Airbnb Offers New Advantages for Hosts

Airbnb has more than 4 million hosts managing stays and experiences on its platform. Now, it's after more of them as it generates more bookings. After introducing a major redesign to customers earlier this year, Airbnb is now turning its attention to improving the experience for new and existing hosts. On top of that, it is rolling out its previously announced anti-party technology in North America to prevent disrupted bookings.

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Details about the New Advantages

Host Accommodation

Last year, Airbnb launched a new workflow to easily onboard new hosts. Now it is adding a new feature to Airbnb Settings, pairing new users with Superhosts to guide them through the setup and hosting process. Airbnb said that so far 1,500 Superhosts with at least 10 bookings or 100 nights booked and a rating of 4.8 or higher have signed up as "Ambassadors". For context, Airbnb has 980,000 active Superhosts today; it will be interesting to see how many sign up. New hosts who create a profile will be able to contact the dedicated support team via email, messaging or video/voice chat, or they can now search for a nearby Superhost with a similar property type.

Host Protection

One of the triggers for attracting hosts and hosting activity to Airbnb is protection, both in terms of who books and what happens if things go wrong. And to top it off, Airbnb is raising the limit on AirCover, its damage protection program for hosts, from $1 million to $3 million. The new protection will also cover damage to cars and boats and valuables such as paintings, jewelry and collectibles at an assessed value.

Payments

Airbnb is rolling out a new feature called Fast Pay in the US, developed by Airbnb itself, to pay hosts who register a Visa or Mastercard payment method in less than 30 minutes. The company is charging a 1.5 percent fee, capped at US$15 at launch. This is much faster than other payment systems such as bank accounts or PayPal, which can take one to seven business days. Airbnb already has built-in solutions for processing multiple currencies and payment methods. But Chesky said Airbnb wants to do more with payments.

The company is also considering better payment solutions in countries like India and Brazil, and other countries where it is more difficult to get money in or out. When asked if this could mean a future wallet, Chesky said it was "definitely something we're looking at."