Webinar: Help Shape the Future of Airbnb (Sept 28th)

[Lizzie]

 

Hello Everyone,

It is that time of the month again and the next webinar will take place on Wednesday, September 28th. This month, we are spicing up the format and the team will be offering the webinar at two different times during the day. This is great news for our hosts here based in Asia and Australasia regions, as you no longer have to tune-in during the night! 🙂

This month's webinar is: Help Shape the Future of Airbnb

Discover how to influence the future of Airbnb’s features and programs. Plus, the team will discuss ways you can share your feedback - and why it matters. (A important topic for us here in the CC).

Details:

Wed, Sept. 28th 10:00am PDT (1:00pm EDT / 6:00pm BST) - register here

Wed, Sept. 28th 5:00pm PDT ( 8:00pm EDT / 10:00am AEST) - register here

Webinars will be spoken in English. Registration is now open and remember to register using the email associated with your Airbnb account.

The team will be taking questions for the Q&A part of the session, if you would like to ask a question related to this webinar topic, reply to this thread and all questions will be passed over to them. They will answer as many as they can during the time. 🙂

Looking forward to hearing your comments. 

Enjoy! 

[Andrew90]

Will these be recorded?

[Lizzie]

Hello @Andrew90,

Yes, similarly to the previous webinars this will be recorded and is usually available about a week after the live session. I will post it here in the CC.

For more information on this take a look at the post here in the CC. 🙂

Lizzie

[Francesco192]

I found near my houses in Italy few apartments placed in a very incorrect positions, more than 5 km and very easy to note. Airbnb said me that for his rules is enough that the town is correct and the rest is not considered.

Do you think we can imagine a future with more correct rules? I do not see a great future for those who advertises homes through a map where the homes can be placed in the position that best suits to the owners and not to the reality. A position that you can friendly choose in a very large territory ... I think not only in Italy a small town has several square kilometers of territory.

This matter, the veracity of the position, is very considered to a lot of competitors that in fact they have different rules and they correct the mistakes.

For the future of Airbnb, I think it would be useful to speak about this matter in your meetings.

Good job!

[Victoria57]

@Lizzie I'm tempted to join the webinar to ask why Airbnb uses hosts as its first line support when in the vast majority of cases there is nothing we can do except tell people asking questions to contact Airbnb. Then they say they can't find the contact details because Airbnb tries very hard to hide the contact details so we have to answer that.  If I was to help shape the future of Airbnb the first thing I would do is to introduce effective customer support for hosts and guests as it is so absent at the moment, particularly for hosts.

[Lizzie]

Hello @Francesco192 and @Victoria57,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Both these comments will be passed over to the webinar team. 🙂 

Just to respond to your comment about the Community Center acting as a first line support for hosts. We have thousands of hosts from around the world and between you all, almost every situation has been experienced by another host. The ability to access this collective knowledge on how to deal with so many different situations, is something that we believe benefits the whole community. It shouldn't feel like a replacement for the Support Team, it is a different resource (which is why we do our best to promote the contact numbers across the boards).

To add to this, the CC is an important forum for hosts to share ideas, tips, funny stories and generally meet people from around the world who share their passion and interests (see Meal of Champions, Special Ways to Remember your Guests, Community Playlist and What's on your Walls?). Also, with the recent launch of Host Voice, we are building a great platform for crowdsourcing community ideas on what you would like to see Airbnb do in the future – making the voice of the Community even louder! (This is the exciting part) 🙂

I really hope you will be able to join the webinar, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Lizzie

[Brittany1]

 @Victoria57 is right, @Lizzie

While the CC is very helpful for some things. For those of us trying to help and answer questions the most common question is how to contact you! I have it in a tab in my computer so I can easily copy and paste. We answer what we can but anything serious, anything related to calendar or tech or pricing issues, accidental cancellations, changes in formatting is on you guys. We hosts are like your unpaid customer service hotline. I'm happy to help but there should be two places to go for info. The forum or "chat with Airbnb" just like every other major company has now. Need help with a purchase at zappos or nike? Just chat. Questions about a phone or utility bill. Chat! It is too bad that Airbnb isn't more reachable. I've generally had very good luck calling you but last night when I called I received a new message stating that if I wasn't calling for a reservation in progress try a different form of communication.

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

Just a quick reminder about the webinar tomorrow (Sept 28th), registration is already open so feel free to click on the link above, so you are all ready in advance. 🙂

It is great to see we have a couple of questions here, there is still time to get your questions in for the Q&A part of the session, so please do add them to this thread and I will pass them over to the team.

Also, let me know if you have any feedback on the webinar series. We are always looking for ways to improve it and make the sessions as useful for you as possible. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Jiw0]

Question: 

Would you agree that due to several changes in recent years, the 'community' feel of AirBnB is lessening?  I used to get inquiries from peope who nearly told me their life story just when inquiring to book my place, now I wake up to an InstantlyBooked stay and all I have is a name and a phone number.  I don't know what the guest is looking for in his trip, I can't weigh in on how suitable my place would be for them, etc.

Some of these changes are intentional (InstantBook!), others are just a function of AirBnB's success, such as professional real estate brokers and hotels listing on AirBnB.  The result IMHO is a lessening community feel, and more people treating AirBnB like it's Expedia or Priceline.com.  Would you agree with this and if so, is it actually a problem or is it considered a good thing at AirBnB?

As a host too I guess it's a good thing in some ways:  I wake up to having made money.   But... I actually enjoyed the inquiry, the chat and getting a feel for my guests!   That's what I like about AirBnB in the first place.