Weird Message from Airbnb

1

Hi! I do not host much- we just put our own house up three times a year when big events are happening in town. However, I got this message from Airbnb yesterday:

Airbnb Support6:56 PM

We hope you and your family are safe and healthy as we all work to navigate the COVID-19 crisis in our communities. While Airbnb has developed initiatives (https://airbnb.com/covid) to minimize the impact to your business today, we are also exploring programs to help hosts get back on their feet once COVID-19 is less of a threat in our communities.

One program involves verifying listings in order to offer both hosts and guests more peace of mind once we start traveling again. As a successful host, we’d like to partner with you first, before launching the program to all hosts later this year.

If you’re able to safely access your listing and are interested in participating, please use the link below to schedule a 20 minute virtual home review with our team.

Schedule an appointment: Link Removed

If now is not the right time, we completely understand, and look forward to working with you when the timing is better. More details about the program are available at: https://abnb.co/videofaqs

Thanks, and stay safe,
The Airbnb Team

I went ahead and scheduled it for today at 5, but I really don’t understand what it is for. We do have an active reservation coming up in a few weeks. The event (music festival) was cancelled, and I have reached out to the guest twice, asking whether or not they still plan on coming. No replies. We are, at this point, assuming that they are coming, and planning on completely cleaning and clearing out of our house for a few days. So maybe that’s why we got this message?
Anyway, I wanted to share in case A. anyone had some idea of what’s up and B. this info could be useful to anyone else.

2

I removed your Calendly link, it meant anyone could have clicked through and, if they were of such a mind, altered your appointment.

It’s not good posting personal email addresses, phone numbers and contents of emails with personal data such as this.

Let us know how you get on,

JF

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3

Oh, thanks!!

I will.

4

Hmmm, I would have thought there wouldn’t be any Air interns left at this point, due to cutbacks, to continue these fun Airbnb experiments they like to do on us.

5

@lparks I wouldn’t assume a guest will show up if they aren’t answering messages. Some guests don’t have their notifications turned on, so they don’t even realize they have a message. I would try texting or calling them to let them know they need to answer your message. If they don’t respond to calls or texts, I’d get Airbnb to try to contact them.
You could go to all the trouble of cleaning and preparing the place, only to have them cancel and convince Airbnb they deserved a 100% refund because their event was cancelled due to COVID.
Airbnb did put out a notice, after the shootings in Orinda, back in early November, saying they were going to start verifying listings, but they didn’t indicate how they were planning to do that.

6

This could be related to that “Airbnb promised to verify all 7 million listings” or whatever it is. They announced that after the party death thing that made the news.

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7

I’ve seen other reports of hosts getting this same message on other forums, FB, etc.

8

This is Airbnb’s verified listing initiative they announced on November 6, 2019, just a few days after the Airbnb halloween shooting and stories of host scams made international news.

Here’s one news story on the announcement, but you can find many others.

9

At the time they first put that announcement out, everyone was wondering how they could possibly verify all 7 million listings.
A 20 minute virtual home review? Times 7 million? Let’s see, that’s 3 per hour, so 2,333,333 hrs of virtual home reviews. Seriously?

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10

Well, that’s what it was! He just wanted to look at all the things that I say I have on my listing. He told me that I would be hearing more about verified soon- that it will be a big deal. And that verified listings will be given search priority. It took 15 minutes. Let me know if you have any questions about what else happened!

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11

I wonder if they prioritized verifying your listing as it is a sporadic listing and recently came back on? Obviously a place that gets rented frequently and has positive reviews would likely not need to be verified as the frequent rentals and positive reviews “helps verify” the STR.