We only host long-term extended stays -- minimum 60-days. Our guests usually stay in our two furnished cottages for 2 to 6 months, sometimes as long as a year.
Prior to March 2023 review length was unlimited. Then a 1000-character limit was implemented, which is bad for those hosting long-term stays.
Simply -- guests who stay for a long time legitimately have a lot to say -- that is very helpful to future guests. It's a different market and experience than the STR market.
We only found out about the new restriction after recent guests wrote a review describing things from their 3-month stay, that they felt future long-stay guests would want to know. Then they discovered... they must cut 75% of it out. Their review was still great, but they apologized for the brevity and lack of detail.
Yesterday I warned guests checking out tomorrow about the new character limit. They replied they've already written a lengthy, detailed review. So now they're equally frustrated they will have to cut most of it short. They also felt it important to describe their long-term stay to our future guests.
I totally understand the reason for the limit -- short is good when it comes to short-term-rentals. It's enough. But for guests considering long-term stays -- well, they do actually want to read lengthier reviews, and they appreciate having more details.
I've read multiple news stories about Airbnb wanting to welcome more long-term hosts. But changes like this are not friendly to our business, and become yet another reason we continue to reconsider where else we can find long-term guests outside of Airbnb.
I hope somebody from Airbnb sees this --
Please make the team who made this decision, aware of the negative impact on long-term hosts.
An ideal solution if possible -- would be that the character restriction is lifted for views over a certain length, say 14-nights, for example.
Thank you.
