experiences host here.

i noticed an enormous drop in bookings in july. i went from bookings weekly to now… well. nothing. not a sausage.

since july i’ve had THREE bookings. three. and they were ones that had been made well in advance.

i did some investigating on the homepage as a guest in july and found that airbnb had rolled out prioritising business bookings. tickets to madame tussaud’s, the london eye, sky garden, churchill war rooms, etc.

this is still the case.

they dominate the top of the page under ‘tickets to top attractions in london’, and then they’ve also taken over ‘popular experiences’ and ‘happening today/tomorrow’.

it’s so frustrating.

independent hosts like myself don’t get a look in.

has anyone else noticed this? is there anything we can do about it?

I live in a college town. Kids come in on internship, many of them from overseas. Fulbrights, all kinds of prestigious awards, occasionally to work some tech giant for a few months. They keep their heads down, study like crazy, work really hard, and are no trouble at all.

This young guest came in in mid August. Overseas. Pleasant guy. Couple weeks into it he comes to me, nervous. He has to break his several month commitment to my place. Trump administration abruptly changed some rules about visas for overseas people doing forms of university/business work.

I look it up, it's in the news. It happened immediately before he came and spoke to me. So I figure it's legit. I could keep all of that first month's rent, but choose to prorate it. We get on the phone with AirBnB and get it all settled.

Then the guest comes back to me. Apparently I'm entitled to extract another month's rent out of him. He's afraid of what I might choose to do, and afraid of whether it might happen automatically.

We get on the line with AirBnB. We explain the situation. I make it clear that I do not want them charging my guest for me. I do not want the money deposited in my account so that I then need to give it to the guest but pay taxes on it. I want them to not charge him, despite my having the ability to do so.

We get an assurance that this will be the case.

A few days later this guest is gone. At this point it's very late August. The whole matter is settled.

I thought.

Somehow it is now almost November. I am on my third set of customer service people, and this new person, someone who seems very sweet, doesn't write intelligible English sentences. I have now asked to speak to a manager. I am waiting on a response.

Because AirBnB charged my guest. They didn't give me the money. They kept it. I'm texting back and forth with this brief former guest of mine trying to get AirBnB to give them back their cash, making appointments to speak on the phone with AirBnB staff and them not calling when they have committed to.

I am not what I would call extremely happy with this situation.

For what it's worth, when I initially spoke on the phone with AirBnB representatives they told me that the calls would be recorded and if I was ok with it. So I said yes, that I would also record the calls, and were they ok with it. They said yes. So I legally have the recordings of the original conversations with AirBnB.

• I'm not interested in being made party to the fleecing of one of my guests. I can't control everything, but I'm to some extent responsible for what happens to him while he's under my roof. This needs to be corrected.
• I'm not trying to be a martyr and blow up my relationship with AirBnB on behalf of someone I knew for 2 weeks who really (completely inadvertently, not his fault at all) inconvenienced me. I need to be civil, non-combative in my dealings.
• I'm starting to feel less than civil.

Any advice or thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16242587/hilton-hotel-baltimore.html

I have a back-to-back turnover situation. The previous guest had a cat and there is a terrible cat smell in the apartment. I tried the ozone machine for couple hours and the odor is still there. Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do to eliminate the odor?

I’m a newbie on Airbnb and recently put up our holiday lodge for short term rentals on the site.
In the same timeframe we have had over 30 bookings from booking.com and only 2 from Airbnb.

Any tips to get more bookings or setting I might not have turned on?

Our location is out of season at the moment so everyone in the area is competing over little to no bookings, which doesn’t help.

Hello, because of the recent changes, our cleaners can no longer do sameday turn overs for us if we have AirBnB guests. (They hit a few houses in one day and since our house sleeps up to 12 people, if they arrive to tons of dirty dishes and the dishwasher not running, they can't fit everyone in. )

Since summer is the only time of year we do same day turn arounds, I want to just turn off AirBnB without the calendar syncs blocking any dates for VRBO. (And i know by now that if there is a way to mess up AirBnB calendar settings, I will. I just noticed I had accidentally blocked every weekend next summer when I was raising the rates, per AirBnB's message to raise the rates to make up for their fee shift).

So, I think the most fool proof way is to just basically double my AirBnB rates so nobody books through them in the summer. So that way the dates are still open and won't block any dates on my other platform calendars where i'm keeping my normal rates. Is there a better way to do it?

Thanks!

I’m a Superhost with multiple listings and a strong history of positive guest reviews. I recently had a guest leave a 1-star review under circumstances that strongly suggest retaliation.

Here's what happened:
During their three-night stay, the guest voluntarily messaged, "Everything has been great. We love the house." We repeatedly encouraged them to report any issues so we could address them promptly. No concerns were raised.

After checkout, our cleaners discovered a cracked bathroom vanity, extensively stained linens, and a broken mug. We had before-and-after photographs documenting the vanity's condition.

I politely contacted the guest to understand what happened. I did not demand reimbursement or threaten any action.

Only after receiving my inquiry did the guest claim that the towels and bedding smelled horrible and required repeated washing. None of these concerns had been mentioned during their stay.

The guest also stated, "I wasn't going to leave a review because I didn't wanna hurt your business."

The guest subsequently left a 1-star review. I submitted two removal requests, providing the message history and supporting evidence. Both were rejected without a meaningful explanation addressing the inconsistencies.

I fully support guests' rights to leave honest negative reviews. However, hosts should also have reasonable protection against reviews potentially motivated by disputes over property damage.

My questions for fellow hosts:
1) Has anyone successfully escalated a retaliatory review after two rejected removal requests?

2) Is there a supervisor, specialized team, or formal complaint process that can independently reconsider the decision?

3) What evidence has actually persuaded Airbnb to remove a retaliatory review?

I'm not looking to suppress legitimate criticism. I simply want a fair, evidence-based review of the circumstances.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has successfully navigated a similar situation.

I'm sure everyone's seen the new Airbnb guidelines around garbage disposal. Just wondering what other rural cottage hosts are planning to do?

We have a cottage in Ontario with no municipal garbage pickup and bears are a real concern in our area. The municipality actually provides guest landfill cards for short-term rentals, so guests can take their garbage to the dump. It's a common practice up here and has worked really well, especially when we have guests staying for a week or longer in the summer. We give them multiple cards... never had a complaint.

I'm trying to figure out what we're supposed to do instead. We don't have a shed or anywhere indoors to store garbage, so our only option seems to be having it sit outside until our cleaner comes at the end of the stay. Which obviously isn't great when you have bears around
Has anyone found a good bear-proof garbage container? Or come up with another solution? I'm genuinely curious what everyone else is doing because I can't imagine we're the only ones in this situation.

Pulled my listing down after Airbnb said the video of the drug deal and guest openly talking about stealing everything they wanted was "not enough proof." Extra unapproved guests, theft, broken items, trashed house, you name it...... I just wanted them reprimanded, not money.

There has to be something better;

Like a higher up service that screens guests. Something to just make sure you're a good human being in general......

I want to keep renting it out but its no longer worth the risk. Any out there know of a better platform?

Anyone out there wanna make a million dollars and just build a decent app?

Hey everyone,

I’m looking into buying a short-term rental / Airbnb condo unit in the Blue Mountain area and wanted to ask existing or former owners about real-world performance.

A few quick questions:
Real ROI: After condo fees, property management, HST, taxes, and resort fees, how much of the gross income actually ends up in your pocket?

Seasonality: How slow do spring and fall get compared to peak ski and summer months?

Management: Is it better to use the resort/on-site management, or self-manage on Airbnb?

Bylaws: Any strict Town of Blue Mountains STA (Short-Term Accommodation) bylaws or hidden costs to watch out for?

Would love to hear your experience or any lessons learned!

Why do people not generally leave reviews? I've had multiple stays and only three reviews. I'm a new host so I don't generally know why they don't leave a review and it makes it harder to compete with those big timers

People may believe Airbnb hosts are making so much money. Are they? Chat calculated an example:

TOTAL NIGHTLY REVENUE (2 NIGHTS with embedded cleaning fee)

$300.00

Airbnb host fee (15.5%) −$46.50

State lodging tax (5%) −$15.00

County tourism tax (5%) −$15.00

Cleaner (per stay) −$150.00

AMOUNT LEFT

$73.50

BEFORE utilities, maintenance, supplies, insurance, mortgage, property taxes, and federal income taxes.

Howdy hosts!

I'm curious how people have approached the changes in fees...

If/ who has directly referenced it in their listing verbiage? Or maybe specified it as an add on fee to the booking?

I have yet to charge fees or taxes on top of my nightly rate— even though my area has a lodging tax on top of the sales tax, so I've already been eating 10% off the top for my first two years 🥴

(I am seasonal and overall, have been really happy with how well things have gone in all areas so far... not thrilled about the changes obviously)

I'm just curious if everybody is flat out raising their places to compensate or if anybody has tried an approach that informs the guests somehow of the changes, one way or another.

I'd appreciate hearing your experiences or any advice you have to offer!

We've been using Airbnb to rent out our spare room for about 2 years now and its mostly been a good experience however I feel that the new guidelines about what you can and can't ask a guest to do don't really take into account hosts in our situation.

We allow guests to use our kitchen during their stay - but its still our kitchen and so I expect guests to wash up what they use and put it away so that we can still use our kitchen in our home as normal. I don't expect to have to do the washing up for my guests who are paying to stay in our spare room, and I don't think thats at all unreasonable.

Does airbnb also expect me to cook their dinner for them?

Edit:

Thanks for the support - for the record we rent a room with ensuite out in London Z3 for about £60 a night. Its an absolute steal for most people who stay here and most of our guests are great and very respectful. A decent hotel in the area would be twice the price. For us its a bit of extra pocket money that helps with the rising cost of everything and probably allows us to go on a holiday each year that we wouldn't otherwise afford.

I don't think anyone has ever not washed up after themselves when using the kitchen which is why I find it really weird that Airbnb has banned us requesting this in the first place. Just seems like such a basic expectation if you're staying in someone else's home. Maybe as some have pointed out, Airbnb don't want to prioritise hosts in our situation. We try to be very honest in our listing that we're offering a good quality room at a good price but in exchange we ask potential guests to respect the fact they are staying in our home. In 2 years we've probably had 2 sets of guests that have completely failed to acknowledge/appreciate this.

Hi all. I run a short-term rental in [city] and lately I’ve been noticing how much some stays add to my electricity bill. A few times I’ve looked into it and found that guests left appliances running for hours for no real reason: A/C or heating blasting with nobody home, the water heater always on, that kind of thing. Since I cover utilities and the nightly rate stays the same, some bookings barely break even.

I’m curious whether this is common or I’ve just been unlucky. If it happens to you, which appliances tend to be the culprits and roughly what does a bad stay cost you? How have you dealt with it, whether that’s an extra fee, a note in the listing or welcome message, limiting something somehow, or something else? And if you’ve tried something that didn’t work, that’s useful to know too.

Thanks in advance, any experience helps.

Hello everyone,

​I recently had a guest who wanted to cancel their booking, but they were well inside the non-refundable cancellation window. To make matters worse, they openly admitted they had planned to cancel all along, but simply missed the reminder notification they set for the final free-cancellation day.

​As a matter of principle, I don't double-dip. So, I offered what I thought was a fair compromise: Cancel the booking, and I’ll refund whatever amount we manage to rebook for those dates.

​They rejected this, claiming that if they cancelled first, they'd have "no recourse" if I didn't refund them (which is false, as the entire agreement was in the platform chat).

​Instead of accepting the rebooking compromise, they went through all our past reviews, cherry-picked potential minor issues, and started listing everything that would "make them uncomfortable" in our home. Their explicit ultimatum: give us a full refund, or we will show up and guarantee neither of us enjoys the stay.

​Needless to say, I processed the full refund immediately to cut my losses, avoid the inevitable retaliatory review, and leave them to Karma.

​Have you dealt with this kind of blatant review extortion before, and how do you handle it when support is a coin toss?

For now, I will take a break from Airbnb.

Two things made me take this call. For context, I rent out a room in my home.

1) A guest snuck in a friend overnight, and since I did not have photographic evidence I got a 1* review I cannot fight. My guest even recognized having someone in without my permission and against the ruules, but stated it was only in the morning to get helped with the suitcases. No help at all from Airbnb.

2) Airbnb does not understand I am not the everyday cleaner of the dishes. I do not charge cleaning fee, but I think it is reasonable that if sharing a frying pan I can expect to find it cleean if I am also to use it. Moreover, cleaning fee is per stay, not per day, so there would be no chance to adequately address this even if I were up to cleaning myself after coming from work. After having a long chat they proposed a phrasing to allow this, but it was not permitted by the webpage. They proposed a second one, also not permitted. Finally, they proposed I "suggested" they left the dishes in the sink so I could wash them, and I am not going to do that.

I know most guests do not break my house ruules and most guests would simply cleean dishes themselves, since they understand this is just common sense when sharing a space, but I am not taking the risk and I am feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the direction Airbnb keeps going to.

(And just found out the words ruules and cleean are not allowed in this sub)

Problem is over the past half a decade, Airbnb has become a Craigslist for property rentals rather than a good alternative with true holiday homes.

It starts with the product right? Then the audience follows.

As a host I am still thoroughly shocked that there are hosts who make guests do chores…. You really don’t know what a bed and breakfast is supposed to be then….

So kinda glad air bnb is doing this. Weeds out the crappy guests who think this is a budget platform to haggle on and Airbnb can then be tougher on the guests if they misbehave.

Airbnb advises against declining requests “too often” but doesn’t set an actual number vs timeframe. They threaten listing visibility or to entirely remove your listing. How true is this?

I’m a new host and just turned on instant book for guests with a good track record and am noticing abnormalities with it.

Last night at 11:30PM I received a request for that night/immediate check in. I have same day check in turned off, and require 24 hour notice. Tonight, another late request for same day check in plus 4 guests on the reservation when my listing states a 2 guest maximum. That is an actual rule, not one of the new “requests”. When declining that second one and selecting the “request goes against house rule for maximum guests” the pop up says “check your max guests on your listing to avoid confusion”. Huh?

Why is Airbnb allowing these requests to even come through? Is this normal or a glitch? I’m nervous that I declined two back to back. Is Airbnb expecting me to bend my standards/settings I put in place since I have instant book turned on?

I have been a host on Airbnb for more than a decade. Over those years, I've rented out parts of my own home and the entirety of another. I was a Superhost for probably 75% of the time that I hosted.

During the early years, I met plenty of interesting people and mutual kindness and respect were the general rule. I provided nice spaces that couldn't be found at a hotel and guests provided a return that was good, but not spectacular.

This year, I said goodbye forever to hosting with Airbnb. The platform has simply gone downhill too far and too fast from the host point of view.

The biggest collapses have been in customer service and guest quality.

In the early years, I would call and get an English-speaking agent who knew the system and knew what they were doing.

Then, I started getting people whose command of English wasn't great, but wasn't terrible either. If they couldn't solve a problem, they could escalate to someone who could.

About two years ago, Airbnb stopped trying completely: host support collapsed to people who knew some English words and nothing about the system in which they were working.

Guest quality fell through the floor in 2025, mostly because Airbnb started allowing guests to use review extortion to get free stays. No surprise: the scammers showed up.

I fought back as best I could. I installed exterior cameras so that I could see the number and state of the guests who arrived. At first, guests who booked for 3 people but arrived with 6 had to pay the difference. Then, Airbnb support could only "ask" them to pay their full bill (surprise: they didn't). At least the guys who were on camera leaving the house with lampshades on their heads and arms full of house supplies didn't get a refund.

My end came when Ms. Low-Rent Tony Soprano said, on the platform, that "something might happen" to my Superhost review profile if I didn't give them $400. I didn't give them the money and they gave me a 1-star review. Airbnb's shiny new AI review assessment said that this was just fine and I knew that my time with Airbnb was over.

I've been working my way out since then and finally closed the Airbnb host chapter of my life last week.

Those of you who are still in should realize that there is no floor. It won't get better. Loss of good hosts won't force Airbnb to improve things, or even stop making conditions worse.

A decade ago, Airbnb cared about its hosts. Now, it is obvious that they don't have to. There are enough property owners who want to rent their homes out temporarily without becoming landlords that Airbnb can simply churn through them without caring. Since they can, they will.

Anyway, good luck out there; you'll need it. And don't invest too much, you can't expect to get it back. Cheers.

I recently had an older couple stay at my property. They checked out yesterday and the cleaning crew found out that the valance was broken.
This incident was not mentioned to me even while I checked in during their stay if everything was okay and the guests said they were fine.
Now I reached out to her to ask if there was any incident that happened and she didn’t inform me:
Her response: I was adjusting the blind by turning the cords to let light in and the valance fell off and hit me on top of the head. Since the plastic bracket broke when it fell it could not be put back up.
My message for review went out earlier today, she read and ignored and I don’t think I’ll be getting any sincerely, however, do I bill them for this broken valance or just let them go?
My review is 5 star and I don’t want anything or anyone to damage that.
Advise please?

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting here, but I wanted to see if any other Airbnb hosts have experienced something similar.

Last Saturday night, I had guests book my place last minute for a week. After checking in, they messaged me saying they were working in town, loved the place, and wanted to stay longer. They asked if I’d offer a discount for a month-long stay, which I was happy to do, so I extended their reservation to 31 days.

On Monday, I came back into town and went to my office, which is directly below the Airbnb. I heard a dog upstairs and was pretty shocked to discover that the guests had brought one.

My place has never been pet-friendly. When I originally set up my listing, I specifically chose not to allow pets. It’s on the second floor, there’s no yard access, and the only outdoor space is a balcony. The nearest grass is about 200 yards away. Everything inside is brand new, so I’ve been pretty particular about maintaining the space.

To make matters worse, it’s a two-month-old puppy that isn’t potty-trained yet. Needless to say, I’m pretty stressed about the potential for accidents and damage.

I contacted Airbnb support, expecting some help, but they told me I didn’t have any house settings listed and that there were no pet restrictions in place when the guests booked. Basically, they said there wasn’t anything they could do.

The strange thing is that on Tuesday, I noticed what appeared to be changes to Airbnb’s house settings interface or policies. When I checked my listing, I could no longer find several of the preferences I remember setting up, including no pets, no smoking, quiet hours, and other house instructions.

I can’t say for certain what happened, but the timing seems suspicious. I’ve tried explaining this to Airbnb, but I feel like I’m getting nowhere and that they’re putting the responsibility entirely on me instead of investigating whether something changed on their end.

I understand that Airbnb has to go by what’s actually documented on a listing, but if settings or house settings somehow disappear after an update, how are hosts supposed to protect themselves?

I’m now dealing with a month-long reservation that includes a puppy I never intended to allow, and I feel like I have very little support from Airbnb.

I’m not trying to jump to conclusions, but I’d really like to know if this has happened to other hosts, too. Any advice or insight would be appreciated!

Just unlisted my Airbnbs. Two bookings in a row I had issues because I had to change my “rules” and the diminished character count led to less explanation and failure to read the house manual. Hopefully Airbnb changes their rule decision.

Please note, this has nothing to do with cleaning. I clean up after my guests, and clean my bathrooms twice a day.

Heads Up: Airbnb has rolled out a new system-wide default called Photo Tour that automatically rearranges listing photos. (I was told it was initiated Oct. 13.) I found out the hard way: The photos on both of my listings were scrambled, with the hero shot and best photos far down on the page and some of my worst photos (the W/D, bathroom, kitchen cupboards, etc.) first.

What really steams me is wondering what potential guests I lost because all the photos the program deemed "best" that it posted on my listing were of the front of the house with no interiors, and the hero shot was of the small back deck.

Hosts were never notified.

Per Airbnb support, the new default randomly grabs photos it thinks are "best," and reorders everything. And only customer service can turn Photo Tour off so that hosts can put their best photos first in the order they choose!

If you haven’t looked at your listings lately, do it now. To get it fixed, call Airbnb, ask them to disable Photo Tour on each listing, and request a case number and email confirmation. Then you'll need to reorder your photos and check the public view to make sure the order sticks. (I was told it will take 24 hours.)

Hosts should control how their own listings look, and a change like this (that will take me hours to unscramble) shouldn’t happen without notice. Thanks, yet again, Airbnb.

I just smelled our guest smoking weed from upstairs. The rental is our downstairs apartment.

My husband and I confronted him and asked him to leave. He claims he wasn’t smoking weed but smoked somewhere else and the smell followed him home.

We said sorry you need to leave. He gathered his things and left peacefully.

I contacted Airbnb support and explained what happened. They said they are going to contact him next.

Any ideas how this is going to shake out? I mostly don’t want him to be able to leave us a bad review. He is also asking for his money back for the next 15 days that he had booked.