Tell them! AirBnB needs to know why you are unhappy!
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I am so blown away by your selfless generosity! I will absolutely keep you in mind for this task.
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Another view on declines in bookings, increased competition (U.S. centric):
And an explanation for the categories and big geo footprint in searches – deliberate strategy to drive traffic to less-saturated booking areas. Here is quote from Chesky at a Morgan Stanley analyst briefing:
“The final thing I’d say is beyond our network growing itself in ways we focus on growing supply, the holy grail is actually pointing demand to where we have supply because there’s no one night any time in our history where we’ve been even close to sold out on Airbnb. We’re not sold out. It’s just that everyone’s going to Boston on the 4th of July or Times Square over New Year’s Eve. And so, if we can point demand where we have supply, that is actually the equivalent of adding millions of more homes. And that’s what we’ve done with this new feature called I’m Flexible.”
From Skift article, May 3:
“This comes after the success of Airbnb’s flexible search launch last year. In May 2021, Airbnb introduced “I’m Flexible”, a new way to search on Airbnb when guests are flexible about where or when they are traveling, and and in November last year it expanded with “I’m (even more) Flexible”, adding a date range of up to 12 months with a total of nearly 30 categories of different types of stays. It is now touting has been used more than 2 billion times since it launch, and said it has helped distribute guest demand more widely. Guests who use this feature are more likely to book in less popular places, it said.”
From Webintravel site, dated May 12, Airbnb was 2/3 of the way through its property inventory to assign categories:
"Airbnb says, to date, four million of its six million properties have been put into at least one of the 56 categories through machine-learning systems that have analyzed the title, descriptions, photo captions and structured data from hosts and from guest reviews.
Computer-vision technology also surfaces the appropriate lead photo for each property, based on the category searched. For example, a home listed in the categories of both “chef’s kitchen” and “grand piano” will display the corresponding photo, depending on how the user finds the property."
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Is it the same still? I ask because things in my area looked wonky but only very briefly, for a few hours, and then reverted back to looking like they did before. It is different if I choose a theme. It does show me stuff all over the greater New England area but it makes sense because there’s nothing in my city to fit the themes, other than Shared Homes.
I thought the “Shared Homes” choice would be positive for in-home hosts. When you say that your listing didn’t show up, was it when you chose “Shared Homes” or just put in dates and did a regular search (not choosing a theme)?
Personally, I was digging the split stays and received one booking as such before they disappeared. They are also gone for me. The themes are at the top still but if I only do a regular search with dates then everything looks like it used to.
A guest being able to search using “I’m flexible” is totally different, though, from an algorithm putting hosts’ listings into categories they really don’t belong in, changing the host-chosen cover photo, changing the titles of the listings, etc. Cutting hosts completely out of the equation.
And if I were a guest and wanted to stay in a little beach town on the coast of Nayarit state, which is where my listing is, I wouldn’t want to be shown pages of listings in the big inland city of Guadalajara, 5 hours away, having to wade through those to try to find the ones that were actually in the area I wanted to stay.
The way this has been implemented, it’s as if I went into a clothing store, told the salesperson I was looking for a sleeveless knee-length white dress, and they brought out 20 dresses, 19 of which were long-sleeved, ankle length or mini, and every color but white.
If I’m in the market for an SUV, but open to any color or manufacturer, and the car salesman presents me with an array of 2 door sedans, I’m going to look for another car dealership.
I understand the concept of what Airbnb has tried to do with this new update, but it should have been done in conjunction with hosts, letting them choose the most appropriate categories, the amenities to highlight, and so on.
When a guest who wants to go on a surfing trip and is budget-minded, so is looking for a private room, not an entire place, but is flexible on dates and as to which little town they stay in, but in a specific area, they shouldn’t be shown places to stay in the city 300 miles away, or beach towns where there is no surf break within a 3 hr drive.
Sure, trying to direct traffic to a less congested area makes sense, but a guest who is interested in visiting museums, going to theatre performances, and city nightlife doesn’t want to be shown remote cabins in the woods.
So, interesting idea, but disastrous implementation. AI is fine for some things, but doesn’t suit others, and it obviously doesn’t work for this concept, or needed to be programmed by people who actually are experts in creating workable algorithms.
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Just for reference. I went and did a search and put Nayarit as where I wanted to go and then I chose “flexible” for a week and then I chose “private room” and your place came up on the 2nd page of search results for me. So that is just the good old-fashioned search.
I then tried out some of the themes including Surfing and Beachfront and yours did not come up, but I didn’t get the feeling that you were angling for those things anyway?
Thanks for doing that, and I’m happy to hear it came up so readily. But I couldn’t find it anywhere in the home-share category.
No, I am not beachfront, although I’m in a beach town, so that wouldn’t be an appropriate category, but Surfing could be appropriate. The guest I just had for 2 weeks came here to surf and surfed for hours every day of her stay.
As have some of my other guests. This is a really well-known surf area, it’s one of the main draws.
And what the algorithm picked out to highlight as a feature at the top of my listing is totally inappropriate- first it said “Dedicated workspace” which is not why anyone chooses my listing, and I definitely don’t cater to digital nomads. So I crossed off that amenity, whereupon what appeared in its place is “Free Parking”. 3 of my guests since I started hosting in 2016 have arrived by car. All the rest have flown into Puerto Vallarta, or come by bus from other areas of Mexico.
Do I have to keep unchecking all my amenities, even though I have them, because the algorithm thinks it knows why guests choose my listing better than I do? There are many things on my amenities list which would be good to highlight, for instance Private Bathroom. I get a lot of middle-aged and senior guests, and several have told me they like booking home-shares, but that having a private bathroom is important to them.
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I wasn’t given the option of a home-share category. I was only given: Beach Front, Tropical, Surfing and Beach. I just chose “private room” to narrow it down during my search.
Yeah they put that on mine too because I have fast wifi and a desk. So I took off the dedicated workspace as well. Personally, I don’t want to argue about whether or not the chair is comfortable or not (I think it may not be, lol).
I also don’t want the digital nomads which is I why I resisted doing the wifi speed test. But they were instead highlighting that “95% of recent guests gave the location 5-stars”. As if that is something to advertise, especially since the star rating for Location rounds up to 5-stars. And I don’t even remember someone giving less than 5 stars for location so it must be from last year or something. But I figured out that they replace that stupid location thing with wifi speed so I did the speedtest and got rid of the location bit.
Well, it’s also obviously near the beach too. Anyone looking at a map can tell that. It seems silly to travel to a beach area and look for listings that are near the beach 
Now, Beachfront is different, I can understand beachfront but “beach” and “tropical” and even “surfing” I could ascertain purely by looking at the map. Anyone coming to your area is not going to choose any of those themes that I got other than maybe beachfront. I’m surprised there wasn’t an “amazing pools” theme for the area because I did see some amazing pools.
But I really don’t think this is going to make any difference for most hosts. I have noticed zero difference since it came out.
Do I have to keep unchecking all my amenities, even though I have them, because the algorithm thinks it knows why guests choose my listing better than I do?
Yes, yes you do. It has always and forever been this way though. At least for the last 5 years anyway. I have always had to mess around with my listing to try and influence what they highlight at the top of my listing. I don’t think anyone ever has been satisfied with the highlighted features. But at least they got rid of those dumb compliments to the host icons.
edit to add: Ok, it appears that I got so few themes to choose from because I put in the specific location (Nayarit). When I went back I zoomed out so that the location changed to “map area” and then I got the other themes. And you didn’t come up under Shared Homes.
Well, since they did away with the “Home Highlights” at the top of the listings, there hasn’t been anything from my amenities list there on my listing except the “Compliments” and “95% of recent guests…” But they have never explained what “recent” is based on.
It’s actually the worst time of year for me to assess whether this update has affected my views or bookings, as I have almost never gotten a booking past the middle of May-late Oct. Too hot and humid in this area for most guests. I’ll have a better idea come autumn, and hopefully they will have worked out some of the bugs by then, or done a complete overhaul of the implementation.
I can see them keeping these theme things but thinning them out because some are dumb. Also, I can see them integrating them better, not so front and center there at the top. Even though it seems fun to book with the themes, it’ll probably be a minority of guests to really use them. Most guests know where they’re going and will just search the regular way.
So that you know, I did a search in your area and your place came up for me under 3 different themes: Shared Homes, Beach and Beachfront. That’s just from the themes. If I do a regular search with your location name and a flexible timeframe, your place also comes up, even without choosing private room.
I’ve also read a lot of guest posts that are saying they are totally confused about how to book in the normal way now, as they are presented with this new format immediately, gave up and booked through another platform. Even guests who have used Airbnb quite a bit, so I can only imagine how baffling it is for newbies who are not the flexible ones this update was aimed at.
If Airbnb gets enough of this feedback and sees a drop in overall bookings, that is what will drive them to tune it up, not that hosts are distressed at what category they have been placed in.
That’s strange. The box where you put your destination, dates and number of guests looks exactly the same as it did before. It is still at the top, above where the themes are listed.
I suspect it’s a matter of the screen being too cluttered and distracting for many, therefore confusing. For a person who is both a host and an experienced guest, I can see that it would be clear to you.
What Airbnb needs to do is have very visible wording on the home page that says something like, “If you are not flexible on your dates and destination, search for listings by filling out the booking box at the top of the page.”
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Themes? I didn’t even see/notice/pay attention to that. I just put in my neighborhood with shared homes and nada.
It’s resolved, so it must have been opening night jitters, so to speak.
I’ve delisted except for opening up on select days for my current guest. She’s waiting on a new build rental complex that keeps pushing her move date, so she keeps asking to come back in 2-3 week chunks. Which is fine and it makes my closing decision easy for both of us.
“Shared Homes” is one of the themes (like Beachfront, Yurt, Chef’s Kitchen, etc), it is not the same as choosing “private room”. And with all of the theme search options, they widen the area to show more listings. It doesn’t really make sense for Shared Home because there are so many of them but you can see why it would help for Yurt to expand the map.
Glad to hear it has resolved for you! Perhaps it is just taking some time to get it organized. The difference was so minimal to me that I might not have even noticed it if there wasn’t so much discussion about it.
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You say that but I once went to Barney’s in NY to buy a winter coat and every style I chose the assistant went out the back and then came back and said “we don’t have that in your size”. Eventually I suggested he grab everything in my size and bring it in so I could save both our time and choose one. Then he came back and said “we don’t have anything in your size”. And people wonder why Barney’s went broke.
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the other thing that makes things tricky is when you are looking at a foreign map, and suddenly it zooms out, you’ve got no idea where you little town is anymore, and you can’t locate it via other names, as they are all foreign. pressing + doesn’t help, the zoom doesn’t put your first location in the centre. I’ve done this a few times, and even in my country, got a bit lost trying to find a place in central NSW. (once you lose the coastline it’s hard to know where you are). It’s not a big thing, but just another layer of annoyance.
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thanks for the giggle. Most people don’t realize how HUGE and internally barren Australia is. And I don’t mean barren in a bad way - there’s just a lot of mileage between outposts, stations, and towns.
Gorgeous country. Can’t wait to go back.
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There’s a segment on a Canadian spoof news show called “Talking to Americans” where the comedian, Rick Mercer, interviews real people on the street in the US, asking them questions about Canada, some just straighforward, some referring to totally made-up “issues”, or “news”, which the interviewees have no qualms about opining on.
One of the questions was, “So how big is Canada?” He got answers like, “It’s a little bit bigger than Texas”.
Not implying that all Americans are ignorant about such things, nor that people from other places aren’t uninformed, but the average person from most other areas of the world have a much better grasp of world geography.
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