Hello Fellow Hosts, I’m hoping you can share your wisdom with me, please. When I perform a search for my specific neighborhood, the results include nearby areas (including different zip codes). Is there any way to limit or narrow my listing to a specific area?
Not that I know of. Airbnb lumps my little beach town in with listings in Puerto Vallarta, an hour’s drive away, even though no one who wanted to vacation in my town would book in PV, or vice versa. They also lump in rentals in many neighboring towns.
They lump neighborhoods together. That’s why in my title I include me neighborhood and also mention the neighborhood in the description of the place.
When I first started hosting, I received a 4 for location because they thought I was in Long Beach Island since that’s what they typed in the search bar. After that incident, I added the name of the town in the title and description.
When I rented an Airbnb in Paris, many years ago, it was a 45 min. metro ride. Same thing, I typed Paris and that property came up on my search.
Airbnb should really fix that issue, but it’s been like that for years.
Does no one use the “map” thing the listing gives? Even if it’s not the “specific address” it’s not miles away. Searching for Paris and then looking at the map and zooming out a bit would have shown you were nowhere near the city center… I’m big on maps and Google Satellite View. I use them all the time to see where something is in relation to surroundings. It’s saved me from booking too close to noisy places, like a schoolyard during the week. Call me a curmudgeon, but I can’t stand screaming kids, even if its “happy screaming.”
Are you referring to the map used on Airbnb for bookings? That map was not very helpful since it was my first time going to Paris.
@muddy @Tranquility_Base @Ritz3 Alas, it irks me that the way listings are lumped together makes no sense; I also have to reference my specific neighborhood in the title of the listing. I’ve been tempted to apply for a corporate job at Airbnb just so that I could try to influence how things are done.
It would make sense to allow guests to filter by zip code and get only listings in that zip code or in the little zone within a couple of miles within the radius of the listing. Totally annoying.
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The Airbnb “Host Advisory Board”, which Airbnb was “thrilled” to announce the formation of several years ago, and which consists of hosts hand-picked by Airbnb, was purported to be a body that would represent host’s interests and concerns.
Instead, this “board” had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and are not allowed to communicate what they actually do, to the host community, and there is no way for hosts to communicate with them.
(Can you imagine not having a way to communicate directly with your lawyer, who is supposedly representing your interests, and them not letting you know what they are doing on your behalf?)
Every once in awhile, one of them posts on Airbnb Community Forum, telling hosts about the latest politically-correct virtue-signalling project they are working on, like “inclusion” or hosting disabled guests.
When they were touted as a “voice for hosts”, many thought “At last, someone who’ll tell Airbnb what about their platform needs to be changed because it doesn’t work for hosts, or offer suggestions for features hosts would love to see”, while the more sceptical and pragmatic among us said “It’s just another PR exercise”.
That Host Advisory Board was announced on the heels of the Covid disaster, when hosts were freaking out about all their bookings being cancelled. It was obviously announced as a distraction- “Okay, yeah, I was really upset about losing all those bookings for full refunds, but at least Airbnb is ready to listen to hosts”.
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I was on something similar for Vrbo years ago (along with at least one other person that participates on this forum). The only good thing that came of that is I met some lovely people! We were mostly there so they could judge how to roll out the changes basis our response to them, or to give them feedback at the very beginning when they had an idea. We complained about a lot of things but it didn’t make a difference.
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map zoom is the answer