Two, simple enhancements would really help Guests…and maybe Hosts too:
-
Ability to SORT search results by price
-
Ability to FILTER for a SPECIFIC NUMBER OF BEDROOMS
1 Like
You can filter for number of bedrooms as well as number of beds.
While we can’t sort by price we can at least put a price range. Sorting by price would probably hurt hosts with higher priced listings and I don’t know if many hosts here would actually favor that unless they are taking part in the “race to the bottom.”
If you filter for say 3 bedrooms…it will show you homes with 3+ bedrooms…meaning you might see homes with 6 bedrooms, for example.
it’s impossible to search for EXACTLY 3 bedrooms. Try it and you’ll see what I mean.
1 Like
Exactly! Good to know its not just me frustrated by that…
1 Like
I know how the filters work, I stay in Airbnbs when traveling.
I don’t see the need for it to filter for EXACTLY the number, but I can see that if that mattered to me it would be a good way to narrow my search.
I’d like to see filtering for star rating. I use the superhost filter but I get lots of results that are below the number of stars I want. And Airbnb wants to show me 300+ listings. Even with using every filter that applies and the map I get way too many results.
I haven’t done a search recently but I think most of the summer updates are an improvement.
Gotcha.
The point is…if I’m traveling with another couple and we obviously only need a home with 2 bedrooms…I have zero interest in seeing homes with 3 or 4 bedrooms - it’s just a waste of space and money.
I understand. I just haven’t had that experience. Maybe because when I travel alone I don’t generally search by bedroom and I often stay in what is classified as a private room or guest suite. When I search for a place for a group, I put in bedrooms and number of beds we need I get good results.
Yeah, I can’t compare. The only non SH I stayed with were 8-10 years ago and it was only because they were relatively new. I only search without SH filter if there aren’t enough choices with the filter on and so far, there always have been. I also haven’t had any bad experiences with the places I stay. My only complaint has been what I judge to be poor communication.
It depends on the area you are searching. The other day I was perusing the private room listings in Mexico City, just out of curiosity, because Airbnb usually shows me a home page full of Mexico City listings.
Every single one, and I clicked on about 20 of them to read the description, turned out to be a hostel-type situation, with multiple rooms and shared bathrooms and communal areas, with no indication that the host lived there. (And many seemed to be cobbled together with plywood separating bedrooms, some with no windows, stuff that would never pass fire or safety regs in the US or Canada.)
I suspect one might find similar situations for “private room” listings in big cities in other non-first world countries, where regs are lax and what few inspectors there might be can be bribed to look the other way.
But that’s how most of the filters on Airbnb work, isn’t it? I read posts by guests complaining that if they filter for “pool” or “children allowed”, or anything else, the first places that come up fit those filters, and then all the ones after them don’t.
And one guest told me she had to keep upping the price range to twice what I charge before my place showed up.
Guests shouldn’t be shown any listings that don’t conform to the filters they input. It’s irritating to them, wastes their time, leads to guests who don’t read through everything thoroughly trying to book places that say, for instance, no children, when they have kids, assuming all the listings they are shown conform to their filters, and will lead them to book through other sites that don’t play these games.
3 Likes
I haven’t used it yet as a guest. I may be booking some more places this summer for a solo trip and look forward to using the new features.
1 Like
I agree 100%. But Amazon does it, too. For instance, I search for “Cressi duke mask” (Cressi Duke is a full face snorkel mask). I get 1000 results, of which only 5 meet the search criteria.
I am sure this is intentional on AirBnB’s part. Chesky’s goal is to spread all the bookings around so the overall occupancy rate goes up and they get more service fees.
When I look for a property, I start on Vrbo. You can sort by price, guest rating, or number of reviews instead of accepting the default sort order.
2 Likes
For sure I think it’s intentional to some degree, and if it were just a matter of showing guests higher priced properties, or ones with more bedrooms than the guests need, I could understand. The guests can just ignore those listings. But when they are showing guests who’ve filtered for child-friendly properties, who then naturally assume the listings they are shown accept children, when they don’t, that’s just a problem for both the guests and the hosts, and I don’t see how it benefits Airbnb at all.
2 Likes
I imagine that at an early stage in the development of filtering etc, Someone showed a filter result with only 2 or 3 places. The ‘powers that be’ then made a decision that no matter what is asked for, it will show many many listings. As we see when your area is called up, it is always full of listings, even when some are 20 or 30 miles away.
2 Likes
A problem I had years ago was that results would show listings in Las Cruces NM, 50 miles from my home but only 30 miles from parts of El Paso or in Juarez Mexico. Listings there might only be 2 miles from “El Paso” but no guest passing through town wants to stay in Juarez.
I would love to see some data on how many guests who input the name of the town where they wanted to stay ended up booking at a place 50 miles away that was shown to them in search.
I could see someone who just wanted a quiet remote cabin getaway not being that fussy about it being within a 50 mile radius of their search filter, or resigning themselves to having to drive further to the wedding or graduation they are attending, because everything closer is booked up or too expensive, but most guests have a reason to want to be in a particular place, and aren’t going to want to book something that’s even 20 or 30 miles away, just because it has pretty pictures or is $30 cheaper.
Guests should only be shown places in the town or city they input, and then there could be a button that says “Show listings within a 50 mile radius”.
Another thing that’s off about the algorithms is that on the home page, it shows you the supposed distance from you of various listings. It is reading the IP address to determine that, I assume. But my internet gets funneled through a server in Guadalajara, which is a five hour drive from me, so the distances shown are always incorrect, often by hundreds of miles.
I’ve only had it happen once that I know of. Those guests booked then shortly after cancelled saying they were trying to stay in Las Cruces.
I actually meant whether they ended up booking a listing outside of their filter place by choice, rather than by mistake. In other words, if Airbnb is trying to spread bookings out over wider areas, by showing guests places 50 miles away, is that working as they intended it to?
My take on that would be a big no for the area I’m in. I’m located on a barrier island and I can’t tell you how many people have messaged they’re looking forward to staying with me to attend a wedding at the next beach over. As the crow flies it’s only 2-4 miles to several surrounding beaches however to drive there it can take an hour or more based on leaving one island, heading inland, and traveling out to the other island. Not to mention summer visitors and major road construction.
2 Likes