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Randomly checked my listing and a boatload of new amenities have been added, down to hair conditioner yes/no and a text box to list the brand! (Note to RiverRock, they’ve added “Hot Water Kettle”)
Love how they never alert us, just leave us to bumble around and discover their “improvements.”
And why would anyone care if there’s “pocket WiFi” vs “WiFi” as long as it works?
That stuff’s been there for awhile now. But they do keep adding more. It’s absurd. The brand of stove you have???
“Look, honey, I know the place looks like a dump and has bad reviews, but they have a Westinghouse stove! And Herbal Essence shampoo!”
I just opened the app and this is the first thing I saw. Oh holy hell, so my listing would be filterable by heat vs no heat? What in the hell are they thinking? (Errr…not thinking, more like it)
Hey, they want to know if I have heat, too. Yeah, I have heat, plenty of humidity, too. I live in the tropics, idiots.
So, I’m curious. How long have all these amenities lists existed and how are they affecting booking rates? In other words, is this affecting our business or is this much ado about nothing?
If I re-open and don’t get bookings does this mean I need to double check amenities checked?
Hard to say since business is anything but normal, but I do agree that the hamsters have been busy on their wheel of weirdness, and they have no rhyme or reason. I didn’t find anything different with mine when I reviewed each amenity. Just that weird “heating?” prompt to check for a further “to do” list.
They even have a box to check if your stove is stainless steel.
“Oh wait, honey, it’s a Westinghouse but it’s white, not stainless. That’s just not acceptable.”
It’s what the techies busy themselves with instead of fixing all the glitches.
“OMG, Dexter, I just can’t get to the bottom of this calendar glitch 10,000 hosts have called about this week.”
“You must be new here. Why are you wasting time on that? Try to come up with at least 5 useless items to add to the amenities list. You could start with the toilet paper brand, 1 or 2ply, scented or unscented, made from recycled paper, etc.
I’m redesigning the host dashboard, myself. I think we need to hide more of the information hosts rely on somewhere they’ll never think to look.”
Us, too! The record low for our Caribbean island (St Lucia) is in the upper 60’s, so NO ONE needs heat!
A pocket wi-fi is portable. One of the first things I pick up at the airport in Japan.
It’s interesting how they can manage to identify our regions to send us Airbnb alerts that there’s a hurricane coming our way (like I rely on Airbnb to tell me what the weather forecast is) yet can’t identify the regions that don’t need heat.
I actually wouldn’t have minded having a heater here this winter- it was insanely cold, never experienced that in my 18 years here. It went down to about 40-45 degrees at night for about a month. Normally the temps here are like yours.
Pocket Wifi is actually the one I have checked in my amenities, because of course, even though there is a place to name the brand of toaster you have, they do not have cell-based Wifi as an option to check. Which mine is. I asked a techie guest I had which option would be closest to describe that my Wifi is accessed by turning on the phone hotspot, and she said pocket wifi.
Would you say that’s correct? I’m a bit of a techno-dummy.
Yes. For My dad’s condo, the only internet option is cellular data hotspot. When I added it to my mobile phone account, the tech called it pocket wifi. My bill says hot spot.
Maybe it’s a regional thing? Like USA refers to a cell phone & shows on BBC America call it a mo-bile. ( so does my Aussie voiced Siri)
Thanks for the confirmation. When I looked up pocket wifi originally it described it as a special device, like Skai said he/ she buys when travelling, so I didn’t think that fit. So I had checked normal Wifi, but that doesn’t fit either. There’s no phone lines where I live, so cell-based internet is my only option at this point.
If the device (wi-fi) fits in the pocket, it’s a pocket wi-fi. (Not meant to be flippant.)
Adding on… in Asia anyway, these are a rented item. My travel bud and I rent two. Always connected, able to make calls (with your cell) and not run up a high cell roaming bill.
Well, my cell phone doesn’t really fit in my pocket.
So the guests can carry it around with them when they leave the rental unit? How likely is to come back? I’ll stick with my Verizon modem and router, which is in my house and inaccessible.
Deposits.
The BnBs we have stayed at typically provide a pocket wi-fi, often with limited usage. That, plus not having good (any?) coverage while moving to the next lodging is why we rent them for the entire stay, arriving airport to departing airport.
Thanks, this is fascinating. Are the pocket WiFis that are provided limited as to range (I guess not as you carry them in your pocket?) or volume of usage?
One benefit, if I understand, is that I wouldn’t have had to go through all kinds of procedures to make sure guests couldn’t tamper with the WiFi extender I put in the rental suite and hack my WiFi account.
For me, as it’s what I have to use where I live, as well as my guests, I just turn on the Wifi hot spot on my phone. My guests have to add my wifi name on their phone or laptop, then they can connect. If I have to go out, I have another phone I can take with me, a little dumb phone, and I leave mine at home so guests can still connect.
It’s a much more expensive way to get Wifi and it’s a metered connection, not unlimited.
