Airbnb is introducing a creative new way to search properties, an innovative approach to longer stays, and new levels of protection for guests.

 

On Wednesday, Airbnb unveiled its 2022 Summer Release, the “biggest change to Airbnb in a decade” according to CEO Brian Chesky. The summer release brings travelers new features to help them “easily explore the world of Airbnb—and discover places they wouldn’t have known to search for”.

 

Airbnb is introducing a ‘search-by-category function’, designed to guide users toward discovering rental homes in locations they may have never searched for on their own. Emphasizing unique properties & unique stays may help redistribute the benefits of tourism and travel to areas that aren’t already considered popular destinations.

 

Upon opening the platform, a user will be presented with 56 categories that organize homes based on what makes them unique. This could be the architectural style or design, location, or proximity to a certain travel activity. Searching for a particular place will result in organized categories relevant to the destination.

 

Style categories include a wide range of options such as “house-boats”, “windmills”, “amazing views”, “tree houses” and “yurts”, amongst many others. Location categories include places such as national parks, vineyards, deserts, arctic, and countryside, to name just a few. Activity categories include things like camping, surfing, golfing, and skiing. There is even a category for homes built by notorious architects.

 

 

While the answers to these questions are still unknown, Airbnb Categories are created through a process using machine learning and an Airbnb curation team. Machine learning will analyze listing titles, written descriptions, guest reviews, photo captions, and other data which help evaluate and categorize each listing. Members of Airbnb’s curation team review each listing, hand-pick featured photos for it, and essentially do a quality assurance check.

 

With this in mind, hosts must spend time marketing their listings in ways that may help them appear in desired categories. This includes updating listing titles and descriptions & adding key search terms, updating property photos & their captions, encouraging guests to leave positive reviews, theming your property, and sprucing up your listing to stand out.

 

Airbnb has always offered its included travel protection service, AirCover, to hosts listing on the platform, in the event they would need to cover things like damages or liability. The new update will extend similar coverages on the guest side, providing 4 major features to protect travelers and encourage travel again after stagnation in the industry over the past 2 years.

 

The first is “Booking Protection Guarantee”. If a host cancels a booking within 30 days of check-in, the company pledges to find a similar or improved home or refund the customer. Second is a “Check-in Guarantee”, so if a customer finds they can’t check into a home, and the host can’t resolve the issue, Airbnb promises to find a similar or better home for the length of the original stay or offer a refund.

 

Third is the “Get What You Booked Guarantee”. Guests will have three days to report listings if they aren’t as advertised. For example, if there are fewer bedrooms than listed, the customer can report it and will be placed in another listing or refunded. The company has created a team of specially trained agents to handle last-minute rebooking assistance to serve guests experiencing these issues promptly.

 

Finally, Airbnb is adding a 24-hour safety line for customers, in 16 languages. This may be good for international travel, though we always recommend 911 here in the United States if you are in immediate danger.

 

The pandemic resulted in the growing trend of remote work, which allowed for a lot of career flexibility and saw people staying in destinations for longer. These factors helped drive the “Split Stays” feature, which lets people divide their trips between two homes.

 

Think of Split stays as you would a travel itinerary when planning a road trip, or visiting a different country and navigating several destinations throughout your time there. In the past 3 months, nearly half of nights booked on Airbnb were for trips of a week’s length or longer.

 

Split stays will automatically appear in search results for specific destinations and 14 categories, including national parks and skiing. A great way to shed perspective on this would be a Colorado Ski Trip, where a user books several nights in the Aspen/Vail area, and continues down to Crested Butte, Telluride, and Steamboat Springs.

 

We are curious to see how these updates will shift the Short Term Rental landscape and are excited to get back to hosting amidst what is projected to be a very busy summer for travel!