In three weeks we will celebrate 8 years of hosting with Airbnb. While we survived the Covid crisis, Airbnb is now destroying us all with their changes.
We are 30+ consecutive time Superhosts, who believed in Airbnb so much we quit our jobs and dedicated our lives to full time hosting, so it is insulting to read the founder proudly calling the actions causing our demise "the biggest changes in a decade…”
We’ve spent weeks trying to understand why our bookings this spring and summer are so incredibly low, from +80% booked capacity to 0%, and we've found several causes. The first is a malfunctioning pricing tool. Once we offer a discounted rate, if we later try to offer a larger discount, the system is calculating our base rate off of the first discounted rate, rather than our actual base rate. And if we don’t use the larger rate, we don’t qualify for the perks.
Secondly, de-prioritizing the names of the listings and emphasizing their automated titles is misleading. For instance, our Magic Tipi Retreat, which is high-end glamping, is now listed as "Tent in Park Hills", the same as our rustic Famous Home of Hammping, giving potential guests the wrong perception. For years we’ve been nurturing the concept of high end hosting, and they’ve now pigeonholed us as a campsite.
Thirdly, the category "Tipi" has been removed from search & listing options in the Special Stays section. Oddly there is now space for everything like Cycladic homes, kezhans, ryokans, minsus, truli, OMG!, riads and dammusos, but seemingly no room for tipis. They are not listed under camping either. So where do people go to find a tipi? Seems Native Americans are once again getting the short end of the stick.
Fourth is the change listing the number of beds in search results. Our Tipi now shows as having “4-beds” rather than accommodating 6 people. This may seem like a small detail, but you understand the implications. How do guests know if 4 beds hold 4 people or 6? The same problem with our Peaceful Treetop Cottage, where they only show “1-bed”, but we can accommodate 4 guests (we have portable mattresses).
To paint a clear picture of how their “big changes” have degraded our ability to host, here are our statistics for the number of nights booked in June since we started. These show Airbnb’s revisions have dropped us to levels at or lower than our first year of hosting.
Tipi: 2022-6, 2021-16, 2020-26, 2019-28, 2018-23, 2017-24
Cottage: 2022-14, 2021-22, 2020-24, 2019-24, 2018-27, 2017-26, 2016-23, 2015-14
Hammping: 2022-0, 2021-2, 2020-12, 2019-17, 2018-9, 2017-14, 2016-7
To put everything in perspective, and to preempt Airbnb’s claim that our prices are too high, here are some statistics for our listings. In the last year the Value Rating on one of our properties has risen for 9.2%, another for 4.8% and the third for 6.7%. In the same period, our Overall Rating on two listings is 100%, and on the third is 98.7%. And we monitor this ourselves. Our properties also have over 1,200 reviews.
Is anyone actually benefiting from these changes? Well, according to SEC data, in the last three months, while the stock lost nearly ½ its value, Joseph Gebbia (Chairman, Director and Ten Percent Owner) sold over $267,000,000 in Airbnb stock, CTO Aristotle Balogh sold $3,456,000, CFO Dave Stephenson sold $9,485,000, Director Jeffry Jordan sold $2,240,000 and Director Belinda Johnson sold $11,944,000 for a total of about $294,000,000 in stock.
Rats leaving a sinking ship?
Shall we?
