@Oad0 Definitely 1 and 2 are valid, and I hope you've put through feedback to Airbnb about them.  But absolutely no to #3.  Who wants people tromping around checking things out?  It's not a real estate open house.  And while hotels and motels might allow a prospective guest to enter and look at rooms, how often does that happen in practice?  When you're booking accommodation for travel to another place, you can't travel there ahead of time to look places over, and you don't want to arrive with no accommodation booked.  And for my part, as a remote host, I would have to organize everyone on the ground to make such a visit possible, and if I'm not getting paid and they're not getting paid, I would never allow that.

[Linda108]

@Oad0   Always good to get a guest perspective and to whatever extent an individual host could impliment them.  As you note, much of what you find desireable for the business traveler are part of the hotel industry practice.  As such, the hotel rates are reflective of the additional cost and the ability to spread the cost over numerous rooms.  I am curious why, as a business traveler, you don't just book hotel rooms.  

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Oad0 

Same as @Linda108  I'm very curious as well....... why not just stay in a hotel?? Hotels are already providing everything you want as a business traveler. 

Myself included, a lot of ABB hosts are not trying to take the place of hotels..... I think it's safe to say we strive to be different from hotels 🙂 Also, hotels/motels have tens of hundreds or identical rooms to show, a huge staff and teams of maids and cleaners. I have one private room in my home. 

[Fiona243]

I think if you want hotel service you would be better off staying in a hotel as home owners do not have the economies of scale whereby they can offer those services at a comparable cost to hotels.

For example, in my home I rent out 3 guest rooms. I am the receptionist, the cleaner, the laundress, and the concierge. I would struggle to clean the guest bedrooms & bathrooms every other day while also keeping the rest of my house clean.

Laundry would be an additional headache. I already have two 9kg washing machines (the largest non-commercial size here in UK), as one washer was insufficient for a family of 4 plus 3 guest bedrooms. If I were to change guest linens every other day I would have to purchase yet another washing machine, and probably a 2nd dryer as well, but I have no idea where they would fit as I have no more space for additional appliances. Before we purchased our 2nd washer, we experimented with going to a local laundromat, but had to abandon this as being unsustainable. On several occasions, we either had to wait for large capacity machines to become available, costing us additional down time, or else had to bear the monetary cost of doing multiple loads in smaller machines, which was uneconomical.

Irrespective of how much additional fees can be charged for the extra cleaning and laundry, I just don't see how this hotel-style service could work from a practical viewpoint for those of us who rent rooms in their own homes.

[Paul154]

@Oad0 

Thanks for your input. You have some great ideas .

All hosts will gladly stock their refrigerators and provide daily cleaning  for you - if you negotiate for this service.

As hosts, we just don't know what level of service the guest wants. Some guests want total privacy, no housekeeping.

Some guests like soda pop, some only want water.

As a result, many hosts have given up trying to guess what the guest wants and just provides the minimum.

[Zacharias0]

"Increase the rate slightly" is the key phrase in why you dont see what you are looking for with AirBnB. Theres a clear disconnect between the rate you think hosts will charge and what the true rate of the service you are seeking. Providing every other day housekeeping and a fully stocked fridge is an expensive proposition. Thus why AirBnB is cheaper and 5 star hotels charge their sky high rates. A typical courier in my area charges $65 for ANY task plus the cost of goods and a 3 percent surcharge for credit card transactions.  There are numerous grocery delivery services that offer what you are looking for. Housekeepers charge just as much for ONE trip or $20/hour per housekeeper. This would easily increase an airbnb rate $20/night.

In regards to your request to "kick tires" around someones house is unreasonable. I get the request a lot and dont entertain these people. Hotels offer this option if you have a appointment and are booking a block of rooms or need it for a photo shoot, but its rare that hotels will honor this request outside of educational or selling opportunities. This is what pictures are for. A hotel operating at 103 occupancy would lose money trying to show a room to a random guest trying to satisfy his curiousity. To that end hosts are losing time AND money showing their personal living situations to strictly RANDOM humans.

Yes, AirBnB should confirm payment before confirming with either party that the reservation is in process. Its the worst of situations that rarely gets better. I've been there many times.