Airbnb is shooting itself in the foot with the “professionalization” of Hosts
Or why professionals are a big risk to P2P marketplaces
Last week I traveled through Ireland while staying in 3 different Airbnb accommodations. I didn’t book them, a first time Airbnb user did it for us. For what it’s worth the 3 of them had average rates of 4–5 stars.
The first place was an apartment located near the center of Dublin. We got there late in the night, there was a keypad next to the door where we had to type the security code we got from the host. It was a small building with 3 floors and 2 apartments per floor. All of them had keypads on the doors. The apartment had a kitchen and a shared bathroom. It was clean enough, the beds were confortable and the location was super. The only gotcha was that the shower was leaking water all over the place, but for 2 nights it was good enough. In the kitchen we found coffee, milk and little cookies carefully measured for 3 people and 2 nights.
We never saw anyone in the building, nor the “host” nor other guests. It was private, cheap and well located.
The second place was a private room in the house of Jane, a 65 years old lady living in small town near Galway. The house was full of pictures of Jane’s family. It was the typical house that if you would see it on pictures you may feel like you don’t wanna spend your holidays in there, as it was full of personal objects. However, the moment we walked in we really felt like we were home. The place was remarkably warm and cozy.
Jane was super friendly, she asked us what time we would like to have breakfast next morning and gave us great tips for dinning and sightseeing.
On the morning we walked into the kitchen and found a big table with yogurts, bread, cereals, jam, ham, cheese… and behind all of that there was Jane, still wearing pajamas, finishing to brew coffee for us with a smile in her face.
As co-founder of Gudog, an “Airbnb for dogs”, every time I use a “sharing economy” platform I like to ask the service providers about their experiences. So I asked Jane. She said that, overall, most of her experiences were great, however in the last few months she had two really bad experiences that made her consider quitting Airbnb.
The first bad experience Jane had was with a woman who booked a single bed for him and her son who would sleep with her. The woman said her son liked castles and boats so Jane gave her a few recommendations of places to visit before they arrived. Just two days before their check-in the woman sent Jane a picture of her son… he was a 27 years old guy. Jane found weird that a woman would book a single bed for her and his “son” so he decided to call Airbnb asking them to cancel the booking. After waiting 90 minutes on the phone, Jane finally managed to contact Airbnb and they agreed to cancel the booking but still required Jane to make the cancelation herself — Jane did so.
The day after the cancelation the woman and her “son” show up in Jane’s house. They were pretty angry and complaining about someone canceling their booking. Jane was a bit afraid of them but she still decided to let them stay for the first night and Airbnb next morning to explain the situation. On the morning Airbnb called the woman and required her and her son to leave the house. They throw the keys through the window and leave the place yelling at Jane.
The second bad experience Jane told us about was about a young couple who stayed in the house just one week before us. When they arrived the girl introduced herself as “Snail” — as in the animal that French people like to eat — and asked Jane to call her so. The funny thing is that she was wearing some sort of snail horns in her head. Jane thought that was just a eccentric fashion accessory and did not give any importance to it.
On the morning Snail walked into the kitchen still wearing her horns and with her hands full of carrots. She sat at the table and started to eat the raw carrots making noises like a rabbit, ignoring Jane’s breakfast. Snail’s boyfriend was a guy who Jane thought was blind, as he would look at random places when talking with someone. Jane realized he couldn’t be blind as they both got to the house by bicycle. They were definitely a very weird couple.
I know Airbnb now is all about fighting discrimination, but I wouldn’t enjoy having to host at my own house someone who calls herself “Snail”, wears horns and only eats raw carrots, nor someone who is sleeping with her 27 years old son to save some bucks.
I asked Jane why she accepted these guests and if they had previous reviews on Airbnb. Jane said that in both cases their profiles looked totally normal and all of them had previous 5 star reviews with descriptions such as “lovely couple” or “great experience”. Jane explained the problem was that there is an increasing amount of hosts who never meet their guests or they do it for a short period of time – they’re professionals managing many apartments at the same time. Exactly the same kind of host we had in our first apartment in Dublin. These kind of hosts don’t care about the community so they just copy and paste reviews for guests pretending they’re normal hosts so that they don’t raise any alarm.
While the increasing number of professional hosts is causing major legal problems for Airbnb in cities like NYC, it’s also undermining his truly sharing economy community.
Every P2P marketplace or sharing economy platform gets some sort of professional service provider sooner or later and they always become a risk to the platform itself and to their users.
On Airbnb professional hosts destroy the “Airbnb local experience” and the value of the users’ reputation (in addition to the legal problems). On car sharing platforms like Blablacar, professionals lower the quality of the service by offering 3 seats in the back of the car instead of just 2, just to make some more money, as that’s the only incentive they have. On dog sitting platforms such as Gudog, Rover or DogVacay professionals often lower the quality of the service and increase the risk by looking after many dogs at the same time instead of just one.
However, sometimes choosing a profesional service provider in one of these platforms is better than not having any other option. If you can only afford an apartment at $X/night and hotels are double than that then you don’t care about whether you meet the host or you don’t. In the same manner, if you have to travel and the only dog sitter you can find on Gudog is someone who takes care of 3 dogs instead of just 1 at the same time, that’s still way better than not being able to travel or leaving your doggie in a kennel.
Therefore the presence of these kind of professional service providers on these platforms is often inevitable and sometimes even necessary. However all these platform must make sure professionals don’t become the majority, and control the effects that they have in the rest of their communities. Otherwise it doesn’t matter how much money they spend on marketing budgets to raise the sharing economy flag — while the “pros” may help them boosting their growth metrics, they will also slowly kill their communities.
Maybe P2P marketplaces should start flagging the “pros” so that users (consumers) can have a better idea of what to expect, a lovely woman that would treat you like your grandma or a cold keypad on the door.
