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Airbnb has give way hotels a discharge for their money with offerings that are often more whippy , sometimes sleazy , and more characterful than their traditional cordial reception opposite number . One area where Airbnb has stumbled , however , is eubstance : Hotels are still considered to havebetter serviceand customers still on a regular basis kick that Airbnb itemisation arenot accurate .
Now , to adjudicate to bridge over those opening — and at the very least to better deal everyone ’s expectations — today Airbnb is unveiling an overhaul of guest review . Alongside that , Airbnb is tote up two more way for host to help surface more nuance about their properties , by way of a new top - rat badge and puppet to transmit more information about properties .
The update are coming as part of the company ’s later wintertime release , and as we talked about those with Airbnb ’s Brian Chesky , the CEO and carbon monoxide gas - beginner also discover some of its future roadmap , including trial it ’s running using generative AI to write review summaries .
Overall , Chesky read the company ’s principal precedence was to bring more predictability to Airbnb , since the reason multitude often stick in hotel is because they recognise what they ’re going to get in term of service .
“ Our home plate are one of a kind — that ’s a strength [ for us ] , but their reliability is the big question , ” he say in an interview . “ We ca n’t inspect every home base , and we do n’t need to taste to scrutinise every home . So we ’re just going to be endue a lot more into a review and reputation system . That ’s why we ’re upgrading reviews , and we ’re going to be doing a raft more stuff like that . ”
The redesign review Thomas Nelson Page will have a whirligig at the top that will display overall and category - specific paygrade . Users can now also classify reviews by most late or highest rank .
The new badge being roll out is a signaling of how Airbnb is trying to bake in client overhaul incident and customer feedback to translate if the property is deserving a shout - out . scream “ Guest Favorites , ” the badge will be used to assign highly fink belongings . Currently , the properties with this label have an middling rating of 4.9 , less than a 1 % cancelation rate , and a less than 1 % incident charge per unit .
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The company did n’t specify the precise criteria by which it clean the 2 million “ Guest Favorites ” property in the first raft . But Airbnb said that it deliberate “ signal that have the loudest guest voice . ” such as review and cancelation rates .
you may think of Guest Favorites as the prop equivalent of the“Superhost”badge that hosts can earn by maintaining a 4.8 overall evaluation across their property ; less than 1 % cancelation rate ; and at least 10 brusque - term stay or 100 nights quell in the past twelvemonth . “ Guest Favorites ” will be more property - specific and subject to changing more frequently : They are updated hebdomadally , while the “ Superhost ” badge is evaluated quarterly .
Whether customers ever understand the differentiation between those two badges remains to be see . But ultimately , there are other reasons to have launch Guest Favorites : The more frequent updating make host more accountable , and the information gives more transparency to would - be guest . It also gives Airbnb another fashion to understand its client base , and also aerofoil prop free-base on the “ Guest Favorites ” filter .
Still , the five - star military rating system , popularized by hotels — ironically , the very industry Airbnb aims to interrupt — is far from gross , something Chesky admitted .
For fledgling , there is a plenty of opportunity for stake right now . A property with a 4.6 - star rating on Airbnb , for example , is really at the bottom 20 % of all itemisation . In 2022 , the U.S. average review score was 4.75 , and it was just above 4.6 in the rest of the world , according to short - terminus rental analytics firmAirDNA . In other Word of God , given that many of those “ lower ” shit properties are not actually that nice , this undermines the whole idea of the rating in the first berth .
Bram Gallagher , an economic expert at AirDNA , said that heterogeneity is a grownup challenge for companies like Airbnb , but it ’s also a crowing haul for customers .
“ I do n’t think Airbnb wants to commodify listings by making them consistent . A move towards providing more item would relieve some of the uncertainness in consumer that might be preventing them from going to a poor - condition rental , ” he said .
On the other side , though , Airbnb is stuck between a rock and a hard place in trying to meliorate this .
“ We did n’t want to bollix up up the five - star evaluation system because we have more than 317 million reviews and two out of three mass will a review on our platform , ” Chesky explained . “ [ So ] we will seek to create more linguistic context on the rating with label like guest favorites . ”
On the host end of things , Airbnb is adding more tools to keep them sweet . An easy approachable “ Listings ” tab key on the home pageboy has cock to add amenities , as well as an AI - power photo tour to arrange image uploaded by the host by different room automatically .
Investing in AI and future roadmap
Airbnb has acquaint a few AI - powered features in this spill , but Chesky said that the plan is to tot more . Top of the listing , he suppose , is a test using reproductive AI to produce review sum-up . He take down that those sum-up can also take into account anterior info such as customer religious service contact .
He also mentioned that reproductive AI can ameliorate area such as lookup , identifying amenities of a property from photos and customer military service . In particular , it can help with language transformation between a host and Edgar Albert Guest who are fluent in two dissimilar languages . Additionally , AI can help in quickly parsing the policy Page to see what might be relevant for an proceeds — both for exploiter and customer service agent .
“ think a Nipponese guest detain with a German emcee . Neither of them speak the same language and they are calling a call center , and very few the great unwashed mouth both languages . Agents are attempt to take with a resolve within mo while dealing with many insurance [ applicable to the post ] that could be like very many pages long . So I think what AI can do just generally , is it can reimagine our overhaul reimagined customer service , ” Chesky say .
In a set of interviews in the last few months , Chesky said that Airbnb istrying to overhaulitscore servicesbefore concenter on other things . He tell TechCrunch that there might be one or two release focusing on improvingaffordability , reliabilityand client service .
Airbnb register $ 3.4 billion in tax revenue for Q3 2023 , with an 18 % growth year - on - class . However , the ship’s company presented conservative counseling say that it is seeing “ great volatility early in Q4 . ”
In a note to investor , Bernstein said that the firm adjusted its night book direction for the financial class 2023 from 455 million to 449 million because of the guidance .
November 9 , 7 AM PT : The narrative has been updated to clarify that Airbnb has n’t in public defined the exact criteria for properties to get a “ Guest Favorite ” recording label . The numbers eject by the ship’s company were reflective of average ratings and cancelation rates for the initial batch of properties with the “ Guest Favorite ” recording label .
