The base price of a listing on airbnb to a guest ends up about 20% higher. Sorry if it was too cryptic in the way I worded it.
Yep, exactly the pro and con format often encourages guest to say something informative instead of “Awesome”, it doesn’t necessarily have to be something to complain about but it does encourage a more comprehensive review. Often the con portion is “nothing, everything was great”. More info is better.
Yes, airbnb reviews as a whole are at least 1 star higher across the board than the industry wide review consensus. Airbnb’s system encourages it. A 5 star review to an Airbnb host means everything was as it should have been in the stay. A 5 star review elsewhere mean an exceptional experience.
You still haven’t explained why you think this is true.
Airbnb reviews seldom just say “Awesome”. Most guests do describe how their stay was, including anything they disliked, and are informative. I don’t know where you get these bizarre ideas.
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Not sure why you need to label and degrade to a personal attack.
The goldrush years of airbnb are long over, as airbnb continues to lose market share to everyone, including bookingdot com airbnb will continue to try to regain it both through the pockets of hosts as its always done and through moving further and further away from their origins and look more and more like their competitors. For instance it won’t be long before Instabook is the basically all you will see on airbnb, they won’t force you to adobt it, they will do it as they always have, making it the only choice you have in order for your listing to be seen at all.
As for reviews being overstated on airbnb, anyone can do a non-scientific survey themselves and compare the percentage of 5.0 hosts on airbnb versus 5.0 listings on other sites such as booking or trip advisor or any others and you’ll see the review average rating is noticeably lower on all other platforms. Maybe you’ll say that is because of the quality of the hosts, but we all know that’s not the case.
Airbnb is losing market share for a number of reasons and there is no denying how the slow price creap over the last 6 years where they have flipped from being the lower priced choice to the often high-priced choice is affecting the problems on the platform.
Next for airbnb will be introduce big chain hotels to the mix, it’s coming. Market disrupters always end up being duplicates of the competitors they started off so different from. Uber is a perfect example and airbnb will get there too, I’d say it’s already came about 60% there.
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Do you have guests who stay a week ? Or longer? Try marketplace Facebook. You might find there guests who need couple weeks or months .
I’m going to assume that was not meant to be snarky. Yes, I understood what you said. As I and others have pointed out, there is no OTA fee-structure reason for the same listing to be more than a small percentage difference (if any) between BDC and AirBnB.
We decided NOT to be the ‘lower priced choice’ a few years ago - there is nothing worse than someone looking for a ‘bargain’ based on price alone - and we have always done well… yes it is not 100% occupancy but we do not book lowballers. We realized that we could offer a ‘hotel-like’ experience with ADDED value and we get many repeat stays that are into our ‘vibe’.
We also have seen a change in the travel plans and needs of guests, but we tried to mitigate any changes that might affect us by making sure that desperation did not power our business.
Your airbnb has to evolve and flow with the times. Ours originally was a classic - a basement room empty except for an air mattress and a small rug. If we stayed the way we were then - which BTW was VERY profitable since every penny of income was profit - we would have probably zero bookings at this point, since the market needs have changed.
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Can you point out the personal attack? I can’t see it. As you’ll know from our FAQ, personal attacks are not permitted here. Thanks!
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Labeling someone’s comments as bizarre, if you’re a mod and tolerate that, then I guess it’s what people here do.
That’s fine, why are you fixated on one point out of 12 statements? 12 statements are made and all there is are fixation on one of them. Okay, I got it, thank you, now maybe let’s move on.
Staying on topic to the original question of why are so many people seeing less business it’s at least a 5 issue result…
- Airbnb is losing market share, specifically to booking dot com - why is that happening? I listed a few reasons
- Listings are diluted more today than ever before
- Airbnb decides the algorithm based on how you should list and run your property if you run contrary to the criteria you lose visibility and bookings
- Airbnb has continually been growing critics, negative social media,main stream media and municipal governments
- Airbnb’s listing have gone from being the low cost provider to often times the highest priced provider
When I was a host back in the dark ages there seemed to be embracing of a symbiotic relationship with Airbnb, where running your STR how you wanted to it didn’t conflict with Airbnb’s goals. Now returning to Airbnb with just a single STR in a resort town, those days are over and it’s not really about how you want to do things, it’s 100% learning what airbnb wants you to do in order to get anything out of the platform, sure there are options but there really is a defined set of choices that you have to choose in order to get views. You just can’t zig when airbnb wants you to zag. And with all the growth of new hosts signing on that are more than happy to do so, that’s the game today and it’s only going to continue in this direction.
Fixated? You claimed that listings on Airbnb were much more expensive than on BDC, which there is no apparent reason for, and haven’t provided any examples to back up that assertion.
As far as Airbnb “continually growing” bad press, there have been sites like “Airbnb Hell” for a decade. And half the time the complaints guests have are just a sense of entitlement, like that they didn’t get their money back when they cancelled, even though the cancellation policy they booked under was clear.
I’m no Airbnb cheerleader- their customer service is generally awful, their guest-centric policies leave a lot to be desired, and they manipulate search ranking to favor listings which use IB, flexible cancellation, etc., but I have heard exactly the same complaints about BDC.
Airbnb has provided me with a connection to great guests since 2016, and continues to do so. They are just a listing platform and I don’t expect much more from them for a 3% service fee.
Also, I am not okay with a platform like BDC where guests don’t get reviewed. It means guests can behave badly without other hosts ever knowing that.
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No, you had previously referred to a ‘personal attack’. As you’re aware, calling someone’s comment bizarre is hardly a personal attack.
And let’s face it, your comments are bizarre in an Airbnb hosts’ forum (not an Airbnb bashing forum.)
I realise that English may not be your first language but I can assure you that the word ‘bizarre’ means ‘strange’ or unusual - it has nothing to do with a personal attack. Hope this helps.
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Airbnb reports earnings today. I look forward to your analysis of the conference call.
As for me, I opened up my calendar late last month, it’s open to June. I haven’t been opened up 6 months out since before the pandemic. I picked up right where I left off and if not for all the complaints I read here, I wouldn’t realize anything had changed. I completed 7 bookings in the last two weeks and banked 5 new 5 star reviews in the last month. One stay has not been reviewed by either of us yet. I have one booking for June already so I’m getting visibility. I’ve also had 2 bookings from my direct clients and I’m going out of town again soon so not all dates are fully open.
As a longtime member here, you know I have a different business model than most, so maybe that accounts for my starkly different experience with Airbnb than so many others.
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lol, not a stock holder…
I think I might need my head examined for getting back involved with STR, but it’s more helping a family member and with youth I’m all for them taking any initiative and doing anything other than following their peer group onto uber eats or a door dash driver as a career. But airbnb sure ain’t what it was. But that’s the curse of going public they are a slave to wall street now, every move, every strategy is influenced by shareholder return.
The hosts in Seattle’s FB groups have been reporting slow and no bookings too. Some are panicked new hosts wondering if they’ll make it through winter, and some are experienced property managers looking for tips. I didn’t host during the pandemic and only came back a year ago. Summer was my busiest ever, but fall, winter, and spring have been almost completely dead. I’ve done what I can to make my listing enticing: IB, allow one-night stays, no cleaning fee. I show up high in the search algorithm and I will be one of the only listings that isn’t a flophouse or illegal unbooked. As best as I can tell, fewer people are using AirBnB in my city during the non-tourist season.
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Edit: Airbnb reports earnings today (2/13/24) after market close, not yesterday.
My home was available right through the pandemic and did very well. As stated initially, I’ve been booked 80 to 85% every years for the last 5 years. The only thing I haven’t changed yet is my strict canelation policy. I’ve kept it strick since the beginning, but maybe my competitors are more lenient. I do have guests coming this weekend for 3 nights, but that’s it. As I wrote earlier, I’ve blocked off my calendar for the next few months until I know more about my cancer prognoses and treatment. Thanks for the advice everyone.
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