Wednesday morning Airbnb inc. revealed what he calls his “biggest change in a decade”. Beyond changes to its user interface and nifty new bells and whistles, it also tackles one of the company’s biggest problems: poor customer protection for customers.
Airbnb will now offer a substantial set of guest satisfaction guarantees and is building an army of customer service agents to uphold them. “There are structural advantages inherent in hotels, such as product consistency and having a reception,” explains the CEO. Brian Chesky on Zoom. “And it’s been an underlying assumption for many years that we really can’t meet hotels in that sense.”
AirCover for Guests is its attempt to change that. “We wanted to take some of the uncertainty out of Airbnb,” he says, “and make the idea of being unique an asset, not a liability.”
Take the misadventures of San Diego-based Kelsey Swann, who was looking forward to a quiet getaway in California’s Sonoma wine country with her kids, only to find the timeshare resort she booked on Airbnb was far from complete. ideal. First, he was given a multi-hour run between three different units that were all unavailable, unlockable, or uncleared. Then, once finally settled in, the karaoke nights began, blaring through the paper-thin walls from what seemed like every direction. They left the next morning.
To add insult to injury, during a multi-day battle with customer service to get a refund for three unused nights, she was fraudulently charged $3,500 by the same host. Canceling those charges, she says, took several days and required additional assistance from her credit card company.
Amid the drama, she turned to a family travel Facebook group for advice; Dozens of sympathetic comments poured in. “Airbnb is the worst,” a member of the group told her. “We got nothing because the host disputed everything,” rallied another, who had been in a similar situation. “We loved using Airbnb for years, but it’s back to hotels for us,” added another.
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Traditionally, Airbnb will pay out the portion of a reservation that a host has earned within 24 hours of check-in. If a guest’s issue hasn’t been resolved by then, the guest has no real recourse or protection with Airbnb, and the host has little incentive beyond a bad review. to fix things.
Hosts have long enjoyed a wide range of insurance-like protections called AirCover for Hosts. There is $1 million in liability insurance and an additional $1 million in damage protection. AirCover for Guests pushes towards parity.
Hosts, however, have long enjoyed a wide range of insurance-like protections called AirCover for Hosts. There is $1 million in liability insurance and an additional $1 million in damage protection. The plan also covers pet damage and other deep cleaning costs, with generous 14-day deposit windows.
AirCover for Guests pushes towards parity. It extends the window for filing a complaint to 72 hours and adds guarantees that customers will be re-booked or refunded if anything goes wrong, whether it’s inaccurately described listings, glitches or devices. heater broken.
Airbnb adds protection and insurance features with AirCover
Wednesday’s other brand-wide updates are also aimed at creating a more user-friendly experience. There’s a redesigned homepage, the ability to search more openly across categories (think “amazing pools,” “windmills,” or “yurts”), and a new tool called “Split Stays” that helps travelers to seamlessly line up multiple bookings for trips that last longer than two weeks.
But AirCover for Guests is unique in the way it underscores the two-sided market of Airbnb’s business model: satisfying both the hosts who open their homes and the guests who stay there. And as the first answer suggests – the hosts got wind of the politics earlier this year – it’s hard to please them both. While guests should be happy to have more time and support when they things go wronghosts say the same policy hurts them by opening the door to scammers who want a free stay.
How it works
The new policy will not only cover issues that arise after check-in, but also incidents where a host cancels a stay within 30 days of booking, in which case Airbnb will automatically rebook guests to comparable (or better) homes.
It would have helped Roberta Roy, a Seattle-based mother of three, whose apartment booking in Rome was canceled at the last minute “because the previous guest broke the bed”. Trying to find something new on her own with just a few days to spare, she said, cost her twice as much. And calling Airbnb for help was nearly impossible thanks to an impenetrable automated phone system: “I felt like the problem could have been very easily solved by Airbnb, but they were completely unreachable.”
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For customers who encounter issues at the scene, getting help will now be as easy as tapping a red “Help” button in the “Trips” tab of their app. This begins a formal arbitration process, via text thread, with the newly expanded and better trained Community Support Team.
Assuming the host has already been contacted and was unable to provide an acceptable solution, customer service agents will have access to an automatically generated list of Airbnb properties similar to the existing booking, from from which they can immediately rebook the traveler at no cost.
Chesky says the guideline will be to upgrade a guest when in doubt: “We prefer you to be convinced this is a better house, not a worse house.”
Airbnb will also have a “second line of defense” prepared for major events and high-demand seasons when inventory may be fully booked.
“Let’s say it’s Palm Springs during Coachella and all the Airbnbs are booked,” Chesky says. “Our agents will also have queued properties or hotel rooms that may be off-platform.” The idea, he explains, is to have more agents able to respond in more languages, to deliver solutions “in minutes or hours rather than days.”
The early response
Hosts learned about the policy change earlier in the year and discussed it in Facebook hosting groups. Across the largely negative posts, there are fears that customers will take advantage of the policy and seek refunds for minor or, in the worst cases, fabricated complaints.
Some hosts Bloomberg spoke to in April said they’re considering setting up a website to attract their own bookings, so they don’t have to deal with Airbnb policies and rules. Kim D., a Superhost who owns properties in Western New York and Florida, said she was concerned a guest might try to take advantage of the new policy and seek a refund for a minor issue. (Bloomberg doesn’t use her last name because she fears Airbnb will remove her listings.)
A guest could stay at their property for three nights and find a minor issue with wanting to leave, which could risk Airbnb approving a refund, she said, adding that there is a “grey area” between what hosts, guests and the company view as worthy of reimbursement.
The company sees the new policies as a respite for customers. “We didn’t want to punish the hosts, but a lot of guests don’t visit the whole property the first day they arrive and they find something on the second day,” Chesky said of the schedule at an event on Tuesday. “And it’s kind of a ticking time bomb – on the second day, if you find out anything, you can’t call us? So we try to be reasonable.
A 72-hour window would also give the host and guest more time to resolve the issue themselves, an Airbnb spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Chesky thinks that for most hosts, politics should be a net benefit. “95% of hosts, maybe 99%, will be happy because they do a great job. And if a host cancels or lists properties that don’t match the description, that kind of hurts every host’s brand,” he says.
For consumers like Swann in Sonoma, it may be too little too late. “Would I use them again?” Maybe,” she said. The King of Rome, however, is encouraged. “We love Airbnb. We’ve always used Airbnb,” she says. “I’m really glad they’re tackling these issues.”
Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
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