Ah, the NorCal Coast tourist season is upon us. In previous years a few critical May weekends were responsible for generating most of my summer bookings. Not now. In fact, my reservations have dropped off the proverbial "map ", literal calendar. What's the major malfunction? Maybe there's new competition muscleing in on my hospitality business. I switch to traveling and search for stays in Manchester, CA, skipping over the dates as well as the number of guests. My two neighbors a half a mile down the street and two miles down respectively are at the top of the search results. Curious, not requiring minimum two night stays and not shutting down for the winter always resulted in a higher occupancy rate and consequently put me above them in search results. I scroll down to see if there are any new faces on the block. Fifteen pages and "1000 listings" later, 13 of which are for places over half an hour away, I realize that my listing is no where to be seen. I repeat the search this time using the "rooms" category. Still nothing. Okay, I then look for my exact listing name, town and state. Strike three, this can't be. So I log out, then check the mobile app. My 7 year superhost listing has vanished from the airbnb search results.
I contact the dedicated Superhost support team and am advised not to worry she can see my listing and sends me a link to it. Yes, but how do people searching the platform find it? She can't see it either and says she'll look into it and get back to me and sends me a message memorializing our conversation. Next day I am checking our message thread when I see that my case has been closed.
I call back and this time the support Ambassador says my listing might be mia due to "saturation". Come again? Yes I heard her right and even understood her correctly to mean that due to the 15-page selection, 13 of which are nowhere near me, my superhost listing could not be squeezed in on page 16. I tried to maintain composure and simply requested that she have the technical team contact me ASAP. She explained that that would not transpire, but if she felt it was needed, she would reach out and consult with them. Silly me, I thought the techies would offer some conclusory factors, some objective basis for my unlikely predicament when we had just established that my listing's missing due to saturation.
This was yesterday. No word/response/resolution yet. In the meantime, does anyone at airbnb care that I'm missing out on one of the most critical booking weekend of the season? If they do, they're not letting me in on it.
Don't know about you, but it feels somewhat surreal on my end. Anyone else in the same boat? Please let me know.
