In the new rules vs requests category, we cannot require guests to only flush toilet paper. This is unhinged to me given we are on a septic system. Thankfully we have a long term renter for the winter because every new AirBnB policy makes it that much worse.

No more Airbnb for me. I've been caught by the so-called “dirty clean” scam twice now, and I've had enough. The risks simply aren't worth it, especially when Airbnb can't be relied upon to apply basic common sense when resolving disputes.

I'm out. And if I ever decide to host again, my fees will be high enough to reflect the risks involved. I doubt anyone would book at those prices, unless they're truly desperate, of course.

My listing now says right at the top "Guest highlight how welcoming **** is, with thoughtful touches like treats on arrival." Has anyone had any luck getting this sort of stuff removed? I'm not advertising treats on arrival.

I’m a newer host and a recent guest gave me a “4” because I didn’t use the suggested code. I honestly thought that was just a suggestion on AirBnB’s part and wasn’t visible to the guest; I’ve always come up with my own code. Are we literally supposed to use the suggested code?

Can we move beyond the discussion about washing dishes? The new mandate from Airbnb prohibiting rental agreements and barring us from getting actual guest contact information is what may push me off the platform.

I have always required guests to sign a rental agreement. It clearly lays out all expectations. I have rarely gone after guests for damage or misbehavior. In 10+ years of renting, I can think of only three guests that went too far. One of those booked via Airbnb. I was not able to recoup the full costs of repairs and cleaning with Airbnb. It wasn't enough that I felt like pursuing via small claims court. (Short version, hard drinking adults failed to supervise children, who ran wild. They destroyed our entire irrigation sytem, dragged logs into the house and up carpeted stairs, threw games and toys outside and into a stream, etc.)

One time I did have to file in small claims court, when a guest had a party for 100 in our house that has a max occupancy of 8. Ultimately the guest paid the full damage and cleaning claim, only after realizing I was serious about pursuing the case. (This stay was booked through VRBO.)

Without a signed rental agreement, what recourse do we have in these kinds of cases? In my experience basically Airbnb asks the guest if they want to pay the damage claim and if the answer is no, too bad for me.

I can't file in small claims court based only on a name that may not be correct or complete. No address means I can't have the person served. Obviously that's a rare situation, but it did in fact happen to me, and it was a $10,000 claim.

So I have this guest who has just checked in, I told them to take a picture of their passport when they arrive to the property, they said ok 👍
It’s around 3 hours from when they arrived and they haven’t sent anything .
Ps: I’m still new to Airbnb…

I thought I would post this in here since we see so many negative experiences. I had a guest who's booking my private room in my house. On the night she was supposed to arrive, she didn't come and also didn't communicate via messaging. Finally around 11:00 p.m. I called her and left a message saying I wasn't sure what happened and I hoped everything was okay. Anyway, next morning she texted me and said that she didn't realize that she had booked that night and had spent the night at a nearby hotel. She showed up and stayed for a few days. she was traveling around following her state's volleyball team. While here she caught a big 10 game. She was very apologetic about the whole thing, but I forgot about it as soon as she was here. This was about a month ago. anyway today I get a card in the mail with a $50 Costco gift card. The handwriting is illegible and I could not tell who sent it. There was an apology and I could not think of who might be apologizing to me for what! Finally I looked up the zip code which was the only thing I could really read and that gave me the clue I needed. Yes, it was that woman who still feels badly about the incident apparently. very considerate and nice but totally unnecessary.

I went in the Airbnb app today and noticed it says “New guests await, your listing is now bookable through Amex travel”

I clicked on the button but I got an error message. I couldn’t find any of my listings on Amex travel or any information about it online.

Is Amex travel expanding to include more properties? Or maybe this was just an error in the Airbnb app and shouldn’t have been shown to me?

I also have an Amex platinum card and heard rumors about the hotel credit changing to include Airbnbs booked in Amex travel.

Some of my properties are top 1% guest favorites but not in the official luxe category.

My guest broke the house rules and had an unregistered visitor overnight. I told her this was not allowed and also reported it to support. But I also allowed my guest to stay as long as visitors didn’t continue. 2 days later, the visitor’s wife showed up at the property, knocked on the door, then opened it!! and proceeded to scream at my guest about cheating with her husband. The husband showed up later the same day also distraught and angry.

This all happened on the front porch of the property in a quiet neighborhood. I have it all on my doorbell camera. Including the husband coming and going to the property days before.

My guest has been there 10 days and has 10 more but I want her out. I’m scared for her, I’m scared for my property. I’m scared for the neighbors being involved if it gets crazy like vandalism, arson or guns. Guest had 15 - 5 star reviews. But now this is happening. How do I proceed? What steps do I take and in what order? (I currently have a perfect 5 star rating and listed as “guest favorite” status for my property. )

Edit. This is MY primary residence when I am not hosting. Also not a bot.

With the change to House Rules section, it appears there may have been changes to the Guest Safety section where you detail noise monitoring devices, carbon monoxide devices, pool safety, creature/animal safety, etc. All of the info that I had previously entered and filled out had been cleared and I had to go back and re-enter it all.

I remember Airbnb made a similar change recently, but my understanding is that Vrbo is diff. as they're still charging guests a separate service fee.

I see a lot of talk about payment processing, Stripe, etc., and I'm confused about all that. In my case, guests book + pay through Vrbo, and Vrbo sends me the net payout after deducting its fees. My recent reservations show the usual 5% commission + ~3% payment processing fee.

My setup:

• 2 properties in PA, USA, both on Airbnb & Vrbo.
• Both connected to Hspitble, which is connected to PriceLabs.
• Pretty sure Vrbo handles guest payments and sends payouts directly to my bank.

When Airbnb switched, we simply applied a 14.8% markup to nightly rates + fees (cleaning, pets, etc.) to offset it. That seems to work fine and our pricing remains competitive.

My question: Since VRBO's moving from roughly 8% total host fees to a flat 12%, shouldn't we just do something similar - apply an approx. 4.5% increase to Vrbo nightly rates and fees in our PMS to maintain the same net payouts?

Am I missing anything? And is there anything different we need to consider because we're using Hspitble/PriceLabs?

For everyone who was up in arms over Airbnb raising their host fees, just be happy you're not on Vrbo with Property Management Software integration. Next week, Vrbo is increasing their commission to 12% (which of course they claim is a benefit to hosts somehow and cheaper than their competition) but conveniently avoids discussing that guests still pay between 6% and 15% service fee (which is absurd that it's dynamic to begin with instead of a set rate). Then, if you are a property manager, you are responsible for processing the payment separately, so that's 3% to Stripe. So upwards of 30% total in commission and fees right off the top between guests and hosts. That's also not factoring in that because you pay Stripe directly for processing, that 3% hits the passthrough taxes as well, so you have to eat the 3% on that in addition to everything else. That coupled with their clunky platform, I'll gladly take Airbnbs and Booking.coms roughly flat 15% commission all day. Strongly considering just removing our listings from Vrbo all together. Hope everyone else is aware of the upcoming changes. Somebody please let me know if there's something I'm missing here, because I certainly hope there is some type of positive or misunderstanding here.

Hello,

A few days ago, I received a push notification from Airbnb offering me €40 off a booking in Paris (if I remember correctly).

I tapped the notif, and the Airbnb app opened showing the map of Paris.

Then, several success toast messages appeared. I don't remember exactly what they said, but it was something like "Operation successful"

I then went to my profile and was surprised to see a "Switch to hosting mode" button (I'm not a host and I've never been)

When I tapped the button, it took me to the hosting mode, where I discovered that a draft listing had been created on my account.

I'm certain I've never created this listing myself.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? The whole flow was super weird, with the toast messages and the draft listing appearing out of nowhere.

Thanks in advance for any insights!

So now that many rules are now merely "requests," any ideas on what to do about differentiating what kind of pets are allowed? We allow dogs, but not cats. Unfortunately Airbnb doesn't allow us to tick dogs, cats, or both when saying pets are allowed like VRBO does. I used to deal with this with my additional rules, but now it's just a request, not a rule, to a guest. I have a request in to support but am not hopeful...maybe it will all work itself out? I'm nervous due to the number of people who've asked me to make an exception to my rule.

Where are my check out instructions?? I really liked having that so that guests I could instruct guests to throw out garbage at the chute and move their car out of the garage before locking up. Why are they removing host functionality? It's our homes, we should have a say in guest expectation/behavior!

Since the fee change I’m seeing 0% booking rate on this platform. I updated my pricing using the built-in tool. Is anyone else seeing the same problem?

Hola Peeps,

I'm in the process of purchasing a property for STR. Based on the airbnb subreddits, I'm wondering if I should have my head examined.

Anyway, what are you using for management software? I'm thinking a rather detailed excel workbook / spreadsheet should be more than sufficient to track ins/outs/expenses, etc.
If you're using excel, would you mind sharing a sample? I don't want to re-invent the wheel if someone is already rolling around a really, really good one.

Second: Should I install a dishwasher? It's a small rental, maybe 1,200ft², two bedroom. Not a ton of room in the kitchen, but if it's highly recommended I'll figure it out. My thoughts are that with 2 - 4 people occupying, they could manage to handwash their own dishes.
{Gasp! The horror of it all!!!}

Third: Any tips, tricks, sage advice?

Thanks for any and all insight.

Hi everyone, I’m a new Airbnb host. I changed my nightly price about 6 hours ago. When I search for my listing as a guest, I can’t find it.

I called Airbnb support and they said my listing is active and everything is fine. Has anyone else experienced this, especially after changing the price?

I’ve been hosting for about a year. Bookings had been very strong until the pricing change. 80%+ occupancy, all 5-star reviews, top 1% of listings.

I checked today and I dropped to top 5%? I didn’t get a bad review, cancel on anybody, or anything like that. What could have caused this?

I’m a long-term landlord that’s interested in dabbling with a couple of Airbnb’s. I have one property in particular that I think is ideal for an Airbnb but less suitable for a long-term tenant due to location, school district, and floor plan.

My problem is that I simply don’t want to host. I don’t want to deal with guests. I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t mind doing the property maintenance, inspections, perhaps not even the cleaning. But I simply don’t want to deal with people.

Just wondering if there’s a good way to turn this over to someone else. I’m sure they will take a cut and I don’t care.

Does anyone recommend a company for short term rentals that does a good job marketing your site for direct bookings? I currently just get repeat guests on my direct site that I got through my PMS. I'd like to lower my use for Airbnb and VRBO.

Any hosts out there who have issues with the new house rules should send emails to;
Gus Fuldner - Head of Global Operations - gus.fuldner@airbnb.com

Brian Chesky - CEO - brian.chesky@airbnb.com

I’m very very new to Airbnb and honestly having a rental property. We close next month. Do you all have direct booking websites also or just rely on Airbnb? If you do have a website how did you get started creating one?

I'm looking for some honest perspectives from hosts who occasionally rent out their own homes while travelling.

I rent out my personal apartment in Copenhagen when I'm abroad. It's my actual home, with my furniture, personal belongings, valuables, etc., rather than a dedicated rental property.

I recently accepted a seven-night booking from guests with several excellent reviews. Something about the communication initially made me a little hesitant, although looking back, their messages were mostly polite and fairly ordinary.

Shortly after check-in, the guests complained about parking. My listing advertises free on-street parking, but spaces are subject to availability and aren't guaranteed.

They said they'd had to park 3 km away, accused me of misleading them, and stated that they expected financial compensation. They also mentioned an error in my key collection instructions, which I acknowledged was my mistake.

What bothered me wasn't necessarily the complaint itself, but the rather accusatory and demanding tone. Especially considering that they also explicitly stated they were otherwise very happy with the apartment.

I offered two solutions:

1. A goodwill refund of approximately 10% if they wished to continue their stay.
2. An early checkout with a full refund of the unused nights if the parking situation made the accommodation unsuitable.

They politely accepted the 10% refund and chose to stay. I subsequently contacted Airbnb Support to document the disagreement, and they confirmed the matter was resolved.

So technically, everything is fine. But psychologically, I'm having a surprisingly difficult time with it.

I'm currently in Asia, thousands of miles away, and I suddenly feel deeply uncomfortable having these people in my personal home.

I don't trust them anymore, even though I recognise that there's no actual evidence they'll mistreat my property. I've found myself worrying about my belongings, anticipating further problems.

The financial aspect is completely irrelevant to me. Frankly, if I could turn back time, I'd happily forgo the entire booking income rather than deal with this feeling.

Part of me regrets ignoring my initial hesitation, but another part recognises that I may be overreacting to an unpleasant yet ultimately resolved disagreement.

My question to other hosts isn't really about the parking dispute or compensation. It's about the feeling of losing trust in guests who are staying in your personal home.

Have you experienced something similar? Particularly when hosting remotely?

Did you simply let the reservation run its course? Did the anxiety subside? Or did experiences like this make you reconsider renting out your personal residence altogether?

I'm genuinely interested in candid perspectives, including if you think I'm overreacting.

Fellow hosts, i have read many comments from everyone, some neutral, some negative.

I like to look at this problem from an incentivized behavior pov, and then project the long term effects.

- hosts will be leaving honest reviews for dirty guests
- dirty guests will have lowered star ratings
- dirty guest cannot book anymore or turned into less dirty guests

I think we will experience some short term turmoil and bad behaviors, but I think in the long run, guests will self regulate and self select.

Your thoughts?