Airbnb’s New Feature Is Great for Guests. What About Hosts?

On Monday’s Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down three platform moves that sound host-friendly on the surface but deserve a much closer look.

The conversation opens with Airbnb‘s first fintech product — a cancel-for-any-reason feature that auto-enrolled hosts without requiring an opt-in. Hosts still get paid, but still have to scramble.

From there, the team unpacks what one week of FIFA World Cup 2026™ – Canada, Mexico and the United States data actually tells operators about pricing strategy for the knockout rounds, with RevPAR up across all host markets but occupancy down in six of nine.

They close with American Express‘s $700 million acquisition of TheFork and why dining reservations might be the next front in the battle for the guest relationship.

This episode is presented by ⁠⁠Cloudbeds⁠⁠, Bilt⁠⁠, and StayFi.

Watch This Episode

Good morning.

Happy Monday.

Hello, everybody.

Best day of the week. Glad to be back. We had a week filled with World Cup.

Brandy getting in the mix with the Scots. Jamie, you want to share some of your experiences?

Oh, yeah. We took my oldest son, Elliot, to the South Africa versus Czech Republic game in Atlanta, noon on a Thursday, played hooky from work. It was awesome.

You’re not supposed to tell people.

What?

You’re not supposed to tell people when you’re playing hooky.

No one from work listens.

It’s fine.

I don’t love that fact. I feel like we could use some listeners from AirDNA.

No. I had bought tickets off the FIFA resale site. I ended up paying more than I wanted.

It ended up being about $300 a ticket, but we got bottom level, row 22.

Not bad.

Upper level is going to be $250 a ticket, $50 more ticket, get down and right near. I ended up seeing so many Atlanta friends at the stadium. How many fans are traveling from South Africa or Czech Republic for this game?

It was mostly-

Not enough, apparently.

Yeah. Mostly Atlanta people are near my metros. A lot of people, a lot of Mexico fans work in their Mexico jerseys, a lot of US fans wearing their US jerseys.

People just going to see a game.

Everyone going to see a game and it was the cheapest game in Atlanta.

A lot of people bringing their kids. Related back to travel, like not a huge inbound travel weekend or day for Atlanta in terms of the games. But I think it being mostly people from Atlanta going to the games sort of makes sense.

You can still get a full stadium and not see a whole lot of short-term middle demand from it.

Yeah, makes sense. Michael, how was your weekend? No World Cup action for you.

Happy Father’s Day, Michael.

Happy Father’s Day to the both of you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Father’s Day was lovely. My oldest son was very sweet and just never left my side all day.

So it’s a fun age there. The other one was raising hell, but he’s too. So yeah, it was a good weekend.

Did get to watch a little bit of the games, especially the US one on Friday. Looking good.

That was a good game. Good at all.

How could we not?

Love that confidence.

Well, and Brandy, you were on a boat and then mixing up with the Scottish folk.

Yeah. I had a nice boat day this weekend. Then I did actually get to go downtown and we didn’t go to the heart of, down in Faneuil Hall of Boston, that’s where there’s a mass congregation, but we were still downtown at a fun dive bar.

It was a mix of Germans, some Dutch people, a bunch of Scots, some English people. There’s just a mix of everybody there for the games. Then it was fun last night.

We were at my friend’s art studio in Dorchester, which has a big Cape Verdean population. We were walking to dinner from the studio and you could just hear horns going off and people are super pumped.

Boston is really embracing all of the different teams that are here and it’s just such a fun vibe. I think it’s a very special experience to have.

That’s awesome. I view myself as a worldly person, but I’d never heard of Cape Verde before. Am I the only one?

I have a friend who’s Cape from those families from there, so that’s Ben.

There’s also, I think it’s funny, there’s a big population here, so it’s the first time I think they’ve ever been in the World Cup, so there’s just a lot of pride there, even though, who knows how far they’re going to go.

But I didn’t realize that almost all the teams make it to this. Each group sends three teams out of four to the next round. I’m like, okay, that’s.

It’s a little bit less impressive when you make it out of the group stage this year than in years past.

With 32 teams making it out, where in past years is 32 teams starting out. So a little bit less impressive, but it will make the round of 32 game, at least it looks like the US is going to play Bosnia and Herzegovina.

So hopefully not a tough game in the round of 32.

Never know. All right, Jamie, did you know Cape Verde?

Yes, but only through work stuff. When we load, because we track data for every country and you go in, there was a lot of like, all right, what are countries that we’re going to recognize and which ones aren’t?

All that questions when you’ve got a global app.

But yes, certainly the Cinderella team of the Cup.

For sure. Well, before we have some more, we have actual data coming from Jamie. But before we hop into that, want to shout out our sponsor, Cloudbeds.

Cloudbeds unifies your operations, distribution, guest experience and revenue marketing in one place powered by Signal, Hospitality’s first foundation AI model.

Whether you’re trying to drive more direct bookings, cut training time or finally get your data working for you, Cloudbeds is built for what’s next. You can learn more in the show notes or at cloudbeds.com/gmh.

8:48

World Cup Data Analysis

Jamie, we’ve been talking for weeks now about what’s going to happen when we finally saw the data. How are hotels and short-term rentals feeling now that we’re firmly in the World Cup?

Yeah. I’ve been following my friends, Jan Freitag and Isaac Clauso on LinkedIn, and they’ve been posting a lot about it. Since STR primarily collects historical data, they do have some markets where they get forward data, you don’t get forward rates.

But now that we’ve got our first week under the belt, we do have some great data on short-term rental performance. They’ve been talking about it, Jan, in particular around big events are primarily an ADR event, and less so a occupancy event.

This is been the same. Some markets are up, some markets are town, in terms of overall occupancy. If you were just looking at occupancy levels and they’re like, oh, wow, like the World Cup is a bust.

There is no one coming to these markets. Then you go and look at the ADRs. It’s like, this is incredible.

We’re getting massive increases in overall ADRs around the World Cup. So we can put some data behind it now.

Bailey’s article does sort of outline the gains that we’d seen in RevPars were in Mexico City up 133 percent, Guadalajara up 54 percent for the South Korea versus game. And you then compare that. So that’s the first game.

And in our data, in the short-term rental data, we saw South Korea versus Cheshire demand up 33 percent. Then what happened on Friday night was Korea versus Mexico, where demand was up 137 percent. So on the hotel-

Highlights of that one were awesome too.

If anybody saw any videos or reels, that was a gem.

Right. So the hotels are getting the ADRs, so they’re getting significant ADR growth.

It’s going to be mixed on occupancy, but overall it has pushed overall US hotels, Canadian hotels, Mexico hotels, up to pretty strong gains for the week, and that should continue through the finals in July.

Jamie, in this article, there’s a quote that says, demand is very spiky around the days of the games. I don’t know who to attribute it to. It was Jamie for the listeners.

It was Jamie. There was some hope that people will be coming and staying for the week, but right now, clearly, people are coming the day before saying for the game and heading out.

That makes a ton of sense if they’re Americans heading into town or they live here and they want to go see their home country play. Now, why are we not seeing the data of this pool of Scottish folks that are coming and staying for the whole-

I mean, they’ve been here pretty consistently.

What are we missing? Is it just not enough volume?

No. Volume is an issue. Also, different markets are seeing different increases.

For example, Boston, the days of and before the Scotland-Haiti game, occupancy in Boston was up 11 percent. That’s incredible. That’s very strong for Boston, a pretty large short-term middle market.

But then in two days afterwards where there was no gain, occupancy was now down 2 percent. Even the next game, I forget who played in Boston after that.

It was Norway.

Yeah, occupancy was essentially flat. So certain traveling groups are driving increases. The other great example is what we’re seeing playing out in Kansas City.

So when Argentina and Algeria played, and occupancy was up 9 percent. In Kansas City is one of those markets, and we saw almost a seeing almost a 60 percent increase in overall inventory on the short-term rental side.

So on those days when Messi isn’t playing, occupancy in Kansas City is down 30 percent year-over-year. So we are seeing sustained higher demand. Like non-game days, it’s still up 20 percent first last year.

And on game days, it’s up over 70 percent. But we’re not seeing enough sustained demand to pull occupancy above. But ADRs in Kansas City around the Messi game were up 107 percent.

That is incredible. And that’s the reason why many hosts added their listings into that market.

And then not everybody can be Freddie, right? They travel around in their van or their rental car, getting offered private jet to the next stop, but declining them because they just want to drive and see the country.

One of the things that I think will be interesting, I don’t know how you’re doing the data, but because Boston and Providence are so close in Rhode Island, and Providence is actually much closer to Gillette, like that is, if you group all of that

together, I wonder what the data would show you because Providence is definitely seen. Like a huge uptick would be my, I’d be very confident in that guess.

Yeah, we’ve been tracking Providence separately. I’ve got the data in front of me.

So fast, always so impressive.

I did prepare beforehand. I mentioned how Boston occupancy was up 11 percent for the Haiti-Morocco game. You think Providence was stronger or weaker than in Boston?

For Haiti-Morocco, I might say weaker.

Stronger because it’s got back to chill in there for the week, right?

It was almost exactly the same.

It was up 10 percent. ADRs were up not as strong. They’re up 14 percent compared to 28 percent in Boston.

So people willing to pay up to be in downtown Boston as opposed to Providence. But definitely a demand spike playing out in Providence just like we’re seeing in Boston.

Yeah. It’s awesome. I love it.

Good news for the hometown.

Yeah. But even in Atlanta, like the game I was at in midweek, Occupancy and to sort of, and I wouldn’t say no name teams, but lesser in sort of popularity teams, Occupancy was down.

But then when you had Spain playing versus Calaverde, I knew it was essentially flat and much stronger ADR growth.

So I think if any, this is any indication from the first week that when you do have the big teams playing, there’s people traveling in, there’s really strong Occupancy and ADR games.

And I think that bodes really well for once we get to the knockout stage, because once we get to the knockout stage and you’re going to have top teams playing and essentially every game, you’re going to have big fan bases.

And then as you get later and later, and it’s going to sort of compound.

And I think you see messy level demand increases and more and more as opposed to this sort of mix of, I mean, is it just locals going to see the game because it’s cheap first and all the inbound international travelers?

Like the Spanish here this weekend for the, it was yesterday the Spain Saudi Arabia game and it was packed around town.

Yeah.

17:23

World Cup Travel Halo

Well, before we move on to our next topic, we have a really great question from the live audience.

DFX Productions coming to us from YouTube asked, will there be a World Cup aftershock of world travelers to North America from all the influencer videos showing us in a positive light?

So, are people now going to start booking late summer travel back to the US?

I’ll use my gut first, and then Jamie can come in with data.

Yeah.

It depends on which algorithm you’re being fed. How about that? Some people are going to be fed the doom and gloom and others are going to be fed the wonderful positive stories that are coming out of it.

So I hope it can crack some of the grip on America’s bad and don’t come here. But I think that might take a little more time.

Yeah. Jamie, what do you think?

I think Freddie should be our new mascot.

Brand USA, baby.

Yeah, Brand USA should be paying him for future content that we can get more and more influencers like Freddie spreading the good word.

I think if there’s any indication on what great marketing can do to get Brand USA fully funded, and you could sort of point to Freddie. And the more that organizations like US Travel can do to promote that sort of stuff is all the better.

So, but is it going to… I think it is going to… We’re going to see a halo effect, and the halo effects of things like TV shows when they…

Like White Lotus.

Yeah, and where you see subsequent travel.

So, like, who knows what content Freddie is going to be creating and sort of…

And the next viral destination that Freddie just falls in love with, that now for the next five years, you’ve got hordes of US travellers, or European travellers going to see. Like, it could make or break destinations. Auburn football, baby.

Yeah.

But great question. We’ll have to see. I also think, like, summer travel has already mostly been booked.

So maybe there might be a longer tail one, but we’ll see. Hopefully.

I don’t know, Brandy. We’ve got the entire month of August coming up.

That’s true.

Also, I have people there may or may not have planned already.

That’s true. Very true. But before we move on, quick shout out to our sponsor, Bilt.

They’re helping restaurants and hotel F&B teams better understand their guests and create a more personalized experience that drives repeat visits. If you care about loyalty and guest experience, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Head to joinbilt.com/gmh, and you can also find that link in the show notes.

Millions of people use Bilt every day to earn rewards on housing and in their neighborhoods. Now, it extends to your restaurant. Bilt Hospitality shapes how guests are recognized and taken care of.

Bilt’s restaurant-facing platform is designed specifically for dining operators to drive loyalty with their guests.

It combines reservations, guest preferences, VIP management, and payments into one platform alongside an agentic concierge that thoughtfully designs and executes the experience around your guests’ tastes.

When a guest walks in, your team already knows what they like without digging through notes.

Bilt Hospitality works across the entire guest journey, from delivering a complimentary course at the right moment to sending a personalized offer that brings them right back. Make every guest feel like a regular and keep them coming back.

Bilt Hospitality is available now for hotels with restaurants and restaurant groups everywhere. Learn more at biltdining.com. That’s biltdining.com.

Let me make one more comment, because Paul Mazey’s one was insightful.

So based on length of stay between games, we’re seeing people extending their stay to more destination markets. We’re absolutely seeing that. He’s saying he’s seeing a lot of European bookings and why in between matches.

We’re seeing strong demand in markets like Nashville, Austin, Denver. So more destination level markets that are nearby some of the…

So if you don’t want to stay for a week in Atlanta, maybe you stay two days and then pop up to Nashville, pop down to New Orleans.

We’re seeing really strong demand in some of the destination markets that can support all these guests and that there are more destinations that people might want to travel to as opposed to no shade throwing to Houston or Dallas, but that might not

be a market you want to stay in for a week and go visit other places in between games. be a market you want to stay in for a week and go visit other places in between games.

22:16

Airbnb Cancellation Policy

Well, just in case you’ve made a lot of bookings and want to cancel them last minute, hopefully you’ve done that on Airbnb.

And only as of last week.

And as of last week.

In a headline that’s sure to enrage so many people in our industry, Airbnb is moving into kind of like a hopper, fintech play with cancel for any reason feature.

And this strikes a nerve with a lot of people, but put down your pitchforks, it’s not necessarily as bad as you think it is.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, no Brandy rant? Let’s hear it.

No, I’m not. I’m not going off in a rage right now. I think that like-

Ryan, are you listening now?

No, but this, I mean, I think that offering a cancel for any reason feature makes a lot of, it’s like we have the buy now, pay later, it’s just all these features that make a lot of sense for them to do.

And for a host right now, whatever the difference between your cancellation policy is, and them canceling, the Airbnb is paying out, you are not paying that out. So your cancellation policy still holds.

Do we think Hopper is powering this?

They have not said who’s powering it. I was looking at Hopper’s HDS solutions, I was like in the visuals, like could Hopper be powering this? Like wouldn’t that be a fun?

They didn’t say who’s powering it, but they did say that it’s not Airbnb powering it, right?

It’s the third party.

They said it was the third party.

So either an opportunistic group has stood up or Hopper with millions and millions of data points has taken care of it. So my guess would be Hopper, but I know Will is screaming in the background.

Yeah, he’s raging behind the scenes right now.

Can I just speak a little bit on the strategy here?

Because there’s been this, I think, disconnect between what Airbnb really wants is everyone to have really lenient cancellation policies because they do see that, and they’ve got to have great research on how much more likely someone is to book if

they have more flexible cancellation policies versus strict ones, because this has been a big initiative. One, of getting rid of the stricter cancellation policies, and then two, sort of creating a bridge of making it less of a commitment to get a

booking or put down a booking. So hopefully, and I bet what they see is this does help convert hesitant guests of, oh, I’m not totally sure, but I could pay an extra 50, 100 bucks and then be able to cancel or any reason, like that helps convert

people. Then even those listings that do have really strict cancellation policies, this does give you a way around it.

If you’re willing to pay for it, and who knows if this will get used enough to actually create a new revenue line for Airbnb, but they have said that at least with the reserve now pay later, this has created an increase in revenue because of more

people booking further in advance and be able to book higher ADR properties. I see it as a great thing and very little host downside from it.

I have heard people complain some about issues with cleaners and you have a cleaner ready to go and then you get a last-minute cancellation and that burns trust with that cleaner of them being able to plan in advance and things like that.

Well, I think the other part is if you have a flexible cancellation policy already, if you’re only going to get 50 percent of that revenue and then someone cancels last minute to a bigger home and they cancel two days beforehand, that’s a much harder

home to fill. So that’s kind of the, I think, the downside there for hosts. I don’t think, however, that this is going to cause a wave of people canceling last-minute. I just don’t see that happening.

Yeah.

But if you’re a mega home, then one or two bookings canceling last-minute can be heavily impactful.

Oh, huge. For sure. For sure.

For sure. Yeah.

This, from a consumer side, this solves Jamie’s conundrum of the property we always like to stay in at the same beach every year is booked. I’m just going to go ahead and book it. I’ll pay the fee in case we change weeks or anything.

For 150 bucks, totally fine. But yeah, this could hurt the Aspen homes on New Year’s week.

Hey, don’t, yeah.

Sorry, B. Brandy Ritt, Brandy Ritt.

No, no, no. I mean, it’s just I understand. I mean, there’s been like a knee jerk reaction that I’ve been hearing.

We’re just like a continued, there’s just with the bigger homes, companies that operate these bigger homes, Airbnb is just never the platform of choice because of all of these policies like this.

This doesn’t do, I think, enough to improve the relationship with those companies. It’s just another slap. But even if it’s a little, that’s not, I don’t think it’s going to be as dramatic.

It’s just one more data point against Airbnb for some of those operators. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see once this holds out.

I can’t wait to hear a brand new rant six months from now.

Yeah, exactly. I’ll store it up. It will just burn inside of me for a little bit.

Well, and so yeah, we have to see like, does this cause a wave of last-minute cancellations? And then also who is behind, who’s actually supporting this on the back end?

I’ll say I tried to find some booking. I tried like 30 this morning to see if I could find an offer to be able to do the exit cancellation. I couldn’t find any of them.

So maybe it’s something they’re rolling out. Maybe I’m not eligible as a guest yet, but excited to see how they’re pricing it. Because-

It blocked the three of our accounts.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, if you have some of these Airbnb guests that don’t cancel last-minute and do stay at your property and you want to get their actual contact information, you should use StayFi. There are a third sponsor for the episode.

StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded Wi-Fi portals, email marketing and guest data tools that turn one-time bookers into repeat guests.

Start growing your direct booking revenue today at stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality or find that link in the show notes.

29:15

Amex TheFork Acquisition

So our third topic for today is American Express spending a big chunk of change, 700 million on TheFork, which is basically the resi or the open table of Europe.

They’re the the stayfi of restaurant reservation data. TheFork is the resi of Europe. They’re huge.

They’re the incumbents and they obviously have a lot of data. And now this creates a better in for Amex in Europe, who’s been one of the laggards versus Visa or MasterCard. So I wouldn’t say any of us on this show are experts on that.

I think it’s more interesting for us on what it means for TripAdvisor. Jamie, any takes before you jump into what it means for TripAdvisor?

No.

So what does it mean for TripAdvisor?

Yeah, I think we’ve talked about it explicitly on this podcast. Viator is killing it on the experience side. The core TripAdvisor product has definitely seen some weakness.

It feels like more and more pushed out. As people look to AI and other sources for what to do while they’re on trips. I’m a millennial.

I remember the days. Everything I planned was centered around TripAdvisor, and what were the top 10 activities, and what were the reviews? I can’t remember the last time I went to TripAdvisor to plan my trip, or even left a review on TripAdvisor.

The engagement has just gone down significantly. I think the article calls out how they haven’t talked, and they’ve said they’re not exploring the sale of Viator. Is this company just Viator, and maybe they’d sell off the remnants of TripAdvisor?

And do they spin out, or sell Viator, spin it out as own product, or its own company, and get the proceeds from that? I think the M&A aspect of this company is way more interesting on how they’re innovating on any one product right now.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think TripAdvisor had such a great brand, this just shows you that you can have a great brand and be the go-to for a long time. And then all of a sudden, the market changes and you’re left in the wind.

Yeah, you’re falling asleep at the wheel a little bit.

Good thing they had TheFork and Viator.

You know, at this point, a year ago, I would have said they’re gonna sell Viator. At this point, I think they’re probably more likely to keep Viator and sell TripAdvisor.

And if they think they can grow it, if they’ve got the management team to lead it, and they can invest in it.

It’s the better asset. So maybe it’s better to sell, maybe it’s better to keep, but I’m sure those are some fiery discussions at the board.

Yeah, the investors don’t seem to be too thrilled about that notion. To put it mildly.

32:37

Host Travel Plans

Wonderful.

Well, besides the US game on Thursday, which is kind of inconsequential, because we’ve already clinched number one. Any travels coming up, Brandy? Staying at home?

I’m staying at home.

I have a friend staying with me this week, and then another friend’s coming in for the weekend, and we’re doing some like New England coastal adventures. So that’ll be fun.

You’re cheating this, I’m not traveling, by having other people travel to you.

Exactly.

I’m on you, Brandy.

Yeah.

This is the best time to be in Boston and New England. It’s like summer is just so beautiful. So come to me.

There you go.

Jamie.

This is my last week at the office before I head out on my July adventure. Did I mention I’m taking sabbatical for July?

Going to Maine, right? Then Iceland?

Going to Iceland and then Maine. Yeah. So I’ll be in and out on the podcast, but definitely out while we’re in Iceland.

Might pop in from Monday while we’re in Maine or back in Atlanta. Yeah.

So fun.

Yeah. All right. Well, take pictures.

How about you, Michael?

Any fun plans?

Let’s see. This week. Nope.

Same old, same old.

Same old, same old.

I’ll be here. No July off, no sabbatical. Yeah.

Got a trip to Sarasota, which I’ll see you at, Brandy.

Yeah. It’s coming up.

Jamie’s too busy traveling, but otherwise, yeah. Grind in a way. Work with the man.

Well, thanks to all of our live viewers.

Really great engagement. Love getting questions in real time and having Jamie pull our data. So in July, be patient with us if we can’t pull our data in real time.

But thanks again to our sponsors and for all of those that are listening in the download later on. And we will see all of you next Monday.