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I have been hosting for six weeks. The guests are great and all is going well. But Airbnb has made three giant mistakes and it feels like I need to check and double check them in order not to have things screwed up for a guest. I would love to hear if other members are having problems like this:
1 - I have a six month window checked as my Booking Window in settings. TWO guests have been able to book anyway. I have been trying and failing to get Airbnb to respond to this for three days. The only response I have gotten is one message asking me what I would like to charge for one of the guests since I indicated in the original message that I would have raised my rates for the particular (popular) weekend they booked. Since then - crickets, despite maybe five messages from me asking for help. Meanwhile, my calendar has been wide open indefinitely. Finally went in and manually blocked it, but if I want to keep a six month window open I will have to open a new day at the end of the window every day. And the whole thing makes me uneasyā¦
2 - I marked ONE full bed for our yurt listing. Despite the numerous (I counted 3) locations on my listing settings where the host specifies bed showing just that one bed, the public listing showed as having an additional bed. A guest booked it, wanting that additional (non existent) bed. Airbnb fixed it, said it was a glitch, and the guest had to go find other accommodations. Didnāt feel good about inconveniencing the guest, especially since we had to wait three days while Airbnb figured it out. I couldnāt cancel him since it would have hurt my status.
3 - I use Google calendar. The lag between bookings and the sync to my calendar runs from hours to days. Meanwhile, my cleaner and I have to jump between two calendars to coordinate our individual and shared calendars for both our non-airbnb lives and our cleaning schedule. Airbnb has no remedy for this, says its a Google problem.
This seems crazy to me! Like buying an airline ticket and the airline says, oops, we donāt actually have a ticket for you. A week later. Why is their platform so glitchy? Any suggestions about how to smooth things out, or other rants?
Yes, I agree with this. I have 3 listings and I check my calendars daily and the āpreviewā of my listings daily. At least a few times a week I go through all the settings for each listing and run āincognitoā searches to see where Iām landing in search rank (I do this more often if a big event is starting to book or if I have some dates Iām anxious to book so I can change prices if needed).
I think itās important to spend some time everyday on your calendars and listings. I just treat it as āoffice timeā. It has the added benefit of being an āactive hostā which has positive effects on your search ranking, catching updates because they donāt usually announce them and catching glitches because they are not uncommon. Also, I keep up very well with events and high demand days but still find some that I never know what the demand was about but get to raise my prices in time because I notice thereās a lot of activity on dates and the price tips are super-high (for a price tip ,) or something. I have dates blocked off every month for a regular that I book direct and at least once a week, some of her days have become unblocked so I fix those too .
All of this is way easier than contacting ABB to get something fixed, IMO.
There are a lot of unannounced changes and updates and glitches so it just really seems to require active attention. On the plus side, we donāt (as hosts) really pay that much for the system. I guess it just is what it is, sorry
Your Yurt is only showing one bed now!
For my calendar, I like to have 6 months open too. However, Iāve found it easier to just make the setting for 3 months and then do the next 3 months manually. That way, as the days are rolling open, Iām more than prepared. I donāt have to remember that they are opening and I can do a week or two at a time which makes more sense to me than just one day at a time - e.g. I donāt see the point of Friday being available if Saturday and Sunday arenāt. It takes a little time to set it up the first time but then is maintained easily after that. FWIW.
Iāve never tried to sync calendars but have come across numerous posts about the issues with syncing the Google calendar, particularly in the community center. I have noticed that Chrome doesnāt play as well with the website as some other browsers, so I believe it is possible that it may be on the Google side of things.
Thanks JJD. Your feedback is actually quite helpful, because itās a reality check and a concrete way to deal with this, I.e., just build in time to monitor more closely rather than assuming on auto pilot. Thank you!
One more suggestion: I get far more responsive customer service from Airbnb when I call them. After sending a message or two early in my Airbnb hosting days and waiting days for an answer, I now always call Airbnb.
@RebeccaF
I had this happen to me as well and was able to cancel, although I decided to keep the booking anyway. After ABB realized it was their fault they were helpful, but they were a bit difficult until they figured out the computer problem. I messaged you the number I call. Hope it helps! Good luck!
Like others, I also canāt rely on the calendar opening in the way Iād like. Itās worked well for me to have it blocked by default and open a āseasonā at a time. Like Iāll open April-August in early winter and announce it on my FB page.
Also, Airbnb recently announced theyāre going to change the feed that goes to Google calendar, so you may need to change your routine anyway. (The feed currently has guest info like full name and phone number. Air is closing this because too many hosts have openly published their g-calendars)
If you need to share info with your cleaner, you might try the āteamsā function. It gives your cleaner read-access to your Air reservations/calendar in the app. https://www.airbnb.com/hosting/team
Itās been four days since my first message to them, and it still isnāt fixed. I am manually blocking dates. At least I know Iām not alone, and based on the feedback Iāve gotten here, that I should just stay on top of monitoring my listing.
Iām just so surprised that the platform has so many glitches, especially since most of them have big potential to hurt guestās experience.
And they are correct.
iCal is a āpullā system, AirBnB is not pushing data to google. Google has to pull data from AirBnB, and Google has to schedule this.
I would look for another calendar app that will pull the data more frequently.
