Hosts are not given enough information by guests before being expected to confirm a booking

[Courtney517]

I do not understand why it is acceptable for AirBnB to allow guests to sign up to make bookings without providing any information for hosts to view in advance of accepting a booking.  As good hosts we provide substantial information about ourselves for potential guests to view.

I raise this because I am receiving more and more of these sort of booking requests (twice for me just in the past 24 hours)

and I am finding in disquieting.  I have been hosting for many years now and from personal experience this rarely ever happened in the past (at least for me).

It begs the questions as to why would I let someone into my home when all I am told is part of their name with no further information at all?   This is made even worse when it is someone's first stay (and I fully understand everyone has to start sometime) and there has been no prior review in which a past host can provide information on a guest's behaviour.

I also understand concerns about prejudice hiding a guest's photo until after a booking has been confirmed but why should a host's photo be available prior to this time?

This is genuinely not a rant but I feel it is a legitimate concern and perhaps I am noting that AirBnB seems to be drifting away from the balance between hosts and guests that it once encouraged.

Thoughts??

[Mike-And-Jane0 · Accepted solution]

@Courtney517 if you read the Airbnb Lighthouse report on discrimination you will find that hiding the photo and surname until guests book has an appreciable improvement in booking acceptance rates for non-white guests. I actually believe the whole of the guests name should be hidden and replaced with initials until a guest has booked. There is after all very little a host can do with a name (except use it to discriminate).

[Courtney517]

Yeah, that's not really my point at all and I raised the whole photo and anti-discrimination issue myself in my text above so I both get that and have read the Lighthouse Report.

What I am saying is that I don't see why guests should be allowed to provide ZERO information about themselves when booking.   I think it should all be a two way street.  If I make information about myself available such that guests will feel comfortable staying in my home (and I do) then I feel the same should be true of guests.

I do not care about their race in the slightest.  I care about their character and values and when someone makes the effort to present themselves in a profile then those things tend to come through.  Many guests already do this but increasingly many do not.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Courtney517 Sorry but if you want to reduce the ability for hosts to discriminate then you cannot give them too much information on the guest. A guest however, as a customer, can look for places they feel comfortable in and as the recent posts on inclusivity suggest we should go further to make, for example, LGBTQ+ people, confident they will get a warm welcome.

[Courtney517]

Yep, again that is not what I have written above at all.  It really, really isn't. 

I am not talking about providing a CV and any gender is fine with me.   I am saying that an increasing number of guests, largely new to AirBnB, are providing ZERO information - as in absolutely no words at all - about themselves and yet expect to stay in a room in someone's home.  

If a guest truly doesn't want to provide any information, is genuinely uninterested in engaging with a potential host then maybe a hotel or commercial guest house would be a better option.  A big part of AirBnB has always been about forging a sense of community and that is largely the reason that I have hosted for all these years.  But to make this work requires participation from both parties.