[Recap] Live Q&A with Donna Boyer

[Lizzie]

Hello Everyone,

Earlier this week, we had a Live Q&A with Airbnb’s Director of Product, Donna Boyer. Thank you to all of you who participated, we hope you enjoyed the session! Please find below a recap of the questions she answered.

1. Asked by Till & Jutta from Stuggart, Germany: Airbnb introduced some new host categories like “Guest Interaction: I plan to socialize with my guests”. I guess this will be a first step to give an idea about the type of accommodation to new guests – like to define the difference between a “classic host” and a “professional landlord”. Is this a beta test only, or does Airbnb plan a general roll-out? I remember, that “matching” between guest and host always played an important role, and is one of Airbnb’s USP’s.

Donna’s Answer:

Thanks for the question, @Till & Jutta. We know that both guests and hosts want us to set clear expectations about whether a place is someone's home or whether it's a full time vacation rental.  We've added some categories to help hosts better define what type of space they have upfront.  We'd love to hear your feedback on this as we continue to refine this!

2. Asked by Maria from Buenos Aires, Argentina: Good afternoon Donna! From Buenos Aires, my question is, what is the best way to make our listing attract more guests?

Donna’s Answer: Great question, @María. As a Superhost, some of the things my guests have really enjoyed is providing recommendations for things to do and see in San Francisco that are very tailored to their interests and needs, or stocking the fridge with things on their arrival to make settling in after a long trip easier. The biggest recommendation I have is to let your personality come through and have fun with it!

3. Asked by Bea from Athens: We have lived since 2004 totally off of the Grid, Eco friendly - 100% solar energy house. Any thoughts to create a category for houses like ours on the Airbnb site soon?

Donna’s Answer: I love this idea, @Bea! I'm seeing a lot of listings these days that are off the grid, and it would be great to make these easier to find. I'm excited to take this suggestion back to my team.

4. Asked by Alice & Jeff from Durham, NC: Over the years, we've seen products rolled out to hosts with no pre-warning, no instructions, no information in the help center, or, sometimes, not even consistently across all platforms. Can we expect that this will change in the future and, if so, what mechanism do you plan to introduce to provide this support?

Donna’s Answer: Thanks for your question, @Alice & Jeff. We are constantly listening to feedback from hosts on how to make Airbnb better, and we try out a lot of new things as a result. But we've heard you, that several changes happening frequently can be confusing, and we are working to find ways to better communicate these.  

5. Asked by Dave & Deb from Edmonton, Canada: Ratings are important but why are only host's ratings posted. It would be great if guest ratings were also posted for all to see. I also think it would be great for Airbnb to have a SuperGuest badge as I have had several repeat guests who would be very deserving of this.

Donna’s Answer: Thanks for this question,@Dave & Deb. This idea of providing more historical information about guests has come up a lot.  In the coming months, we are going to be testing out a few different ways of giving hosts more information about a guest's past trips.  I'm looking forward to your feedback on this!

6. Asked by Sylvia: Please add a category type entire floor / private floor - e.g. basement, top level of home, etc. I am renting the entire top floor of my home with a private entrance and dedicated bathroom facilities on that floor. My only options in AirBnB for room type is private room, shared room or whole house.  None of these three categories are accurate and they do not allow me to showcase my rental offering. I am losing out on revenue because of this.  Is this something that AirBnB will implement for hosts?

Donna’s Answer:

Thanks for this request, @Sylvia.  I have this need as well - we rent the entire lower floor of our home, and private room doesn't do it justice while whole apartment is not quite right.  I've heard this from several hosts, and I'm happy to let you know that we'll be adding a "Guest Suite" option that can be used to describe an entire floor or multiple adjacent rooms that are private for the guest.  Look for this in Manage Listing!  

7. Asked by Linda from La Quinta, CA: As the needs of the small listing (under 5 room) are different than the hotelier (20+) listings, is there any thought to dividing the platform into 2 different hosting processes?

Donna’s Answer: Really great question,@Linda. As we've grown, we've realized that hosts start needing very different tools if they manage multiple listings.  We're adding tools that make the process of managing different listings more tailored to the number of listings you have.  For example, we're taking a hard look at how to keep calendars up to date and manage multiple guest requests more easily when you have more than one or two listings.  I'd love to hear your feedback as we roll these out.

8. Asked by Dyone from Niterói, Brazil:  Hello Donna. Thank you for the opportunity to speak directly to you. My question is why not open a chat in the Help profile options to address some urgent issues. Could have a combo box with some options to relevant topics.

Donna’s Answer: This is a really great idea,@Dyone. Having chat support could help hosts a lot if they have an urgent issue.  This is something that I know we've looked at, and I will circle back with my team to see where we are on this.

9. Asked by James from Cathedral City, CA: Will Airbnb put out an electronic manual to help us guide our way through the web site?

Donna’s Answer: Thanks for this suggestion, @James. I'd love to explore this further.  I think it would be particularly helpful for new hosts as they get started.

10. Asked by Chantal from Saint-Rambert-d'Albon, France: I rent out 2 rooms in my apartment - 1 bedroom with a double bed and another room for 2 people. When people do not sleep in the same bed and therefore the same room, I would like to charge more as they are using 2 beds. However, there is no section for the number of rooms, you can only increase the price according to the number of people. Could you add this section?

Donna’s Answer:  Thanks for this question, Chantal.  Some hosts adjust their cleaning fee to address the additional set up and laundry costs for an extra bed, but I'd love to understand your specific need a little bit more.  

11. Asked by Michael from Cholula, Mexico: Hi Donna, nice to have you here with us: Is AirBnB planning to implement DIRECT eMail support (without using the Community where most answers are going to)?

Donna’s Answer: I'm glad you asked this, @Michael . We know it can be hard to reach our Customer Experience team. We're committed to building systems to make it easier for hosts to reach us, including making our phone number and messaging easier for everyone to find. I'll be excited to share with you more updates on this soon.

12. Asked by Florence from France: Hello, I would like to use a professional photographer but it's not available in my region. Can you please tell me why? I find it unfair that some have access and others don't. thank you.

Donna’s Answer: Thanks for the question, Florence.  We have photographers across the world, but our photography program currently isn't available in every region.

We're actively working on expanding our coverage and are excited to share more updates on this soon. In the mean time, here are some great tips here on how to take great listing photos on your own.

We have heard from many of you that you would like to see more Q&As in the Community Center, so we have taken your feedback and will work on creating more opportunities like this. 🙂

Thanks,

Lizzie

[David126]

@Lizzie

I missed it my Internet went down.

I did read the thread and wonder if the format could be changed.

There were a lot of questions.

Some were plain weird.

Some were personal, not suitably for this format.

Some were answered by other people

Quite a few important ones were missed.

Perhaps open the discussion sometime before and sort by the ones with the most likes, the ones the Community consider most important?

[Oomesh-Kumarsingh0]

@David126 No worries you didnt miss much i was here and sent my question and no one replied. I wish that she will answer my question next time.

[Annette33]

@Lizzie , thanks so much for recapping this event and posting it here, much appreciated as I was "off the grid". Undoubtedly a step in the right direction, to have someone from higher up at Airbnb directly available to us hosts for a Q/A session. Glad it was attended well and resulted in a lively interaction.
  I particularly liked the questions from Linda about perhaps introducing two different platforms for mega hosts and smaller listings, the question from Alice and Jeff about  how to better manage the constant rollout of new products, and Michael's question about general support access for hosts.
I was looking forward to some specific answers to those specific questions we hosts deal here with all the time - but I am really disappointed with what I read.
All I hear is, "we are looking into it" and "continue to give us your feedback, we are listening.." but nothing specific about anything, except to have guest suite available as an option to differentiate better about what kind of place one is offering.. (and I had seen that one already a few weeks ago on my own.)
I mean, how difficult would it be to say, yes, we listened to you and we will make ourselves available and post our phone number in all correspondance and here in the CC, look for it around July 1. ?? or to (diplomatically) say, hosts need to learn to handle their own problems, we are just the back up, so don't expect anything else from us... (now wouldn't that be revolutionary to admit??)
So, sad to say, I don't think I missed anything. If I were product director, I think I would have selected the best questions, given some clear answers and thrown in a few highlights about what is coming up, like that a few days later, a whole new user agreement between Airbnb and users would be rolled out.

[Helga0]

Some answers seem to have been written by Theresa May... the art to say nothing. 

I followed the life thread and counted through several times, but those answers were not life. Fine, a good idea to give considered statements, but the there is no need to call it q&A. It was q&q& a bit of nonsense complaints. 

Why not ask to submit (considered) questions over a few days and then answer those that concern the topic?

[Helga0]

To question No 10 from France: if you have several double beds or one double and an extra bed and two persons book, you suppose and the price is calculated for a couple. But they may be traveling friends or a couple with one snoring partner. In such cases, they use both double beds, the host has much more cleaning and laundry to do, but does not get any extra fee. 

We have had  couples using three beds, just for the fun of trying different beds. 

Some hosts lock extra bedrooms, if guests do not pay for extra persons, but others would prefer an intermediate rating, for extra sheets, but not a full extra person fee. And something to select at booking, avoiding akward workarounds by explaining, that they have to pay extra persons fee, when there are no extra persons.