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Hey y’all. I’m sorry to bring about negativity but gosh darn I am so tired of Airbnb changing their policies every other day! I don’t know if this will touch a nerve with anyone else but we’re integrated hosts and just in their last update a few days ago it flagged EVERY SINGLE LISTING!
We have 45 listings and EVERY ONE was flagged. Want to know why? All of a sudden, Airbnb does not allow for listings to exceed 500 characters - on top of that, they no longer accept listings with all caps anywhere in the description (including “DVD player” or “AWD vehicle”) or “repetitive” special characters (including ellipses).
I just had to spend hours going through every listing and altering each part of the description, deleting important info to fit Airbnb’s 500 character limit. I hate sounding so negative but guests are already losing out on important info with all these new changes, why would adding more restrictions help hosts? We just got a 2-star review and had our listing flagged for “smaller than expected”… I filled out the section to add the interior square footage in the app, I assumed guests would be able to see it. But apparently not
On top of that, not a single representative has been able to accurately tell me what the trouble is with any listing. It’s like a game of chess with playing cards, nobody knows what’s going on or what the rules are. I hope Airbnb sorts themselves soon but I think it’s unlikely.
People don’t read anything beyond a few sentences in my experience. Consequently the 500 character limit probably caters to that audience. Most people read on their phone so they see anything lengthy as a bother. I tend to be a wordy person so I too struggle with the requirements sometimes.
A few years ago I got that feedback from a guest so I drew to scale a diagram showing the floor layout and size of each room and posted in the photo section of the listing. No words and never got a complaint again.
One of the unintended consequences of well-meaning real estate photographers that airbnb deploys was that in my airbnb, the free photography given by airbnb was so distorted and overdone that I couldn’t use the pics. A small bedroom was taken with a wide angle lens making it so big looking that it was unusable. Beware of ‘glamour’ shots…
You’re not stupid! Since we have 45 properties and it’s only me & my manager, we use a property management system- specifically, Streamline. It’s like how hotels have one central system for their rooms that feeds info to their own website, Expedia, ect…
It makes it easier to manage a higher level of properties, since we also do our own maint & hskp. Sometimes it causes hiccups between the PMS and Airbnb, tho!
I guess it hasn’t caught up to us yet either…our listing name is like: Xxxx-XXXXXXX by the Beach!! And we haven’t been flagged yet. Maybe because it’s hyphenated? Maybe we should change it now, preemptively.
We also have a lot of uppercase words throughout our listing, but not in the listing description…is that the only place where you cannot have uppercase?
We have uppercase in “the space”, “guest access” and “other details to note”. Nothing horrible - one thing being the word COVID, which I guess I could remove now that it’s been downgraded. BBQ, PLEASE DO NOT WASH WHITE TOWELS WITH OTHER ITEMS!..etc.
Would it be suggested that we start fixing these things? What happens when you’re flagged? Can you still get bookings or keep the bookings you have? Or do you lose everything?
This happened to us with the Airbnb professional photos. I have two photographers in the family so we fell back on their pictures for the listing. Our tiniest bathroom looked more like the size of bedroom in the “professional” photo. I prefer to under promise and over deliver.
Apologies for asking again but the term ‘integrated host’ is still confusing, I thought it might be in home hosting or something similar. If its a property management system comprising 2 people, 45 properties and maintenance and housekeeping, where do the hiccups between the property managers and airbnb occur?
“Integrated host”, as the OP is using it, is a term meaning they are using software to help manage things. The hiccups are between the Airbnb software and the software the pm is using, if that makes any sense.
