Hello Airbnb hosts!
I am glad to come across this for we recently encountered a travel agent booking for our guests.
Whilst we appreciate everyone needs to make their 'bread and butter', we are sad that Airbnb's platform moved away from hosts opening up their homes and spaces to persons offering them great experiences through personalized services to hotels and travel agents and large companies providing short term rentals for travelers trying to oust home owners and so forth.
The same way hosts have to be verified with photo, id and so forth, why aren't travel agents provided with a travel agent badge on Airbnb so guests and hosts know who they are and that they are not the ones actually staying at your property/villa/share a room and it is someone else.
We understand everyone is technologically savvy and may have a hard time figuring out how to use Airbnb and that's where these 3rd parties come in.
A young lady instant booked our place and said she and her family are looking forward to their stay with us. More communication was exchanged as we usually have a booking form for our guests so we know who we are welcoming and in cases of emergency who we can contact as well as pool waivers. Not once did she welcome she was a travel agent.
It is only until she mentioned another name in the conversation that we realize something was wrong. She insisted this name is on the booking and we should double check. We always read everything, profiles guest information and the lady's name or photo nor her family was there. When we informed her of this error on her point she didnt even apologize and only then said she is the travel agent is booking for someone else. As a travel agent, she also was asking alot of questions of the island, obvious information about the property which is listed on the site and the airport information. This tells us she failed to read all details on our listing.
Whilst people will not know everything in life and having studied Tourism and Travel, all travel agents should have at least basic information or conduct personal research on travel destinations as well as the particular country the client is travelling to as well as where they are travelling from.
We will not call out the travel agent's name nor agency as she wasn't rude but she was not truthful from the getgo and seemed to have been "shocked" we "discovered" her "company" as we never heard of it nor do we know its validity. The last time we heard from her on the message board was if our guests checked in. She never followed up during their stay or at check-out.
Once we had the ACTUAL guests who were staying with us information and communication became easier and we later found out our guests expressed alot of issues with this travel agent. Plus the agent didn't relay some of the information we asked her to provide our guests with.
Despite that, they had a great stay and will be returning with us AND will book with us directly.
We cannot paint the same brush for all travel agents as we know some good ones. Whilst some people can argue travelers should conduct their research, again some travelers are very busy and use a travel agent, some are unsure of how to use the site and are afraid of scams.
What was most hurtful for us? We lost out on a review and rating. We still decided to leave a review on the agent's profile but noted the review was for the guests and informed them of it. We reported it to Airbnb and just wanted to verify if 3rd parties are allowed to book and is there is a badge for travel agents to show this. The rep said no and that there is nothing they can do and suggested we offer our suggestions of a travel agency badge on Airbnb. We left our feedback and left it there.
Going forward we as hosts work extremely hard every day to ensure we are transparent, accommodating, responsive and upgrade where possible. We lost a review but we gained new friends and knowledge and that's better than any "superhost" status on any platform!