Posted On November 15th, 2022

Before they became Exhibit A of a supposed “Airbnbust,” Carrie Ann Rink and her family were living a host’s dream in Southern California. They had an attractive property in a desirable area near Palm Springs with five-star reviews. Business was brisk amid the “revenge travel” wave of guests shaking off covid concerns.

Then May arrived, and bookings at the Desert Hot Springs home kept dropping off despite the family’s best efforts: lowering prices, adjusting booking requirements and tweaking photos.

“It picked up a tiny bit in June, and it just stopped,” Rink said. “I think we went from 80 percent to zero.” In a Facebook forum for Airbnb Superhosts, her husband, Jim Ewing, posted a question that helped launch a viral tweet and a cycle of headlines.

“Has anyone seen a huge decrease in bookings over the last 3 to 4 months?” he asked in early October. Combining Ewing’s query with someone else’s lament, a Twitter user wrote: “The Airbnbust is upon us,” setting off an extended airing of grievances across social media.

Travelers piled on, too, sharing their own reasons for abandoning Airbnb: high prices, steep cleaning fees and a lack of service that stands in stark contrast to hotels.

Airbnb is addressing two huge complaints: Hidden fees and chores

Travel agent Cierra Chesir is among the disenchanted. The Milwaukee resident frequently turned to Airbnb in the days before the pandemic when looking to book her own solo adventures. But over the past two years, the onset of soaring cleaning fees and inconsistent standards for rentals has caused her to reconsider.

“I would say it’s a last-case [choice] for me now, when before it used to be like one of my go-tos,” said Chesir.

Industry observers say some hosts are seeing a booking slowdown, especially in markets that have become overwhelmed by short-term rentals. But despite the host and traveler complaints, overall bookings continue to grow as the company enjoys a banner year.

Fed up with fees

After the chorus of complaints peaked on social media, headlines like this one from BuzzFeed became routine: “Couple Says An Airbnb Host Expected Them To Strip The Beds, Vacuum, And Do Chores, Plus More Stories From People Who No Longer Use The Service.”

If some hosts’ bookings were down, was a fed-up customer base to blame? Some former fans couldn’t contain their glee over the misfortune of investors whose real estate gambles stopped paying off. “Why would I pay $73 a night to rent a BUS and then pay [a] $40 cleaning fee and a service fee,” one Twitter user wrote. “I cannot wait til they tank tbh.”

When Airbnb officially launched amid the 2008 recession, it was positioned as an affordable alternative to hotels, a way for a community of travelers to bond with locals. As hosts expanded their investment properties and the company’s power grew, the public had to consider whether Airbnb was contributing to a housing crisis.

According to Makarand Mody, an associate professor of hospitality marketing at Boston University who studies Airbnb, complaints about pricing have bubbled up over the years. But the fee outcry reached a fever pitch in the spring of 2021, prompting the company to vow a review.

Even as the public complaints have swelled, the 14-year-old company reports it’s making more money than ever. In the third quarter of 2022, revenue swelled to $2.9 billion, and profits soared 46 percent to $1.2 billion. The number of booked nights and experiences — activities hosted by a local — jumped to 99.7 million, the company said, the highest ever for a third quarter. Guest arrivals hit a record, surpassing 90 million across the globe.

“It’s ironic the [Airbnbust] hashtag is going around given they had their best quarter ever in the company’s history,” Mody said. “It’s a little hard to reconcile the two.”

Airbnb is not oblivious to public sentiment. Saying he had heard users “loud and clear,” CEO Brian Chesky announced last week that Airbnb would improve transparency by allowing users to see price totals with fees baked in up front, not just lower nightly rates. And he said the company was telling hosts to avoid “unreasonable” requests like doing laundry when they check out.

The complaints didn’t go away; many social media users responded to the CEO’s tweets to tell him that the price total should also include taxes. And while Mody said the increased transparency was a good thing, he said “they did not solve the underlying problem, which is exorbitant fees in the first place.”

Airbnb has long said that the company advises hosts to keep the cleaning fee “reasonable” or not charge it at all. According to Airbnb, 45 percent of listings globally do not charge a cleaning fee, and of those that do, the fee is on average less than 10 percent of the total reservation cost.

Spokeswoman Liz DeBold Fusco said in an email that hosts have adopted “more stringent” cleaning protocols since the pandemic, including hiring professional cleaners.

“It’s important that we provide Hosts with the tools to cover these baseline costs for hosting a guest,” she wrote. “However, we know that guests expect that the price they pay includes a clean home and so we are now including all Host charges in the total price for guests so that guests know exactly what they are paying upfront.”

Too many listings

Susan Norton, who has listed a two-bedroom cabin on her horse farm in Covington, Ga., since 2018, is feeling the hit of lower occupancy. She said in an email that bookings are down “considerably” on both Airbnb and Vrbo despite improvements to the property, redecorating and good reviews. Norton said she believes several factors could be at play, including pricing, travel patterns and algorithms.

The people quitting Airbnb

Despite the recent changes, Airbnb may have lost some users for good.

Matthew Kepnes, founder of the Nomadic Matt travel blog, says he feels that Airbnb downplays the damage to local housing markets that is caused by large-scale hosts who buy up multiple properties just to rent them out. While he has consulted for Airbnb in the past, he also complained of “onerous” fees, cleaning rules, lack of a good value and the general “hassle” of renting one of the properties.

“A lot of travelers are turning away from the service and just moving back to a hotel, because it’s more convenient, and it’s often cheaper,” he said.

When Katie Borek, 38, travels from her home in Edmonton, Canada, once or twice a month, Airbnb is no longer on her list of accommodation options. Instead, Borek finds hotel rooms at a significant discount through budget travel websites.

Borek appreciated the level of service she found at hotels after she switched from booking Airbnbs during the pandemic. Once while checking out, she mentioned to hotel staff that one of the jets in her tub was broken, and to her surprise the hotel gave her a 10 percent discount on her stay.

For her, the price of a hotel is worth the peace of mind.

“I knew that I wasn’t going to be stuck with fees or anything that I was unprepared for,” she said.

Rink, whose Airbnb in California has seen a slump in bookings, actually likes the platform as a guest. She’s rented a couple of properties in Italy for an upcoming trip.

But for her family, the great Airbnb experiment has turned into more of a flop. The family — who bought the home with Rink’s mother with the plan for her mother to live there eventually — is looking to rent it long-term.

“I think the idea of it is actually more fun that actually doing it,” she said. “Because it gets tiring, and not everybody is a great guest, not everybody will respect your home. When you’re small-scale like this you take it more personally. Honestly, I thought it was going to be more fun and more profitable than it actually was.”

One thing that has surprised her family: the level of attention Ewing’s Facebook question got.

“I’m like, ‘Babe, you’re famous,'’ Rink said. Her husband’s reply? “I wish I were famous for making money instead of losing it.”

Original Post: Airbnb is more successful than ever. Why is everyone so mad at it?

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