3 Recent Airbnb Changes and How They Will Affect Hosts

You may have heard that Airbnb is making some major changes to its policies, website and booking experience. Lately, the rental site has been the subject of a lot of bad press, so the changes are an attempt to alleviate existing issues.

BookingTeam manages hundreds of rental listings on popular sites. Our property managers and hosts have experienced their own issues and expressed concerns with Airbnb and their latest round of changes. For hosts, these are the top changes you should know and what to expect:

Instant Book Feature

The “instant book” feature isn’t new, but Airbnb is pushing for more hosts to use it. They want to have over 1 million listings available for instant book by 2017. That would mean half of the site’s listings would be instant book rentals. The feature allows properties to be booked without needing host approval. In order to push more hosts to adopt instant book, Airbnb has started to rank properties with the feature higher.

Also, the new version of Airbnb has taken away the host and guest pictures in many areas. It is in an attempt to downplay the identity and prevent guest discrimination. For some, it seems to take away from the personal appeal that made Airbnb stand out from other hotel and rental sites.

Multiple Listings Removed In Some Cities

There are some radical changes in cities like San Francisco and New York City, where Airbnb has been getting a lot of pressure from local regulators. The most notable is the “One Host, One Home” policy that was implemented in the beginning of November. The policy prevents hosts in certain cities from having more than one listing on the site. For those with more than one listing, it would render the platform practically useless.

Tracking and Sharing Data

Airbnb disrupted the rental market when it launched in 2008. Meeting all the rental regulations in certain areas has never been a particularly strong point. In hopes to ease tensions with regulators, Airbnb is now tracking rental data on hosts and sharing it with some cities. The data would reveal details like who are renting out their homes and how long they are renting. In cities like New York, there is a 90-day cap.

Airbnb assures that the data will be kept safe and private from anyone other than the city officials. The move is intended to prevent hosts from abusing the system and breaking local rental laws. However, some hosts are still concerned about who their data will be shared with and how it will be used.

In many cases, the motivation for the changes seems to be honorable. No one can fault the company for wanting to curb discrimination or abide by the laws in the places they operate. However, the proposed policies are increasingly taking control away from hosts and may not be a long-lasting, effective solution to the underlying issues on the site.

The best way to ensure that changes on one rental site don’t significantly hurt your listings is not to rely on one site. BookingTeam is an easy-to-use platform that allows property managers and hosts to cut the time it takes to list and manage properties. Instead of manually inputting multiple listings on one platform, the information is automatically shared with the most popular rental sites. Most importantly, the control is in the hands of the hosts and not the rental platforms and you will have your own 24/7 booking sidekicks, saving you loads of time so you can focus on excellent hospitality.