Old:
New:
Seems that AirBnB is lowering standards again.
Shoving guests down our throat.
What is a negative review?? Is a 3 start low enough, or should we now start giving 1 and 2 stars to help other hosts.
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Just check the last item [No one. Guests who meet Aribnb’s requirements must wait for your response] and stop using Instant Book. I fail to see the problem.
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I am not positive, but I think a negative review for a guest would involve clicking the thumbs down button.
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I think you were part of a test group. I’ve never had the 4.5 star option. I have required the “have a government issued ID” option and that’s the one I use. From reading this forum I’ve learned that most hosts don’t honestly review sub-par guests so I don’t check the highly rated by other hosts guests. I also have a majority of first timers. I can’t quite recall how it was when I first started but it doesn’t seem that the standards overall are lower.
If I turned off IB I’m certain that I’d have far fewer bookings but depending on what kind of rental you have you might just turn it off.
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Actually the “old” is the new version (which is supposed to be a test) and the “new” is the old version every host has.
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No, if it was like that I would not have posted it.
I used to have the old version, now AirBnB has lowered the standards and lowered the 4,5 to 5 stars requirement to “not negative”.
The version “every host has” is the version where you can only select the Gouvernement issued ID, The second option is not available for most host.
I’ve had the second version for several months. As I recall it, faheem was the first to post he had the 4.5 star minimum option. Several other chimed in about what they had making it seem that the top option was a beta test. I’ve never had that option so for me ABB isn’t lowering standards.
For one of my listings i see the “highly rated” option, and for the other I see another alternative: “recommendation from other hosts” - which could mean all thumbs up, at least 50% thumbs up, or at least one thumb up… who knows.
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Yes, and when I asked them whether they might change the requirement from under me, they responded with gibberish, as though they didn’t understand what I was saying. I have that exchange on Twitter - it’s quite lengthy. So no IB for me. I just don’t trust these wackos.
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Ah yes, your version is the first one. I had that one in the beginning.
So now I am having the 3rd iteration in just a few months:
- Only recommendation
- 4.5 star minimum
- No negative review. (Where it does not say what they define as negative).
I presumed that AirBnB were just A/B testing the terminology to see which achieved the highest rates of Instant Book adoption, but do you think these terms actually describe a different filtering system for guests?
There is no difference, this is marketing testing but there is no difference in Airbnb’s code between “Recommended by hosts” and other versions.
Those are the values given in Airbnb’s API for each choice:
- Guest who meet Airbnb’s requirement is “instant_booking_visibility”: “everyone”,
- Guest who meet Airbnb’s requirement and has a verified ID is “instant_booking_visibility”: “government_id”,
- Guest who meet Airbnb’s requirement and was recommended by other hosts is “instant_booking_visibility”: “experienced”,
- Guest who meet Airbnb’s requirement, has verified ID and is recommended by other hosts is “instant_booking_visibility”: “experienced_guest_with_government_id”,
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Yes, they use a different filtering system.
They made a stricter filter by adding the 4,5-5 star requirement, but probably noticed that suddenly a lot of guests were not able to use instant book anymore. Since there are very little 4,5-5 star guests.
Now they made the filter less strict and added a vague description for it.
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@smartbnb.io can you confirm this? I know ABB works in some mysterious ways, but i’d be surprised to hear that they implemented a filter without first checking what fraction of users it applied to.
I would be happy to. Just give me a link to a listing with that supposedly new filter; unfortunately this new terminology is not present on my listings.
Correction: I would not be able to confirm that on the basis of the public information for a listing, because OBVIOUSLY this is a detail that is only known to the host, and not the general public or the guest (for good reason).
aha, when you said ““Recommended by guests” and other versions.” I presumed you meant the three we were talking about. NM, I guess we will never know.
I agree, but as K9 mentioned, you eliminate a lot of first timers who want to book an Air place. But if you’re super busy and in a highly visited tourist spot, you can be a little more selective. Air does for sure want to push us into the instant book mode for sure and for obvious reasons.
I think the 4.5 rating is arrived at by averaging all of a guests ratings.
Do you look for this in the listing, or in the maintenance part? In the maintenance part I find this:
I only find the “who can book”, not the visibility.
input id="who-can-book-trust-gov-id"
input id=“who-can-book-trust-recommended”