I am one of the "original-style" AirBnB hosts. I rent a spare bedroom and an in-law unit on the ground floor of my home, and I've been grateful to AirBnB because my income from this platform contributes a good share of my mortgage payment each month.
However, it seems clear that their business model is to squeeze the hosts in order to increase bookings and revenue for themselves. Everyone here is familiar with the stories of nightmare guests doing extensive damage or causing other problems and AirBnB not helping to make it right.
I also experienced a guest who showed up to her reservation with more people than originally booked and told me she wouldn't be staying there herself, then upon seeing the room was unhappy because she hadn't read the listing well enough to understand that it was a single room and not a separate bedroom/living room (trust that the word "studio" and "single room" were all over the listing and every corner of the room was photographed making it clear there was no other room). She called AirBnB to complain and was given a full refund on check-in day despite my Moderate cancellation policy. AirBnB overrode my cancellation policy for a guest who was violating TOS and couldn't even properly read the listing she booked. How is that fair to me as a host?
Now AirBnB is constantly pressuring us all to lower our prices past the point of profitability. Their Smart Pricing tips are consistently around 50% of what I can fetch and keep my calendar full, but I check my comps regularly and see many of my neighbors appear to be using Smart Pricing and I worry that 1) my current pricing won't hold out much longer and 2) people will increasingly expect Ritz-Carlton quality for $55 because my neighbors are renting entire apartments for $29/night based on AirBnB's recommendations, so people must think I'm offering something extraordinary to be charging nearly twice as much. But there is a hotel a mile up the road for me that charges more than $200/night for a simple room with no kitchen. The market can support much higher prices than AirBnB is foisting on us.
And as someone mentioned above, now I'm being encouraged to offer discounts for last-minute and early-bird reservations - I have always set prices *higher* when they're more than a month or less than a week out, and I still get plenty of bookings at that higher rate. Why does AirBnB want to undercut our opportunities to earn greater profit?
It reminds me of how Uber is counting on their drivers not factoring in the cost of wear and tear on their vehicles undercutting their profits when they drive for rock-bottom prices. AirBnB seems to be counting on us to not factor in the cost of restocking supplies like coffee and shampoo, furnishings upgrades, repairs and maintenance, regular discarding/replacement of aging linens, energy/water cost of laundry, and so on. At $29/night all of my earnings would go right back into these costs leaving me with no actual profit.
It also costs me $150 to have my two basement units professionally cleaned. Nobody is going to pay a $75 cleaning fee for a $55/night room, so I charge a $35 fee and have to make up the extra $80 out of my profits from the nightly rate. What kind of cleaning fee is anyone going to agree to pay for a $29 listing? The cost of the goods and services hosts rely on are fairly inelastic for us, but AirBnB is misleading inexperienced or clueless hosts into charging less than it costs to run their units and driving down prices for the rest of us at the same time.
And on top of this there has been a huge uptake of people messaging me asking for more than my listing offers for less than it advertises - just this week someone receiving a 12% automatic discount for a week-long stay submitted a request asking me if I could reduce the price further and waive the cleaning fee! Another person Instant-Booked my listing with an 11 AM check-out time and blithely informed me in her initial message that she would be checking out at 6 PM.
It would be nice to feel like AirBnB was my partner and wanted my rentals to be successful and profitable. But all they care about is getting their service fees. They don't care if we can't even recoup the costs we incur striving to meet their standards, they want us to provide all essentials and 5-star experiences every time for literally 1/10 of what hotels in my area charge. Why, ABB, please can't you have some empathy for us and fix your smart pricing tool so that it's not encouraging hosts to compete in a race to the bottom?