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This new field has started to come up in the last few days on Airbnb’s API, when requesting additional info on a listing.
It is only speculation at this point that it might (or not) be a new feature to be announced/tested at one point.
I haven’t seen one listing for which this value was true. Considering the “plus”, I wonder if that is not going to end up either “experiences” (hosting + visit for example), or something else entirely (flat payments in exchange for better placement in search results?)
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not Airbnb for businesses. It is something that didn’t exist last week.
Smart… You are a world of information, and are indeed very smart! That you can read the API and know ahead of time that they are going to do something new!
Airbnb Plus… Sounds like it’s going to cost us hosts something.
Because it sometimes seems that almost everyone is ‘giving hosting a try’ at the moment, I would love Airbnb to recruit a few hundred secret shoppers (secret guests) to visit established hosts, incognito, who will give us a special designation of being a ‘plus’ listing.
This wouldn’t be the same as superhost because SH is subjective - you’re unlikely to be SH if people mark you down on location, for example, yet none of us can tow our rentals half a mile down the road. This would be more like a restaurant getting a Michelin star - a personal, expert, Airbnb tried and tested ‘plus’ to show that we are good hosts and that our listings are genuine and we’re not scammers or beginners who don’t know what we’re doing yet.
I believe I can say, without the shadow of a doubt, this will never be something like that. I don’t think an Airbnb police is going to exist anytime soon.
I’m sure that you’re right! But it would be nice if there was a way to separate the men from the boys, so to speak.
Do you have any data about the ‘average lifespan’ of Airbnb hosts? Even in the ‘show off your Airbnb’ thread there are so many who proudly showed off their listings but have now gone.
@jaquo . I think that AirBNB’s policies have something to do with hosts leaving AirBNB. Even on this forum, we read post after post where hosts’ contributions to the platform have been “dissed” in horrible ways. Homes destroyed, fake pictures of cleanliness, people showing up who were no the people who made the reservations… and AirBNB consistently sides with the guests. To be honest, this is feeling like a rigged game; one where AirBNB is the biggest winner with the guests taking a close second.
The new policies indicate that this is only going to get worse. No more free cancelations of IB reservations because we don’t feel comfortable. Guests being allowed to get as far as checking in and then canceling due to anything they want and getting their money back from the host’s pockets.
This is not the “sharing” economy, whatever the hell THAT is. This is on the edge of exploitation of a resource that costs the “overseers” nothing at all.
Yea, I am having a bad night… and pondering what my options are, without sharing the kitchen with a set of long term tenants. Obviously, one of my options is to go back to not opening my home, closing off that floor only opening the rooms when family comes to visit.
I hear ya! Every once in a while I get that resentful feeling from having my personal space invaded and my sense of privacy goes out the window. It’s the price we pay when we share our space with guests.
Unfortunately it requires historical data. I have collected about 4 million listings so far since launch. I can easily check every one of them next year, and see who is still an active host.
But a raw figure won’t necessarily be of any help considering the wide variety of situation between amateur (like me, one guy doing everything), semi-pro (with cleaning team or some kind of pro assistance) or full businesses.
Just point me where exactly I can find that on your profile page? or your listing page?
I can only collect as much structured data as Airbnb has… That is tech, not wizardry!
