Introducing Airbnb Plus
airbnb.com
airbnb.com
Worst of all is the amenities, which are more often incorrect than not. I generally filter for places with washer + drier, as I'd rather not be looking for laundromats. Probably over 80% of listings that say they have a washer and drier do not. Most of the time the "drier" is a drying rack or a hair drier. Other times the host explains that I can visit his house or a laundromat, so that counts. Or the last place there was a shared washing machine between 30+ places.
And because you can't leave anonymous tips, I just add the problem by leaving positive reviews even when I'm unhappy with the place. Currently my airbnb profile shows me an an exceptional guest (I have nothing but positive reviews for me, and have given nothing but positive reviews) so have never had a problem getting any place I want. I don't really want to pollute my profile with candid feedback.
When I'm staying somewhere for 1 or 2 nights, I tend to just get a hotel. There's too much friction and problems in airbnb for it to be worth it.
> I just add the problem by leaving positive reviews even when I'm unhappy with the place
So stop actively making the problem worse. Retaliatory reviews aren't a thing, because the host can't see your review until after they post theirs, and the only outcome from a potential host tracking down all of your past hosts' listings, digging through possibly dozens or hundreds of reviews to find yours, and finding out that you said that the listing wasn't as described is that you'll get suckered by fewer accommodations that aren't as described. There's no good reason to post a falsely positive review of a bad listing.
People keep saying this like it's a universal truth, but it's not actually true for any host worth renting from, and I say it as an honest reviewer who has spent years not being in the same city for more than a few weeks at a time and never has trouble getting a place. How? Because I leave honest feedback _and_ I'm an excellent guest.
You're basically saying that you think it's a good idea to get scammed so that you don't miss the next opportunity to be scammed. It's insane. There are so many good hosts out there. You don't need to be afraid of the bad ones.
But it reflects poorly on Airbnb when an apt is $200 with a $200 cleaning fee.
It’s like back when EBay let you charge $1 with $20 shipping.
I actually prefer this to bundling a cleaning fee into the nightly price. I don’t want the place cleaned every day and it would make Airbnbs unaffordable for longer stays to do so.
On EBay they would just lie and call it all shipping so they didn’t have to pay fees on the “shipping”. With Airbnb, hosts should actually prefer higher nightly prices as they’ll get those prices for every night of the reservation and not just once like on eBay. The comparison to eBay would be paying separate shipping costs when buying several of the same item when they could all fit in one envelope.
I have my entire house deep cleaned for $200 for 3 people over two hours. There’s no way that takes place for a two bedroom condo.
My last rental charged $140 and we talked to the owner who said she comes and changes the sheets, sweeps up and washes the dishes. The owner of the cabin.
I don't think most hosts are gaming it to make money, it's just expensive in relation to the nightly. Usually when I explain the costs the guests understand.
Many see the actual cleaning fee, think it's ridiculous even though it's not and then decide to trash the place because they think they paid to do so. And then that causes you to have to go higher to cover the average turnover.
If I had to do your dishes, I definitely wouldn’t charge a small cleaning fee either :)
This is how I feel about most things. A lot of times I give everyone 5 stars (things on fiverr, reviews for customer support, airBnB reviews, etc) even if the service is mediocre, partially because I don't want to deal with the potential problems of giving poor reviews.
Potential problems include being unable to get files after a project (fiverr → giving someone a bad review), staying at a previous airBnB (giving them anything less than 5 stars), potential harassment (giving anything in general a low review), someone getting fired for anything less than 5 stars (Customer support), potential tampered food (not tipping even if poor service or leaving a bad yelp/google review).
Its kind of silly that the public standard (for 5 star reviews) is 3 stars is bad, 4 stars is ok, and 5 stars is good in general. 1 star is just biased, 2 stars are worse than 1 stars in my opinion just because it shows you put enough consideration to give them a 2.
This applies to reviews on airBnB, uber, amazon, ebay, etc.
But if a review can be tied back to your account (e.g. the review is not private, rather public) this could hurt you long term. A good example of this is airBnB. If you have written less than stellar reviews to some hosts, some superhosts (those that require initial contact, e.g. not the ones with lightning bolts) might potentially ignore you because you are a liability of poor reviews.
This ends up limiting the overall options you have with airBnB when you need to stay at a city. Not only that, some hosts would rather see you left a good review if you only used airBnB a few times.
Another example is writing an honest review about your employer, whether its on reddit, glassdoor etc, and that review happens to be bad. If these things end up being traced back to you publically, you might be burning bridges / not having recommendations down the road.
It is selfish that I write good reviews because it gives me less problems down the road, thereby making ratings not as honest for everyone else. At the same time it can be incredibly selfish writing a poor honest review, because not everyone rates things equally (what is average rating, is it 3 or 4 stars?). What if that was a first time airBnB host with no ratings (having a poor first review is like a death sentence)? What if your stay as poor and it wasn't entirely their fault (e.g. outside noise was bad, washer broke, your sleep was awful, cockroach infestation next door, etc).
My point is, sometimes you need to write a review, and its hard to define what an honest rating is, and how detrimental it can be to you and the other party, especially if its on a personal level. I prefer to leave the honest part on just the text portion of the review, not on the 3 out of 5 stars part.
Sometimes people just need a helping hand and a good review goes a long way even if the service was mediocre. As long as they showed good faith and did their best I give them a 5. I know how hard it is to run a business from personal experience, and I know what its like to be on the consumer getting shafted at the end. I try to be as fair as possible
I figure I'm reviewing the experience, not just the product. Amazon reviewers love it when I give their product one or two stars for an otherwise great product, and leave a review that says, "Product was fine, but vendor spams for reviews."
It's honestly a problem with all of these bi-directional rating systems. As long as they make it at all possible for the ratings to leak before both parties have rated, there's a strong disincentive for any party to leave an honest rating.
I do know that similar systems (Uber, at least) have had issues with leaky reviews leading to retaliation. It's hard to implement a system like that, especially when your users have safety, money, and comfort on the line.
You can say a lot of honest things like "if you expect to cook, be aware that you'll need to provide your own X/Y/Z" or "The wifi didn't work for me" or "I found the bed to be uncomfortably soft" or "It's obvious that nobody has ever lived here because so many basic things are lacking". And if any host would choose to deny you based on those, then I wouldn't want to give them money.
Possible reasons for a host to deny a booking:
1) The apartment is actually unavailable. It happens sometimes. I'm not going to cry about it.
2) The host is scared that I'm going to call them out for lying in their listing. If the listing is a lie, then I don't want to stay there. If the listing isn't a lie, then a good host won't be scared by honest reviews about misleading listings.
3) The host doesn't like my face. It's unlikely but possible. Again, I don't want to give money to a person who makes judgements like that.
I've never had any difficulty finding places while staying honest. Honesty doesn't reduce the number of good hosts available. Dishonesty does increase the number of bad hosts available. I do sometimes suffer because other people were dishonest in their reviews, and it upsets me.
> My reason for not writing a negative review is because before staying at their place we exchanged phone numbers and other things, and now I don't feel comfortable writing a negative review and possibly having a confrontation. YMMV but I avoid writing negative reviews despite the 'double blind' review system.
Despite the double blind system, AirBnb's review system still requires you to have a certain personality. It is still quite adversarial.
Take for instance we stayed at a place recently, where we were quite upset at the ameneties of the place (and we were very certain to give them negative reviews), but during the last day, the host made a huge favor to us by keeping our luggage with them. This meant a lot for us, so we can't really leave negative reviews, however, this does not fix the problem with Host's place.
I would suggest some sort of constructive feedback system, based on different metrics, separate from the textual comment system.
Like something which allows me to say:
Amenities: 3/5 What can be improved: Stack up the toilet paper, fix the broken shower handle (Uber style feedback from multiple choice) Cleanliness: 2/5 What can be improved: Toilet wasn't clean enough Hostmanship: 4/5 What can be improved: Communication
Etc.
The rest of what you're describing is definitely tricky. The host made you guys whole by offering an extra, unexpected benefit that was worth a great deal to you. I think you're absolutely justified in giving them points for that; it's maybe even a tacit admission that they might have known they let you down on amenities and offered to go above and beyond in a different dimension to make up for it.
However (assuming for a minute that you weren't worried about a confrontation), wouldn't it make sense to just give a high star rating that reflected your overall experience (sure, you might dock a star for the missing amenities, but then add it back for helping you out with luggage storage at the end), and then in the free-form text, describe both those negatives, and the positives as well? The host would hopefully be able to take the criticism constructively as intended, and future potential guests would also note that the host can be incredibly accommodating in the face of extraordinary needs.
If I have a bad Lyft ride, I usually won't rate any lower than 4 stars, because of exactly what you're talking about, and because I know that an average rating of below something in the mid-4s can get a driver "fired". The ride may have been sub-par, but its purpose (getting me from A to B) has been fulfilled, and that's that. It's also probably on the order of single- or low-double-digit dollars, so I didn't spend too much on the bad experience. And again, the actual purpose of spending that money has been fulfilled. (Now, if a driver is actually driving unsafely, they get 1 star, plus an email to Lyft customer service, no matter what.)
If I've planned a vacation, however, and the Airbnb ended up being a bad experience, I'm absolutely going to write a bad review. I've likely spent a decent chunk of change on it, and I'm specifically spending that money (plus the money spent for transportation to get to this place) to have a good time. If the accommodations aren't as promised, and it impacts my ability to have a good time, then I'll leave an honest negative review because I haven't gotten the value I expected for that money.
I rented a place in Tahoe for New Years this year that ended up having some significant negatives. My friends and I still had a good time overall, but having to deal with the issues was frustrating and definitely detracted from our fun. It wasn't through Airbnb, so I left a detailed negative review of the management company on Yelp. I didn't feel bad about this; the people from the company I interacted with were friendly and attempted to be helpful (but fell a bit short in execution), but the cleanliness and condition of the property was below what I expected, so... bad review.
If it’s not a lot more, I’ll definitely consider using it to ensure a smooth check in and accurate amenities when I need them.
And they don't have a drying rack? Something doesn't fit.
Forget about drying racks. Many listings don't have a trash bin or toilet paper or soap or a knife suitable for chopping vegetables or a cutting board or pans that aren't half-rusted mangled garbage or blankets. Many listings are for private rooms but don't tell you that the "private" room is in a crumbling 10 bedroom house occupied entirely by other transient AirBnB guests and that there are no locks on any of the doors.
Let's tax these parasites, get them out of residential areas.
What is Airbnb providing? Their premium "service" is their previously claimed bare-minimum if you exclude the slumlord part.
Tech innovation? Pah.
> With Airbnb Plus, you can always check in effortlessly. Every home is equipped with a lockbox, keypad, or a host who is on-call to greet you.
This is so weird. How would you otherwise check in to a home if it doesn't have self check in or a host?
> When you book an Airbnb Plus home, you get the focused attention of our Airbnb Plus customer support team–a highly-trained team committed to great service and faster responses
Okay, so if there is no self check in and no host to greet me at a non Plus home, I'm stuck with a poorly trained unresponsive agent.
I realize that they want to differentiate the hotel-like quality airbnbs from the others, so they can give it a badge and therefore justify a higher price for it, but the delivery is odd, as other commenters have pointed out.
An alternative approach could be to describe such listings as "Guaranteed X, Y, Z". I think with that language it wouldn't undermine the quality of the non Plus listings as much.
I suspect that's the sort of practice they're trying to parse out for this Plus offering.
If someone wants to get in to steal something, they're going to get it done. That could mean a broken window, a broken door, or it could mean nothing broken at all. There's no-one within listening distance to hear a window break, so they're not going to get caught that way. But, your neighbors know your cars, and the sense of community commonly leads to a quick "hey there's a brown Buick outside your house, is that you guys?" call/text. There aren't very many "drive-by" robberies; houses are so far apart and all it takes is one person who sees a suspiciously slow driving car, or a car visiting multiple driveways, to call the police. Oh, and if you thought no one was home and you're wrong, there's a great chance they're armed, and they saw the car you used to get there. And the police are never busy, so they'll be there in minutes.
If the answer is never, then having your doors locked hasn't meaningfully increased your security (Only the perception thereof.)
As it stands, I have hosted 273 stays and have 184 reviews with an average rating of 91% five star reviews between two rooms.
The number one comment I get from guests is that my place is far better then a hotel and far less expensive. Enter Airbnb Plus "hotel like quality" which from my perspective and my guests, Airbnb Plus would appear to rank lower than many standard Airbnb listings.
And this does not even take into account hosting element.
I understand AirBnb is under pressure to put up a product to counter Stay Alfred, Sonder and Parallel Travel, but this adds confusion.
I'd guess this is about saying "we've verified this" .
Staying at an AirBnB is a less homogenous than staying at the Hilton. There's a bit more risk involved (not necessarily safety, but cleanliness, noise, etc). Hotels, on the plus side, are run like businesses and feel more impersonal. It's more honest than an AirBnB experience in a way.
More to the point, I'm surprised the company keeps improving their product like this. It's not Dropbox or Yelp, which don't feel too different after 10 years.
It really depends what I'm looking for. With a lot of business travel in particular, I'm looking for a consistent experience with a 24 hour desk in a convenient location. For a weekend getaway I often look for something that's a bit more "local."
I think this opens opportunities at the bottom. A website that focusses on functionality and cheaper rooms. The public is now familiar with the concept. Some people do not want to pay above hotel prices to stay somewhere for the night only. They are looking for a simple, clean and cheap bed. I am one of those.
I used to rent out a room on Airbnb, it was a great experience. Both renting and staying I met cool people, as they were often keen to chat or hang out. And cheaper than a hotel, usually hostel prices. I never minded that staying in someone’s house would often mean a haphazardly tidied room with no available cupboard space.
Fast forwards a few years and I rent out a spare room to a friend at below market price, well below Airbnb price. I can’t be bothered with the standard that people now expect, I hate the attitude of Airbnb (ie use instant book or get fcked), and I find myself feeling guilty at contributing to the short supply in housing.
Nor have I stayed in an Airbnb for a couple of years, I’m back to hotels. It’s not cheaper (what are their fees even for?), and it’s usually a purposed Airbnb property, rather than someone’s home. It’s lost it’s magic.
It does open up the opportunity for new entrants to come in that are like "X but in the old days." Though it's now harder with a big incumbent and the cycle will probably repeat again if they're successful.
I'm a firm believer that most hosts will stop renting after a few guests. The turnover must be high, only covered by the new supply of hosts following the hype. It will dry up eventually and mostly professional hotels will remain.
what are their fees even for?
I've never ever encountered mandatory fees for (often shitty) WiFi and a daily paper, which I don't want. Some hotels (usually at the upper scale) may charge for WiFi if I chose to use it, but won't just tack it to the bill if I don't.
Offering a low price to then switch to a higher price, which is not even visible when you book, but only when you're about to use the service and can't turn back without penalty is a bait and switch it's fraud; plain and simple.
I don't get why the law doesn't hammer down hard on such practices.
Would love to see your place on Overnight. Our core focus is people who are open to hosting friends/members of their communities.
This splits AirBnBs marketing on two fronts: high end and low end. This either doubles their marketing cost or halves their marketing budget for each audience. Take your pick.
A company focused on low cost listings only has to market to one audience, which results in significantly cheaper marketing cost, which means better profitability, which means longer staying power, which means eventually they own a large percentage of the low end market.
Game Over.
Imagine AirBnB and the low cost company both exist as you imagine. Now suppose AirBnB buys the low cost company and doesn’t change their marketing at all. Of course marketing ROI for each of the two segments doesn’t change. Compare this to the case where AirBnB operates in the two segments without buying low cost company. How are these cases different?
No.
Game over^2.
Edit: Marriott, across all of its brands, had nearly $23B in revenue last year. They're clearly doing something right by segmenting their brand.
I think grandparent post has a good point, I'm also one of the people looking for something cheaper, and most airbnb's are often out of my price range.
There is still some room in the middle, but success isn't guaranteed in that sort of market.
I love the service overall, but I absolutely hate getting the morning-of-checkin email saying "Hey can't wait to host you, by the way, tell the receptionist you're my cousin and if any of the neighbors are in the hallway please just pace around the elevator until they leave." This seems to happen 90% of the time in New York places.
I used AirBnB twice in Japan and booked a couple experiences (which I thought were really expensive for what they were) and I always cringed at their email sig :
From AirBnb with Love
It's not about spreading love. It's about a pretty ruthless business. Externalities be damned.
Shouldn't the general quality of the listing already be apparent from the ratings?
I'm always looking for apartments with a view. That is why I am starting a startup that will help locate these:
https://nothingless.github.io/
I will also list if an apartment has a table. Because I need one to work with my laptop on it.
What are other HNers looking for in an apartment that is not easy to find via the standard filters?
Every startup can be summarized in one sentence or company can be summarized in one sentence. For instance, linkedin is facebook for business users. Uber is peer to peer ride sharing. News.Ycombinator is reddit for tech oriented users.
Ratings are always going to be biased to some extent. If companies can game any marketing in general, it will be done. Tags are also biased as well, not everyone has the same definition and need for what a "table" is. A dining table, a standing desk, a computer table? 30"x30" or larger? Round or square? Real estate / renting /airBnB is going to be always driven by short summarized text / tabular data (square footage, cost/square foot,location) and interior/exterior images so the potential tenant can make their own decision.
I'm confused what you are trying to build here.
Love the implication that the check in process for their regular listings is unreliable :^)
Otherwise, as others are pointing out, interesting to see where their priorities lie - certainly these high touch experiences are bringing them more money than people renting out a spare bedroom.
I do wonder how much of a pain this must all be for hosts - anyone who’s ever been in a slightly expensive place knows how entitled people spending money can get, and that must be a huge pain to deal with when it’s someone staying in your house making a fuss because you didn’t offer them organic orange juice in the morning. This happened to a friend of mine who hosted someone for a few nights, on regular Airbnb, with no promise of breakfast whatsoever in the first place. Again, people can get really entitled when they’re spending money. She stopped hosting as the result of that experience (they complained about more than the breakfast, but that’s one thing they were weirdly pushy about).
I am always looking for apartments with a view so I would like to see how booking one can go so wrong.
It feels really authentic (and it probably is).
Makes sense. You were able to find some killer deals with extremely nice places that where waay underpriced because the hosts were decent human beings. They'll likely get contacted by AirBnB with "You could join airBnB plus... and you can price it 40% higher than current with us only taking twice our usual cut" or similar
I see moves like Plus as AirBnB trying to "professionalize" aspects of their product, but they'll never be able to provide the "guarantee (or recourse)" of an established hotel chain.
Outside of those who are cost-conscious, or those with unique accommodation needs (large groups, etc.), it's hard to imagine why any discerning traveller would opt for an AirBnB over a traditional hotel, all things being equal.
The down side is: it seems like this may alienate new hosts by creating an (overwhelmingly) high bar for a listing. Not everyone is a semi-professional hotelier. How will that be balanced out?
Be careful not make would-be hosts feel too self-conscious to list their space. It's a fine line between building community and alienating it when curation bias turns into a core pillar of a company's identity.
I think discouraging new hosts by setting the bar (and company identity) so high is a net-negative for long-term community building. It makes total sense short-term, and it makes sense for an OTA like Booking. Long-term: it shoots the notion of home-sharing in the foot and without new hosts feeling welcome, a growing market can't sustain the demand.
Personally (I'm obviously biased lol), I'm obsessed with the notion that everyone is a host. Everyone would host someone, and it's a platforms job to help match those people to public listings, homes privately listed (networked via communities / friends), homes that have professional photos, homes that even have no photos (because if you're booking a friend's home, who cares). I'm not saying lower the standards, I'm saying change the frame; it's as a matching game threaded by community.
The result is that while I used to go to AirBnB for the discounts, it's now becoming a premium brand with a premium price.
It may be worth noting that I always opt for "whole place." It may be different if you're willing to get just a room.
Recently scored a whole house for ~60/day using this and you know what, it wasn't that bad.
Thus far, for me anyway, not a reliable method of finding great hosts.
Step 1) enable existing hosts who are great hosts to 'step up' to a prestige status which creates visibility and pushes more hosts towards wanting to get there too, thereby improving the overall quality on AirBnB.
Step 2) (I'm skipping a few steps) - eventually fill the void with AirBnB property/amenity management as a service for hosts.
Hosts who don't want to manage or deal with the pain of trying to get to Plus status will simply pay AirBnB for the cleaning, the linens, the supplies etc, no worries, no problems, and let AirBnB manage it all for you. Also gets more people wanting to host who are aloof to finding or trusting a manager they don't know.
It will take time but it's well worth it, even if it is only partially successful.
Good job.
Maybe, AirBnb should just become a platform on which a branded/franchised networks should appear that stick to certain standards. Verified by "Philton". Quality controlled by "Karriott".
Otherwise, AirBnb is always a lottery.
When I travel over there, I always do it. The amenities of the Airbnb, plus a front desk and a consistency + cleanliness.
AirBnbs are great, but they're still very hit/miss.
Anyway, I told the host it would be too dangerous to comply with their request and that I would be happy to _show_ the ID in-person at check-in. They ignored me and just re-iterated their request. At this point I was already ID verified by AirBnB, so there's really no reason for the host to personally verify me except at check-in. So I contact AirBnB support.
Well the host stonewalls me and support for the 3 days leading up to check-in. AirBnB support is friendly, but their messages are often confusing and contain broken english making them difficult to understand. Their helpfulness only extends as much as to say "yes, this is against our rules, but the host won't budge."
So I had to cancel the trip last minute and break the news to my family and friends who had already made plans around this vacation. Everything was ruined.
The best AirBnB offered was to give us extra "credit" to book someplace different. Oh, great. Let me just go book another AirBnB, who might _also_ break your rules, last minute. No thanks. I was too stressed by having to deal with all this garbage to work up the energy to try and book someplace last minute. The thought that I would have to cancel the trip and disappoint my friends and family who were so excited to go ... that ate away at me the _whole_ time I was dealing with that horrible host and the limp AirBnB support.
We were lucky in that our destination was a road-trip away, rather than a flight. Imagine if we had booked flights depending on this AirBnB booking?
I don't see how anyone could entrust their trips to the whims of AirBnB given this behavior. They clearly can't enforce their own rules and don't go out of their way to help their customers.
On top of all this, I had the misfortune of visiting the AirBnB subreddit. Wow. The AirBnB host culture is rife with self-entitled control freaks who are ready to throw guests under the bus under the guise of "well this is my personal home, so you have to obey my rules." No, this is a business. We're _paying_ to stay at your _business_ property. Not your home. It stopped being your home when you offered it for sale. Of course I would always treat people's property with respect, home or not. But the attitude that they somehow are above the rules of a business because they're renting their "home" is toxic.
Other commenters frequently point out how the rating system is also completely broken. Guests won't rate their stays low, even when there are problems. Which means you can't trust the ratings. And if you can't trust the ratings, how can you choose a place to stay? And how is AirBnB Plus supposed to work if every place has 5/5?
Since my stay was cancelled, I had no way to leave a review. I have serious doubts AirBnB themselves will take any action against the host. So I can only imagine all those poor naive souls out there just emailing copies of their IDs to strangers on the internet.
However, there is that rare chance you get someone who is interesting to stay with.
You could see yourself never using it, or using it a lot, granted your circumstances or needs