Airbnb’s biggest change in a decade killed 10 years of our work. What about you?

[BenkaandKeith0]

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?

[Huma0]

@David8879 

Personally, I was not that upset about categories, although I can see why some others were, e.g. not being listed as being beachfront when you are. There are some categories that hardly anyone is going to click on and others where they might.

What I was upset about was what a total mess the search function became after the Summer Release, not just with category related searches but searches in general and how my views and bookings were totally decimated.

Now, I realise that the one listing that is finally showing up in some of the categories is the only one that has recently gotten views. So, I believe it's very possible that the categories do affect views even if you aren't in some sort of niche category. So, I'm trying to see if the other two can be added also and then will see if that affects views or not...

It's kind of stupid that Airbnb don't have a system in place that lets hosts know which categories they are in. I have found that you need to search a category that you might be in and then keep zooming in and in on the map until you find (or don't find) your listing. However, if you listing has been put in some random category such as 'zoo', that's even worse. I mean, I'm not going to go into every single one of the categories to search for my listing just in case. I guess I will just hope that I won't get guests showing up expecting a zoo or a grand piano.

[BenkaandKeith0]

@David8879 no hosts know what "their" categories are. Seems they are assigned arbitrarily, as are the names of the categories themselves. And the property types you select when creating your listing don't coincide with the category types, which makes absolutely no sense. 

[Elizabeth2613]

wow the bookings have plummeted. I would also think that the price of fuel and airline tickets and the state of the economy is affecting your bookings as well. People are snapping their pocketbooks closed  this summer.  I’ve seen this a beautiful Downeast oceanfront campground I go to. Bookings are down there. 

[David8879]

And I agree on small weird things that started to show up - such as "3 beds" on may listing - where that came from? I have 3 guests max, but can't find "number of beds" setting anywhere. Probably "smart idea" by one of those who has not enough thoughts to put into 140 characters tweet? 

[Mary419]

@David8879 these kind of "glitches" like the bed count not being what you entered.... which are caused by the system not by the host intentionally... misrepresenting the property in some way. These are not rare anymore and are very worrisome in light of the new financial penalties they just rolled out: https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Another-update-another-huge-added-risk-for-hosts-at-the-...

[John5097]

@BenkaandKeith0 

There have been some changes to scale back this update. 

1)  The Categories search bar at the top is no longer there except on the main Airbnb site. Once guest select an area its gone. The Categories also don't seem to have any relevance and in my area all the same listings are in each. But overall progress that its practically been disabled as far as I can tell at this time.  

 2) As you pointed out the unique listing title was added back to the description but the bold listing type is still at the the top. I think what is confusing is that guest are first being shown a random week with the discounted price, and rates in off season. So first a guest clicks on a Guest Suite, for example, then notices the rate for the nights they want are much higher than what was shown in the list view, so they go back to the search page and see all the Guest Houses with the discounted rate, so start searching those as they appear to only be slightly less than the Guest Suite. So the guest are on a goose chaise as all the rates for all the the listings are misrepresented with the confusing "Any Week" that shows the discounted rate for a random week stay. (I realize guest can also search individual dates but the "Any Week" with random 7 days with discounts applied is the default search method if guest simply enter a destination with no dates.)

3) Guest are probably thinking the website has been hacked or has bugs, when the AI first selects the dates. So far I haven't had a single guest book a week long stay, let alone the random one AI selected for them. 

The Catigories may have actually worked if they were just an option on the first page, like VRBO. The Any Week and random week that 99.99999% of guest will need to delete and enter their own dates, which guest only figure out once the click on enough properties, and most will give up before all that. (The main complaint for Airbnb search function was not getting an accurate or total cost, so this random week only made it much more confusing for guest.) 

I'm also seeing most of the search results for 2 guest show 2-4 bedroom houses. The algo is out of wack and if you were already fully booked views and bookings have dropped off. 

Hopefully they get it sorted out. Airbnb was really good at keeping listings booked. 

[Fred13]

In a nutshell: you do not, ever, ever force the visitor to declare why he is at the site right off the bat.  This is like the instance you enter a store, the 'salesman' jumps on you and asks you why did you come, when you say you were thinking of shoes he forcibly drags you to only walk to that part of the store. Way too control freaky. 

    The logical sequence should be: 

1. Anywhere (The only choice on top in bold letters > opens world area choices like it is now)

2. World Map (Visitors now picks a certain area/country)

3. Visitor zooms in to a sub-area within one of the maps, and can now hit one of the filters if they want to reduce the clutter of too many listings; the filters can be categories, price, booking options, amenities, etc)

I would leave the category strip as it is now but clean the list a bit; some categories are a bit silly, like 'OMG', 'Amazing X', etc.; they are way too subjective.

[David8879]

One thing I am truly mad about is that when user from clean from cookies browser searches for specific town - entire region 9thousand times more territory) shows up and even for someone who knows where that town is it is major PITA to zoom in without losing it. That is 100% intentional to book more properties in crappy locations and total abuse of owners who paid top dollars for LOCATION

[Fred13]

There is a remaining wondering to Airbnb's recent changes of 1-2 months ago. Or at least it begs the question. Was the real intent of this new program added to simply make the visitors aware of the existence of so many different places by making them 'easier to find '. Or was it to 'spread'  the bookings by promoting more obscured places by favorite placement? The end model will be determined by Airbnb's total bookings during this summer.

[Huma0]

@Fred13 

I think the real intent was: 

A.) A PR/marketing tool. Bring the guests to Airbnb by showing them quirky or spectacular places, hence the OMG Fund competition. They will have fun looking at those and then book something they actually want/can afford.  The problem is they've made it much harder now for guests to find the latter.

B.) To direct guests away from oversaturated markets (Brian Chesky was quite open about this), because there is a lot of resistance to STR in many of those markets. The problem is that guests who want to stay in London don't want to stay in Littlehampton. 

[Fred13]

Oftentimes, the problem also is that when an entity starts to pick 'winners' & 'losers', oftentimes it ends up losing both in time.

[BenkaandKeith0]

@Huma0  while we all understand what the company intended to do, by now is clear as day, they missed the point completely and piss off half of the hosting community along the way. Not mentioning the guests... Here is a prof, one of many we keep receiving:

And a word on over-saturated markets.... we are a rural setting, so yet once again, Airbnb failed. Quite bad they are too ignorant to fix the problems they created right away or reverse the platform to the previous state until they figure out how to make it work.

As someone said in this thread, Booking.com, GlampingHub, VRBO and others will need to do for now, until someone more sincere and considerate then Brian Chesky comes along.

[Huma0]

@BenkaandKeith0 

The thing is, to a lot of hosts it's not clear as day, it's total confusion and, I imagine, even more confusing for guests. I don't know for sure the intent, I'm just guessing. However, the reasons given in Brian Chesky's video just don't make sense to me. 

He's basically suggesting that the way that people have travelled has totally changed, which it hasn't. Not for the majority anyway. He talks about people being able to work from anywhere. While that is true of some, again, not for the majority and I personally do not know of any digital nomads who want to work from an igloo or need a grand piano as a priority. I would love to see the hard research that informed these decisions. It seems to me that someone thought they had a clever idea and then got totally carried away.

As for the glitches, the engineers are apparently working on them, although it's not clear which glitches they are prioritising, nor whether things that a lot of hosts find problematic like the default any week view and showing dates far out rather than the next available ones, are seen by Airbnb as glitches or not. Only time will tell but, in the meantime, a lot of hosts will switch to other platforms.

[John4704]

The Airbnb C-Suite has just  announced their new Cancellation Policy for Hosts effective in August 2022.

This new rule is both punitive and abusive to their Hosts.   

Airbnb is severely limiting the reasons a Host can cancel, and imposing punitive $ penalties for cancelling.  I have discussed this issue with Airbnb supervisor, and she stated, " Yes, while it is rare that a Host will cancel a guest, but Airbnb wants to make that more difficult. " 

I argued, So why are you penalizing the entire Host Community with a punitive rule when just a 'rare few' are abusing the cancellation?  

The right solution:  Airbnb can very easily identify the Hosts that abuse cancellation.  Airbnb can then impose cancellation rules on those that abuse cancellation.  And if egregious, then Airbnb can remove the Host from the platform.  Punish the violators, not the responsible Hosts.

Penalizing the overwhelming community of Hosts for the abuse of just a very few hosts,  is shortsighted by Airbnb.  It fosters ill will,  and strong feelings of abuse by Airbnb Hosts that are responsible.

**Warning:  Hosts should Eliminate "Instant Book"  with this new Cancellation Rule.  Responsible Hosts can't afford to allow 'Instant Book'  if Airbnb is limiting Host to the right of cancellation to just 3 circumstances--and Airbnb makes the call.  As Hosts we could get stuck with a rogue guest that we have to pay penalties to cancel out.   This is bad Policy by Airbnb.

[Bernadette413]

We turned instant book off too late- had a 3 month booking for someone who dislike us and our place. No stays longer than 2 weeks. This summer has been worse than dating sites