Airbnb has announced their 2023 Fall Update where Brian asked the Airbnb community on 3 May 2023 on what improvements they wanted to see. It has garnered nearly 3,300 responses, these were their top suggestions:
- Lower cleaning fees
- Better search & filters
- Verified listings
- Better customer service
- Guest loyalty program
- Total price with taxes
- Better review system
- Lower prices
The company has spent the summer working on the suggestion, alongside other improvements aimed at making the end-to-end experience on Airbnb even better. The company has shared an update on how they are addressing five of the top suggestions:
Lower prices and lower cleaning fees
- Today, four out of every five Hosts use one of the company’s pricing tools. Almost 680,000 Hosts have used their new tool to compare their prices with similar listings nearby, while almost two thirds of Hosts offer weekly or monthly discounts.
- Against the backdrop of increasing prices industry-wide, and with an average nightly rate of $127 in July 2023, the average nightly price of a one-bedroom listing on Airbnb is 1 percent lower than it was in July 2022 – while hotel prices have gone up 10 percent to $163 over the same period .
- Since Airbnb launched, over 8 million guests have booked travel on Airbnb using total price display, which made fees even more transparent.
- This year over 260,000 listings lowered or removed their cleaning fees – on top of nearly 3 million listings that currently don’t charge one.
Improvements to search and filters
- Starting today, if search results are limited, we’ll automatically display a carousel at the bottom of search results so guests can review more great homes available over similar dates.
- Also added two new search filters by popular demand: pet-friendly homes and king-size beds. This should come as no surprise as there have been over 6 million pet arrivals on Airbnb in the past year. The top ten most popular countries for pets in the past year include the USA, France, UK, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Australia, Mexico and Germany. With over a quarter of listings across the platform welcoming pets, it’s now even easier for guests to narrow their search by those that welcome furry friends.
- And with king-size beds featured in over a million listings, the new king-size bed filter will help guests easily find the homes that offer them.
Listing verification in our top five countries
- Later this year, the company will begin verifying every listing in the US, Canada, Australia, UK and France with verified icons appearing on listings from February. Starting next fall, Airbnb will begin verifying listings in 30 more countries.
- This complements the company’s ongoing work to implement tools to help prevent fraud, remove bad actors, and increase trust in their community. This year, Airbnb has blocked 157,000 fake listings from ever joining the platform, and removed an additional 59,000.
Customer service improvements
- This summer, Airbnb has answered 94% of calls in English within 2 minutes. The company also extended this 2-minute response time to 9 more languages.
- From November, the company will start making additional improvements to customer service so that when guests call, they’re going to be matched with the best agents to resolve their specific issue, faster.
Nonetheless, Airbnb is continuing their hard work to introduce exciting updates at their upcoming 2023 Winter Release.