Unexpected quirks one Airbnb guest considers a property’s delightful eccentricities might drive another straight to a hotel chain’s loyalty program for the rest of their traveling existence.
A door doesn’t quite pull shut. A second living room is actually a futon in a foyer. The pictured driveway has no parking for guests. Airbnb’s more than 7 million homes are unique, but customers have discovered they’re not always as advertised.
“People often describe checking into an Airbnb as a ‘moment of truth’—when you find out if the home you booked meets your expectations,” said Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO. “Too often, it doesn’t.”
Airbnb has spent much of this year addressing customer complaints about the perks and value proposition of Airbnb as it relates to hotels. This spring, Airbnb rolled out 50 new features including a clear price display that includes all fees, a transparent list of chores and a passport containing host information.
Just before holiday travel season, it’s nudging hosts to be more active in their guests’ stay. It’s introducing features including a revamped rating and review system, a “favorites” tier of properties and more extensive listings.
Combined with ads touting the benefits of certain homeshare properties over hotel rooms, Airbnb is encouraging its hosts to do their own travel advertising and giving them the tools to do so. As it reads customer feedback on its site and social media, Airbnb looks to its technology and hosts to provide more distinctive experiences and fewer disappointments.
“We’re looking at the big customer-host journey and identifying what these problems are, fixing them and tackling it one solution at a time.” said Hiroki Asai, Airbnb’s head of global marketing.
Knowing what’s knowable
Airbnb has data from half a billion trips and more than 355 million all-time guest reviews. That’s provided many opportunities for Airbnb guests to indicate why they prefer hotels, but it’s also given the company a shot at redemption.
The new Airbnb Listing Tab was a massive technical undertaking. Airbnb completely redesigned its listings editor so hosts could provide more detail about amenities, sleeping arrangements, check-in instructions and more. It also incorporated the Airbnb AI engine to the property photo tour and organized photos by room.
Later this year in the U.S. and Canada, hosts can connect compatible smart locks to their Airbnb account and automatically generate different codes for each reservation. Guests can view those codes in the Airbnb app before they arrive and may get grace periods for early arrival or to retrieve items left behind.
Meanwhile, Airbnb’s helped hosts better market their properties by offering them access to their per-night prices with service fees included, as well as the nightly rates of similar listings. Airbnb’s Asai noted that the company’s team spent more than a year engineering the feature, but found that hosts can draw up to 20% more bookings if they offer more details about their property.
“When a great craftsman builds a bookcase, and they even use high quality wood on the back of the bookcase. It’s similar to this,” Asai said. “We think a host is just as important as a guest, and both sides of that marketplace should have really powerful, advanced, simple tools to use.”
When properly motivated
If hosts won’t tell the whole story of their property, reviewers will.
Airbnb typically has dedicated relatively little space to reviews in its listings. It also didn’t particularly care how old they were or if they were relevant to a customer’s experience.
The latest tweaks finally allow guests to sort reviews by recency or rating and see a chart illustrating the distribution of 1- to 5-star reviews. The reviews themselves will now include information about the property’s cleanliness and the listing’s accuracy—as well as information on where the reviewer was from, their length of stay and whether they traveled with pets, children, other family or in a group.
There’s also a bit more incentive to give reviewers what they want, as the 2 million top homes on Airbnb now get the Guest Favorites distinction based on reviews, ratings and reliability data. With roughly two thirds of Guest Favorite hosts coming from the “Superhost” pool of hosts with 4.8-star ratings or higher, those properties now get their own badge and filter on listings pages—making them more visible to potential guests.
“In talking to our hosts, we got a very positive response that this is a great way for great listings, that guests have loved to be elevated,” Asai said. “It also is a measure for new hosts to build up to and to know what great looks like.”
