Airbnb May 2022 Release
airbnb.com
airbnb.com
* I’ve paid them tens of thousands of dollars in service fees. Yet the customer service experience is on par with an airline or cable company. Getting bounced from person to person every hour, having to explain the situation a dozen times (really, a dozen), and in the end they rarely help me.
* Easily 90% of listings contain some kind of misrepresentation. Probably half it’s something egregious. Airbnb doesn’t seem to care.
Hopefully they’re trying to turn the ship here. We’ll see.
They count on people to just go through with checkout since they spent a whole bunch of time to get through that point. Compare this with kayak which shows you final price right on the search screen.
And then there is a problem with reviews where a guest is not really motivated to write a bad review even if they have a bad experience because people are usually conflict avoidant. So almost all airbnbs have positive reviews 4.9 review average making the whole review section useless. Also, there is no way for user to sort reviews in ascending order of star rating.
Ideally, cleaning fees and similar shouldn't be allowed - they're a cost of doing business and should be rolled into the nightly. Heck, taxes too for that matter - no reason they need to be hidden from the main view.
The way things are is bad for guests and bad for honest hosts.
There are a few reasons to keep it the way it is: Airbnb is probably aspirational about its userbase: they don't want people to choose based on price comparison, it's more about the unique space. Or maybe this even speaks to actual measured user behavior. Airbnb invests a lot in data science so I would assume they have either tested this or have data to show the performance impact of such a change. They also might want to one day reduce or eliminate such fees using a membership program of some kind. So a perk of this membership would effectively be "all in pricing"
(disclaimer: I was an Airbnb employee)
Edit: It's just in the footer and I was blind. Thanks, that's actually awesome!
Thanks!
I am amazed that ABNB has this dark pattern as I don't see how it benefits them and it clearly pisses off users and makes searching so much more work than necessary.
We've used Airbnb about 2x/year for a while now and the worst we've had is a house that's a bit dirty (but never to the point we'd leave). But, most of our stays are rural, smaller towns, or western Europe, so maybe it's a location thing?
I dislike the pricing visibility (fees and taxes only shown later, and sometimes the feed are astronomical). That's probably my biggest gripe with the platform.
The biggest offender I've seen is a "Dedicated workspace". Everyone seems to just tick that box, and it never really exists. I can see from the photos that it doesn't exist, but it makes searching really annoying. I stopped ticking it, because it just filters out otherwise acceptable places.
I've also seen people tick stuff like gyms/pools when really they mean a commercial one is available a short walk away.
What counts as a 'kitchen' is pretty debatable as well, I've seen places with only a microwave tick that box.
I don't mind all these things, I know what to expect judging from the photos. I just wished there was some penalty for doing that to make filtering easier. In the current state, the filters are pretty useless (in my experience).
Cleaning fees for dirty places also feels pretty bad. I don't mind paying the fee if the place is actually clean, but it seems people just set it to make extra money. I've had hosts ask me to take out the trash and put the bed sheets in the washing machine whilst also asking for $100 cleaning fees.
I don't actually mind cleaning the place myself (if there's a vacuum/mop and washing machine), but charging for it and not providing it really rubs me the wrong way.
Different people seem to have different understanding of what it means. To some, it implicitly means a separate room; to others, any table and chair are a workspace.
But that requires oversight from AirBnB, to the point where they have to send out inspectors or mystery guests, and they don't want to have to pay for that, they want the service to be self-regulating. So the people offering the rooms, if there are no negative consequences to ticking a box unjustly but there will be benefits, i.e. more people viewing the advert and renting it, they will keep doing it.
The only way to fix it is with human intervention and Consequences. AirBnB would be a much better experience if it was curated, if people couldn't make their own listings, if there were Consequences for lying, or if they can't post their own listings but need an AirBnB representative to do it for them. With fines if they change something afterwards.
But that requires money and to give up on some of their profits, they wouldn't want that. It's about volume, not the best experience for their users.
Or, remove the filter, as it serves no purpose and is effectively unenforceable.
I take it to mean a _dedicated_ table & chair. A sofa and coffee table are not a dedicated workspace. I don't expect a separate room, that would be an extra bedroom in my mind. Just a desk that isn't the single dining/coffee table is enough for me.
Here's an example of what I mean [0]. That was the single desk like thing in the entire place, not even a coffee table. Calling that a dedicated workspace is clearly bullshit. That place was pretty convenient though, the perfect height for me as a standing desk :D.
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/How-do-you-define-q...
They could present the same story but keep it generic to get the same value without towing airbnb along
https://youtu.be/bdyVH5LqneU?t=2043
I would actually be very concerned if Apple launched the device (still an if for me) and didn't have 5+ 3rd party partners to show off the capabilities.
These companies weren't on stage, but they have brought many partners on stage for various reasons (Verizon CEO for mmWave in the phones, I believe Epic games, and a few other games-related partners as well).
The place is very quiet (except for dogs, nusiance neighbours and constant building work). Is walking distance to the beach (if you consider a 5 mile treck nothing but a stroll). Has nice views of the park (if you stand on the 5th rung of a step ladder). Has fast internet (provided the local bar has not changed the password recently). Etc, etc
And totally agree on the cleaning fee - that should be baked into the nightly cost, along with the taxes. It's a cost of doing business, no different than other running costs (mortgage, etc). Our expectation for departure is to quickly sweep the floor, wipe counters/sinks, and put sheets/towels in a laundry basket. Basically put the place in a state where the cleaning crew can do their job without having to clean up our messes.
EDIT - my other pet peeve is the lack of pet pricing transparency. There's a pet filter, which works, but pet fees aren't part of the Airbnb pricing model, and hosts have to add them manually after the fact. Completely ridiculous oversight.
Ie. It's a way to charge more for short bookings and less for longer lets. That makes sense because for a host the chances of a place being trashed totally is approximately proportional to the number of bookings, not the total days booked.
I wish they just had an option to use different wording so the customer didn't think the money was for actual cleaning.
One thing I recently noticed was, including "sofa bed" as an actual bed. Screwed up with my filters so much that I had to verify from the pictures that they actually had the number of beds I was looking for.
This. We stayed in Philly and got a nice looking AirBNB. What wasnt mentioned was that the nice pictures were of the owner's kitchen that is shared with their family room and that the room reserved for us in a 'private apt' was just a room off to the side with a glass door and a camera pointed at the door.
Unverified listings could be in the tier two marketplace. The problem would sort itself out.
You can see it more clearly in politics. Does anyone think politicians have the people's interest at heart? The answer is it doesn't matter, because people have proven that they'll just eat it, for decades.
There is a monopoly on internet service, in my town. Get it?
Fortunately, that's not exactly correct. After getting burned a few times with AirBnB I now use booking.com mostly. Of course they are evil in their own ways, but the percentage of incidents is much lower for me.
But they're not a monopoly at all. There are countless other ways to find lodging, whether short term or long term, and even the market for app-powered short term letting like airbnb has very low barriers to entry so someone with enough capital (harder in the current environment, but eventually doable) can come in and outcompete them
Would you mind sharing some? I only know of Booking.com, the rest are country-specific billboards at best. E.g. Craigslist in the US, Bazaraki on Cyprus or Avito in Russia. In all of them you'd better view the apartment in person first, and you manage your own contracts and payments.
I've wondered before if Airbnb could do a Guest Plus: instead of paying a massive service fee (which likely goes towards insurance and customer support) and cleaning fee, a guest could clean the house to its original standard, wash the sheets, put the bins out on bin day, sharpen the knives, etc. You'd also get a late checkout as the host wouldn't need to get a cleaner between guests.
See also: that Black Mirror episode where everyone rates each other.
I think a competitor will pop up before they fix themselves, just the right conditions have to occur and Airbnb's market share will quickly sink - they likely will have exited and dumped the risk and unsustainable platform onto the general public by that point though.
Book a large-ish house that says it has A/C. What it really has is a single small window unit in one of the bedrooms.
It's not uncommon to burn the better part of an hour with cable customer service calls with an airline or cable company. And it's hard to quantify them solely in terms of time as I think most people would rate those two businesses' customer service at the bottom of the heap in terms of experience.
I get that people only kinda show up there to complain, but there is a theme amongst these stories.
1. Customer Service doesn't understand their own policies. Often, a host will need to read their own terms of service back to the CS rep to get some requested action (undo an instant booking, not allowing a pet, etc).
2. To get a promised refund / money owed / etc. you need to call and call and call, continue to ask the status, etc. etc.
3. Their $1 million host guarantee isn't worth anything. Their marketing on this vs the reality is comically far apart. Unless it results in bad publicity for them, they will stick very very strictly to all of the gotchas. (Claim denied, guest says it wasn't them, existing damage. Ohh you had another guest in, claim denied it could have been anyone.)
The general recommendation is that as a host, you need to 100% look out for yourself and that the company does not have your back at all.
I'm not a customer of AirBnB; I'm the neighbour of an unhosted AirBnB flat, that is let for most of the year. They dump food-waste in my recycling bin; break the common parts, leaving me to fix the damage; come and go at all times of night; and they intimidate me if I'm unlucky enough to meet them.
I'm OK with the old-style "couchsurfing" model. But the unhosted ultra-short letting model means that I don't have a neighbour, instead I live next to a glorified holiday chalet, except that a holiday chalet is usually let for a couple of weeks; this place is rarely let for more than 2 days.
I want to see AirBnB banned from the city I live in.
I don't see this as an issue unless they are being obnoxiously loud. Lots of people work night shifts or attend late night events.
I explained this to airbnb but they said they have policy that reviews cannot be be removed/modified. So now I have that on my reviews. Great!
On your second point, I think a lot of this has to do with the price point you are renting at.
My experience - I'm usually staying with a group of people at a relatively expensive property as a vacation/splurge, and I've never had anything less than a 5 star stay. I'm pretty choosy in reading reviews (but don't expect someones' home to be as spotless or perfect as I expect a hotel to be) - nonetheless my expectations are always met on Airbnb.
On the flip side, I've seen comments like this one from guests who have been deceived or disappointed, and also chatter among Airbnb hosts renting less expensive properties complaining about the constant stream of problem guests they have. There's a particular host on TikTok I occasionally get served who talks about her hosting experience and she's constantly dealing with issues (and as a result, micromanaging her guests.) Downward spiral.
Just wondering if they won't default to "we will just refund you" in case the host cancels (1st scenario)
In that situation, if I get the info 1 day before arrival and just a refund, then I am screwed anyway since the prices on the market will be sky high.
The cosy little family business is not so common to come by.
From a landlord's point-of-view, their proposition is attractive: guaranteed monthly rent, they handle all admin, they hire cleaners.
From a guest's point-of-view, it's good too; they have a full schedule of bookings and get rave reviews (this is a very attractive location). The standard of decor is high.
But from my point-of-view it sucks, because they've degraded my owner-occupied home into a hotel suite, except with no concierge, no mailroom (the visitors have access to my mail deliveries), and no onsite manager.
How does that happen? Don't you have a lock on the mailbox at the very least?
This works fine as long as my neighbours are actually neighbours. If they're some random tourist from anywhere in the world, not so much.
Looks like a flatmate-like agreement for me, but on a house level for whatever reason.
This is not a "house" - if it were a house, it would be a six-bedroom mini-mansion. There are separate houses on this estate, and two larger blocks of flats. The larger blocks have entry-phones and so on. This is the only block with as few as three flats.
They are nice flats, luxury even, in an amazing location. Unfortunately the developer (early 80s) went broke, and so there are some loose ends that were never properly dealt with, especially the handling of rubbish, and the whole matter of investment properties, empty properties, and ultra-short lets. There are no children.
As I say, it would all be fine if my neighbours were neighbours. Even if I didn't like them, we'd have a shared interest in making things work. I don't have to like my neighbours; I just need to be able to find them, so I can talk to them about issues. The landlord of this AirBnB property lives 600 miles away, in a foreign country, and has never lived here.
Sure, it can happen on very rare occasions, but what a hotel will do then is "walk" you to a hotel in the vicinity of the same category or better.
They don't put you on hold for hours.
And a half decent hotel will call you or email you in advance to notify you of the situation so you do not waste much time.
"Sorry, we didn't find a equivalent alternative. Enjoy sleeping under a bridge!"
Unless they mean that I as a guest can choose between the refund and the rebooking, but they should definitely clarify the wording if that's the case.
> Booking Protection Guarantee
> In the unlikely event a Host needs to cancel a booking within 30 days of check-in, we’ll find guests a similar or better home, or we’ll refund them.
> If a guest can’t check into their home and the Host cannot resolve the issue, we’ll find them a similar or better home for the length of their original stay, or we’ll refund them.
This implies that the guest is already at the doorstep. Yeah, enjoy your stay in a shitty overpriced hotel, in the meantime we will try and refund the money over the next couple of days.
I got to another computer and couldn't log in. I tried to contact customer support - but it required an account. So I created another account and tried to message the host, but it wouldn't let me talk to them without a booking. So I entered all my credit card information into the new account and attempted to book with the host - but they had no bookings available. So I used the new account to reach out to customer service - they were unresponsive taking 30+minutes per message to respond. Given that what I was doing looked plausibly like a phishing scheme, you can imagine this would require a lot of back and forth, which basically rendered CS useless.
I ended up solving the problem by checking the public records of the property to find the owners name. Then tried finding them on social media but all of their accounts were private. Luckily the AirBnB was in my (smallish) home town and I was able to find someone in my social circles that knew the host and shared their phone number.
It was an absolute nightmare and I'm still not sure what I would have done had I not found someone who knew them.
Were they not doing this until now?! I never had such an event occur to me, but I assumed if I can't enter the place I booked, the least I should expect is my friggin money back.
When I pay Airbnb for a stay, I already expect: 1. to be able to freaking check in 2. to get what I paid for
That's... what it means to pay for something, no? And if the promised service isn't delivered, some reparation is made. Either a full refund or something in between.
That makes the whole "only on Airbnb" tag sound so funny. It sounds more like "Promised absolutely last by Airbnb"
Nope. Rented an Airbnb in Austin. Pool was a mess to the point of being unusable; host was noncommunicative. Complained to Airbnb. Gave the host five stars, but left them a note. Host left a negative comment on my profile. Airbnb refused to remove. Refused to provide even a modicum of a refund.
The Get-What-You-Booked Guarantee claims to cover if "listing description wasn’t accurate about significant things," though it's unclear if something like a pool being unusable would qualify.
1 out of 3 airbnb stays was deficient to the point of affecting the trip in some way: didn’t match the description, overbearing rules, maintenance/cleanliness issue that was difficult to resolve with absentee hosts, etc.
The costs became equal to or more than hotels once you added in fees, and the experience was guaranteed to be less consistent than just booking a familiar hotel brand.
This type of stuff is so common but there is no real way to get a partial refund or screen for it ahead of time.
I don't think a redesign is what they need at all. The problems run far deeper.
The worse case was a home that we rented in Denver for a month (during peak renting summer months) was sold less than 30 days before we were to arrive. We'd booked it 90+ days in advanced.
Airbnb told us they would help us find a similar or better home in the area. Very similar to their policy they just announced. But because it was summer and less than 30 days from our booking and we were looking to stay for ~35 days, there were no similar cost homes. The equivalent homes were 3k-5k more for the same time period in the same location.
Airbnb said okay. Here is a refund and a $200 coupon to help you find another place. A refund is great but if all other similar homes are booked you could end up spending thousands more for a similar place like we did.
Or is it that you can get shorter stays under the minimum number of days required to rent from a place? If so isn't that just pushing the cost to the home owner who now has to pay for the turn over service?
Airbnb -- super interesting company, great business model out of the gate -- as we start to get to the mass adoption stage the prices keep getting silly and the quality outside of the core offerings kind of slips. I don't see how they continue to keep growth going without some major sacrifices.
* I'm looking to stay 8 days in Paris in fairly peak season
* There is no good availability for a single Airbnb for 8 days
* This lets me see good matches of "3 in spot one, 5 in spot two" as well as "4 and 4" etc. without needing to do a lot of filtering by availability and digging into individual listings
Instead of having to try and piece meal it yourself they give you great options.
Actually now that you have clarified it -- it sounds pretty great once I test the functionality!
You had me until the refund. I understand it isn't always possible to find another place to stay last minute in a city - sometimes things are just fully booked. I get that, in that case, you'd have to issue a refund.
But this doesn't give me the peace of mind they imply. It just tells me I can be stuck in a city with no shelter and left to fend for myself finding a place to stay.
Peace of mind is AirBnB maintaining a reserve inventory by under-booking a city or maintaining relationships with hotels. Were they can guarantee an equal-or-better home or a refund and at least a studio apartment or hotel room.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-15/airbnb-sp...
I have an electronic door lock and it needs monthly fiddling to stay in alignment, and I need to push the door in to allow it to unlatch. The door system as a whole needs to be fixed here - but if such issues happen for a guest trying to check in, and the door is Airbnb branded - who is gonna get blamed? Even worse - a door that fails to latch for the night, and no one notices…
I think Airbnb has concluded (correctly) that this is a losing game.
From my eye the available commercial products are just beginning to be “good” - for example, NFC locks entered the market this year, so smarthome locks can finally provide the hotel-room authentication experience, if not the hotel-room unlatching experience.
It’s still useless if your long term stay is cancelled at the last minute as it’s often impossible to find a replacement for a comparable price.
This is the risk with using Airbnb for long term stays - last minute cancellations can (and do) happen.
Everything I do on the site makes me wait. Even when I click on the calendar, it opens the widget and then slowlay paints the day numbers one by one.
Some Airbnbs have free bicycles available, but there's no "bicycle" filter (possibly for liability reasons). There's also no way to search for homes that mention "bicycle". Instead, I have to comb through every listing.
I think this used to be an option, but they took it away. This is the only feature I've ever wanted from Airbnb search.
At least for me this new design is unusable. All I wanted to do is enter a city/zip and I couldn't figure it how to do it. It feels like they are really pushing those high end lifestyle/adventure/experience options.
Also, what the hell are "Grand Piano" homes ?
Do people like to have big pianos in their vacation stays?
Does seem like an odd category but maybe its just a bucket they realized they could fill with high priced rentals.