Airbnb's decision to remove continuity of message history with return guests seriously hampers guest recognition and loyalty and is counter to good hospitality.

[Preston88]

I spoke with a senior support specialist today regarding a different issue and brought this up when he asked if there was anything else he could help with.

I explained that this hampers hosts' ability to recognize repeat guests and to refresh memory about prior interactions, preferences, etc.

He indicated that there was an internal issue previously regarding some difficulty closing out or otherwise dealing with support issues when the message history was kept intact.  To fix that internal problem, they switched to the current situation with a new thread for every booking.

I asked that he try to impress upon upper management that this change is destructive to basic hospitality and to ask that they fix it.

I suggested that it would make sense for Airbnb to confer with hosts about pontential changes like this prior to implementing, because they seem to "miss the boat" on some key hospitality issues at times and would benefit from host input.  He suggested that I post here and indicated that upper management may see it directly or indirectly.

I would love to see a response from Airbnb management indicating some understanding and appreciation of this issue.

[Rebecca]

Hello @Preston88 👋

Thank you for sharing your feedback and concerns about the message history changes. It's lovely to hear that you get a lot of repeat guests too. You must be a great host. 

I'll pass your comments along to the Airbnb team. You can also share feedback directly through the Airbnb website’s “Give Feedback” section, which goes straight to the product teams.

Thanks again for helping us improve!

[Tara0]

@Preston88 This is a rare instance where I actually agree with the change. I can see it'd be difficult to address issues specific to a booking if the message thread included the history from a previous booking. I've also been confused about dates in the past because the new booking dates didn't appear beside the thread when the guest booked again. 

Unless you have dozens and dozens of bookings it's not hard to remember a previous guest - and I don't think I've ever had a repeat booking where the guest didn't mention in the first message that they'd stayed before. It's then an easy matter to search archived messages for the guest in question, and un-archive the thread.

[Sandi14]

I agree 100%! We get many repeat guests and it is so helpful to look back and see when they were here last, any comments they made, and if we had any issues. We are booked quite fully and it is very hard to always remember each guest and their comments/preferences. Knowing more about my guests helps me to be a better, friendlier host during their stay. I hope they consider bringing this back.