Articles tagged “guests”

Airbnb is taking steps to increase its traction with hosts, namely to find new ones and to keep them. Its level of success will depend on how well it executes these changes in practice.

Airbnb has responded to years'-long criticism about a lack of transparency in the way it displays its prices. Now, will competitors do likewise?

Interesting new attempt by Airbnb to rethink how people search and discover on its product and likely to finally spur some innovation in travel search and booking.

Airbnb at times has seemed to lean more toward the rights of guests than hosts while smaller rival Vrbo has done the opposite, tilting toward hosts at some junctures to the disadvantage of guests. Although a host land grab recruitment slugfest is under way, it makes sense to try to carve out a middle ground.

By the numbers alone — around 4 million hosts — Airbnb hasn't made much progress in host recruitment despite marketing campaigns, easing the onboarding process, and pairing hosts with super host mentors. But there is a pandemic still going on, and Asia-Pacific has largely not rebounded.

Hopper aims to be a big player in short-term rentals, and it's still under development cancel-for-any-reason feature could draw a ton of positive attention from hosts and guests. It could either mean a ton of red ink for Hopper or, if successful, spur competitors to scurry to offer knock-offs.

Airbnb agreed to take this limited step on behalf of would-be guests who are Oregon residents because of a class-action lawsuit. If Airbnb really wanted to aggressively crush racism, shouldn't it have announced a pilot to do likewise in other parts of the world? Other platforms shouldn't be off the hook either.

Airbnb seemingly has a good plan in place to limit the possibility of disruptive New Year's Eve parties, but will the company's technology be able to weed out guests with a not-so-sterling history on the platform?

The party house problem is a persistent one in the short-term rental industry. The more industrywide collaboration the better.

Airbnb is pledging to make improvements to hosts' tools, some of which the company merely announced because implementation will take several months. Hosts will be looking to see if there is substance beyond public relations exercises.