The “State of the Union” of 2022 Airbnb

[Richard531]

A lot of discourse on here shades negative towards Airbnb in general (I’m right there on a lot of it, believe me).  Some users have even claimed they have “left Airbnb.”  So as we sit here and bellyache and bring relentless negativity, what is our end game?  I know when I whine on here, it is my hope that CC will pick-up-what-I’m-laying-down and forward it up the chain to eventual improvements.  Or better yet, offer solutions in the moment (this has never happened, but I haven’t lost hope that it might). Fingers crossed!

So where is Airbnb at RIGHT NOW? 

The STR economy has stumbled a in general due to economic factors/policy changes in many jurisdictions.  Enter the worst timing in the world to have Airbnb roll out this boat-rocking Summer Release.  Whipping Posts are an awesome thing to have handy.  The Summer Release is ripe for the whipping!  Add in a few other CS gaffes in various forms and now Airbnb is the Devil to many. 

However, let’s try to calm down a bit and maybe realize that the days of rolling out of bed and printing money on our STRs might be on hold for a while.  And at the same time, does Airbnb want to innovate and force the hands of its hosts/listings?  You betcha.  What do you think McDonalds does to its franchisees?  Are we franchisees?  Certainly not!  But the company is making directional changes, AT A TERRIBLE TIME IN THE ECONOMIC CYCLE, and it’s causing a lot of negativity.  But even with said gaffes, it’s not like Airbnb just sat there and didn’t course-correct when it made a few mistakes on the Summer Release. 

For example, Airbnb made a very purposeful decision when they decided to present limited information in listings to travelers in the Search Results as part of the Summer Release.  Within a very short time, they made adjustments (i.e. displaying Titles, displaying # of reviews).  So that’s great news, right?    And we’re not there yet.  That is, Search Results can still be vastly improved.  I’d like the number of bathrooms listed, number of proper bedrooms, along with 3-5 little amenity icons that the host chooses to appear.  Will that happen?  It might!

We are extremely impatient animals.  We all know, for a fact, that Airbnb has brilliant engineers, marketers, statisticians, and math scientists.  We also know that Chesky shouldn’t be on camera, like, ever again.  But that doesn’t make him a complete buffoon start to finish.  And that certainly doesn’t make Airbnb a crappy partner, either. 

The STR economy isn’t going anywhere.  As an investor with his hands in a lot of cookie jars, I want to remind everyone, for the amount of money invested vs. the amount of actual work, STRs remain orders of magnitude more lucrative, while staying somewhat risk insulated, than any other investment I’m aware of.  And Airbnb remains the best partner, by far, to make those things happen for the investor/host.  In my world, when someone is the best, I applaud them for being the best.  Airbnb is the best (and let’s be honest, “the best” certainly isn’t VRBO or hotels.com, lol).  So we should all get some level of satisfaction partnering with “the best.”  Right? 

So when you’re “the best” does that mean you get a grade of “A” when discussing Airbnb overall?  Or would nothing be good enough, even though you’re “the best?”

[Maia29]

I have been upset with Airbnb from time to time; however, I still consider Airbnb to be a God-send for me and my family. 

[Sudsrung0]

I am behind Airbnb 100% for us here in Phuket it is the best platform, Yep I have tried all the others and we are still on the other sites and we get almost nothing, so Airbnb has done something right at getting the Brand out there, 

This year whatever they are doing keep it coming we have been full all year were normally this time of the year for us is low season, No Chinese market coming to Thailand and no Russians both them two countries are a big market for us, I was fearing the worst but it's turned out the opposite, Long may it continue.

Airbnb give everybody the opportunity to earn an income with no upfront cost, or would you be happy they charge you a few hundred $$$$$ to register? 

You get a fully functioning web site with all the bells and whistles, What more do you want?

Yes, we have had problems but it has been dealt with and in most cases Airbnb have backed me,

So come on guys get behind Airbnb it is the leading brand.

[Gillian166]

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@Sudsrung0 wrote:

You get a fully functioning web site with all the bells and whistles, What more do you want?

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Actually, I'm not so sure about this. What more do we want? proper analytics. I'd like to know my best day of the week for getting bookings, my most profitable day of the week/month, the demographics of my guests, and better access to my earnings stats, instead of making me wade through nonsense like "things you should add to your listing" (opportunities). 53% of my opportunities haven't been realised apparently, add pets/baby items, change my cancellation policy, use smart pricing etc. I have already assessed all of these "opportunities" and determined which aren't suitable, and yet they linger forever, as the landing page for Insights. This is SO frustrating!  I'd love to see Insight show us what we care about most: the finances first. So if anyone is reading this, it's simple to action this: put the Financials at the top, and put Opportunities down the bottom.  solved. 

I sell stock photography online and i'm familiar with many different types of websites for managing assets, and each has pros and cons. the best sites have a dashboard that shows you all the basic info you want to see: what's sold, total earnings this month, status of recent submissions. All the other stuff can be on sub-pages. Airbnb has a lovely website, and our Site Manager (or whatever it's called) is pretty good, but the Dashboard has plenty of room for some more useful metrics. There's a very serious lack of data about our guests that I'd like to have access to. I'd even like to have things like "most common word mentioned in reviews" as a metric, but that's really pushing the wish list too far!  

 

[Richard531]

@Gillian166 This is a VERY good list if what would be awesome to see. And I completely agree about those "Opportunities."  They should be presented, opted in/out of, and then should go away.  If Airbnb wants to remind us every quarter about them, OK, I guess.  Instead, you have to see them every time you go into Insights.  It's stupid.  

"Common word in reviews" metric would be awesome!  And I feel the frustration.  All the data is there, it's a SIMPLE query, why not give hosts the functionality?  In a former life, I did system integration.  I'm here to tell you: this would be a relatively simple enhancement.  

One thing that really grinds my gears is my sunsetted/closed listings (sold 4 listings, three years ago) always appear right at the top when I'm editing/calendaring/etc.  EVERY time I log in, I need to filter by "active" listings to get them out of sight.  If there were a way to simply "archive" these listings, that would be so great!  Instead, I have to do this 10+ second click sequence EVERY TIME I log into my profile (mobile too) in order to only see relevant listings.  And selecting "active" listings only lasts that session.  The moment I click away, I need to do the sequence again.  It's so dumb.  

But remember:  Airbnb is the best for what we're all trying to do here!  That's important!  

[Gillian166]

@Richard531  I a much longer list of things I'd like to see but I pared it back. 

I'd like to be able to put my listings in the order I want, and leave them that way. currently I have a listing that is split into 3 offerings, but in the multi calendar they are not stacked together, which is frustrating. I will have to change the title to get them all aligned and I shouldn't have to do that. 

Like your situation, we should be able to sort our listings how we want and have it stay that way.

The other thing that's missing in these forums is an ongoing Suggestions/Wishlist thread instead of writing a support email addressed to the abyss.  

[Huma0]

@Gillian166 

I don't know if you were using the CC back then, but there was such a list. There was a topic category here for exactly that which was called 'Host Voice'. Users could post suggestions and other users could upvote those. I have no idea if it actually led to any changes, but it suddenly disappeared...

[Gillian166]

@Huma0  no, i dabbled in airbnb a few years ago, didn't do it very well (given what i know now!), and we shut it down in 2018 and then re-booted end of 2020. I didn't bother with the forums either cos i had other work on the go. 

It's a shame such a thread doesn't still exist, instead of relying upon one of the mods to 'forward our concerns to the appropriate team'.  Someone should do a thread of all the things the mods have "passed on to the team" and see where those ideas are now. (sadly could also be a way to be removed from the forums?)
 

[Huma0]

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@Gillian166 wrote:

Someone should do a thread of all the things the mods have "passed on to the team" and see where those ideas are now. (sadly could also be a way to be removed from the forums?)
 

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That would take quite a bit of work I think! 

Here you can see an explanation of what Host Voice was: https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Community-Center-Updates/Host-Voice-Guidelines-and-Tips/m-p/1334...

and from there you can click to see the different topics, which you can sort by 'top ideas', which I assume means the ones that got the most votes. From what I can see when I sort by date, the last one was from 2018, so I guess that's when it was scrapped.

When I have time, I might have a browse to see how many of the ideas were implemented.

[Huma0]

@Richard531 

Is Airbnb the best? Well, I guess so... 

It's really difficult for me to say as I have literally nothing else to compare to. I host homestays and, in my market, there are not competitors for that (not any serious ones anyway), so they have a monopoly. I guess that automatically makes them the best, but that doesn't mean they are not totally crappy either as  monopolies often create crappiness.

To be fair to Airbnb, I have always gotten as many bookings as I needed from them, with the exception of a few glitches (if one can call them that). The first one was when they really forcibly imposed IB on hosts. My bookings stopped completely at that time until I turned IB on. The second was the whole COVID-19 refund fiasco coinciding with them laying off most of their experienced CS staff. That was a headache. The latest is this stupid Summer Release. 

Well, I say it's stupid because, in my situation, it makes Airbnb completely useless and meaningless to me as a listing site so, unless things change, I will be forced to move on. Airbnb is currently doing absolutely NOTHING for me. That being said, it's worked for me in the past.

So, I'm just sitting it out right now, seeing what is going to happen. The only reason I can do that at all is due to repeat guests, and that is not down to Airbnb being the best, but down to me being a good enough host that guests want to return. 

However, I strongly suspect that if Airbnb doesn't do something radical soon to reverse the devastating effect to many hosts of the Summer Release, we will soon be parting ways.