WARNING - Be careful with Airbnb Plus - you lose control over your listing!

Sorry - did look through the forum - where do you find it then…?

Just use the search facility :slight_smile:

https://airhostsforum.com/search?q=plus

Did that - no posts about the issue I raised. In fact I couldn’t find folks that were in the program as opposed to those speculating about it. Sorry but I tried lots of search terms. Let me know what to use. I’d love to see others’ posts who’ve had a similar experience. Thanks.

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You are probably right. Those few of us who read virtually every post remember things that we can’t always readily find again. @HH_AZ just posted about his experience maybe he will chime in.

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Very Similar experience as you described and I also have asked for some additional pictures to be added. Its a very frustrating experience.

Rather than rewrite or even cut/past, let me provide links:

A comment I made on a different post, prior to the above ones.

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Thanks for those links. The process took months actually, but they went live without giving us a chance to review their final changes (like the garden shed cover photo)…

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Thanks @HH_AZ

There’s also a Seattle host who has posted about the Plus process @SuiteInSeattle

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Be prepared to wait much, much longer than one week for a response from support! We contacted them on 9/21/18 because their main photo of our listing is of our patio in summer. I want them to change the main photo to one of the interior (that is not seasonal) so guests don’t find our listing inaccurate when the patio furniture is not there in fall and winter.

Well, we still have not received a response from anyone in Plus support, only apologetic replies from CSs in main support. And still no photo change.

On the “Plus” side (pun intended), we have seen a dramatic increase in bookings into December which we anecdotally attribute to having the Plus designation. I’m super annoyed with Air though for their total lack of support.

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Thanks - good to know someone else is out there :slight_smile: though not good to hear about their responsiveness. It would be nice to see that booking increase, though we haven’t seen that yet.

Same experience. They wanted to change City Garden Retreat into “Edenic apartment in Craftsman home”

Who even knows what “Edenic” means! Luckily that’s one thing you can change once it goes live…

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I’m sorry … I don’t understand quite well … After you join Plus you are not able to add, sort, delete photos?? That’s a big CON for me … I consider myself a quite good interior photographer and I’m never happy with the results of other interior pro photographers that came to my space. Are you saying that I won’t be able to upload my own photos and delete theirs?

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That’s exactly right. Only photos taken by their photographer are even available, and Airbnb chooses, not you. The only option you have is “assigning” them to the correct room/space or deleting them. Our garden shed is our cover photo and they will “consider” changing it (have to appeal to a higher level though). They want us to send the one we want instead, but it has to be one of theirs, none of which show the outside of the unit. They won’t let us use the photo we’ve used for 2 years because the inspector/photographer didn’t take it…

Hmmm. Interesting (while I await The Inspector Calling, who’se late…). I wonder what happens if, like us, the original photos were done by a professional photographer at Airbnb’s expense. They sent someone in a week after we listed 18 months ago.

Well, that was a lead balloon all round. Nice bloke, in a rush, and spent 55 minutes here in total. He left saying all should be fine, didn’t ask me anything I would consider to be a verification process. He then told me that booking.com are pissed off with Airbnb, so are upping their game in the next few weeks, and will soon have a better offering for small in-home hosts like me. He was a host for three years but has given up on them because of website probs etc.

So fascinating that the guy Airbnb has hired to help them is going around slagging them. I’d find that to be very offputting.

Yes, it was off putting, as was his general rush through with everything. He was nice enough but left me feeling generally deflated, although I had also re-read the posts here before he arrived. The loss of control issue left us reflecting on what issues could/would arise but without the level of support we have currently experienced. Still reflecting…

Of interest, he arrived with absolutely NO knowledge or information about our listing. He assumed we were an entire property.

JProviding an update:

The GOOD news is that after 10 days I’m finally getting some response to my requests for changes.

The BAD news is it’s an onerous process that I’m still trying work through.

My request to other Plussers is to suggest to ABNB+ team that hosts should be able to view the photographers pictures.

My timeline status:

  • 10/6: ABNB+ went live
  • 10/6: I sent email to ABNB+ to voice concern over missing pictures and asking for writeup changes
  • 10/16: I received a reply from an ABNB+ rep. He ask that I send him pictures (my own) so that he can share with the photography group. This rep has no access to the photography which seems to be a separate group he needs to interface with.
  • 10/16: I sent a reply suggesting that ABNB+ either provide me access to the pictures or send me a composite of all the pictures so that I may select what works best.
  • 10/17: I received an email advising that they can neither provide me access nor a composite of the pictures the photographer submitted. The rep advised that the Photography group has added some new pictures to address my requests.
  • 10/17: I responded that the new photos show little of what I was looking for. The pictures added are closeups of random things. In my reply I attached my own pictures showing what type of photos I was looking to add to the listing, that I know the photographer had taken.

Some things I’ve learned:

  1. While you can’t add pictures, you can uncheck pictures that you don’t want to include. They will remain on the edit page, but will not show in the listing. This might make sense for seasonal photos that @SuiteInSeattle was wanting to change.
  2. ABNB+ definitely wants a curated look: head-on shots & closeups shots.
  3. in response to @Joan; the inspector / photographers are subcontractors, and you will receive a survey asking for your review of them. I had an entirely different experience with the one that came to my house, so very much like hosts and guests, it’s up to us to review them for the benefit of those ahead of us.
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I’ve found the same. My two key issues:

  1. Now that there is essentially no free text, it is difficult to explain something that isn’t a standard option. For instance, we have free street parking available via permit (which we provide). Given you can only park on our street if you have a permit, there is always plenty available. We had this explained in our “old” listing with no issues. Now you can only select “parking on premises” or “no parking” - if we said no parking, we’d lose everyone who has a car, and we actually do have a parking option so it’s not really correct so we have to say “parking on premises” which is not really correct either. I questioned the airbnb select team and they said what we did was fine (?)
  2. They chosen a photo of our ugliest room or the cover photo and we can’t change it

That said, we definitely have more bookings so definitely don’t want to leave the program!

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Wondering how you found an email for the Airbnb+ rep? And I’m wondering if I could use his name in talking to the one who contacted me who seemed too say I couldn’t send my own photos. I’d like to be able to say that “x” forwarded a hosts own photos to the pictures team :slight_smile: