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[00:00:00] Sarah: Hello. Welcome back for another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:00:03] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we’re–

[00:00:05] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:06] Sarah: And this is the–

[00:00:06] Both Annette & Sarah: Hosting Hotline.

[00:00:08] Sarah: Today we have a question from Taylor.

[00:00:10] Questions: Hey, ladies. Taylor here. I love the pod. Thank you so much for taking my question. Can you guys please break down the Airbnb summer release for us? What all do we need to know? Thank you so much. Can’t wait to hear your response.

[00:00:22] Sarah: It is because when you’re using the something so often–

[00:00:26] Annette: It’s anti-climactic in a way.

[00:00:27] Sarah: Sometimes. But there are a few things about the summer release that are very exciting, and some things are a bit anti-climactic. But Annette and I went on to the website, airbnb.com/release, and the first thing that pops up is this whole Icon thing. And I wish all of you listening right now, we were all in a room together, and we could chat about this because Annette and I have so many questions about all of it really.

[00:00:54] Annette: You should watch Brian Chesky’s announcement. It’s very Steve Jobs-esque.

[00:00:58] Sarah: It is.

[00:00:59] Annette: It was interesting for sure.

[00:01:00] Sarah: I was interesting, and we have questions about–

[00:01:03] Annette: The why. It seems as if you’re going to be able to– these places are open, and they’re going to be open in perpetuity, and it’s like a lottery, and maybe one night only it’s open. It’s genius in the marketing aspect of it, but I think it falls short on no one’s really going to be able to stay there. I know they’ve done it before with Barbie and things. And again, it was one guest one night. Well, not one guest, but one party was able to stay there.

[00:01:35] Sarah: I don’t know about you, but my mind immediately went to whoever got to work on these houses though, it’s so cool. And then who is managing them between the stays, and what does that turn over– that’s where my brain goes.

[00:01:48] Annette: Well, yeah. And some of them are museums or personal residents. They’ve rolled this one or two out from time to time, but now they did the whole Icon section.

[00:01:58] Sarah: And Brian’s hinting that there’s more to come. There are a ton. Reatively, there are a lot of Icon options.

[00:02:06] Annette: I think the overarching message though, is that experiences matter. That guests are seeking experiences. Airbnb sees that, unique stays, experience, and they’re capitalizing on it. So hosts, for us, I think the importance of that summer release is, what can we do if it’s your garage apartment, your one-bedroom apartment, your own beach– whatever it is, what type of experience can you curate for your guest?

[00:02:37] Sarah: And I don’t think it has to be this grandiose gesture.

[00:02:40] Annette: No. Just what is that small little thing that can change the stay for the guest?

[00:02:44] Sarah: And have to be really memorable.

[00:02:45] Annette: Also, obviously, even to get into the lottery to participate in it, you do have to have a profile, so that is also genius, and we should be happy about that because maybe it is bringing more people to the network overall. So I guess that’s also a ploy of like– I read something on LinkedIn, like, if they could just get one traveler that’s predominantly traveling in hotels to Airbnb, it would double.

[00:03:15] I think it was eight out of 10 people still stay in hotels. If they can convert one more traveler per those 10, it would double the amount of stays. So actually, enjoy that marketing as far as getting people to download the app, participate, and see what it can be.

[00:03:32] Sarah: On the guest side, there are a couple of other cool things that I think impact us hosts.

[00:03:37] Annette: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:38] Sarah: The guests will now have an easier time to plan trips where you can send an idea of a place to stay with a group of friends, and they can like it or dislike it.

[00:03:49] Annette: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:50] Sarah: I think that’s fun.

[00:03:53] Annette: Yeah, for sure. It’s like the wishlists that give everyone a stay and then keep your group in a loop. If anything, it’ll help people make decisions quicker. It’ll keep them streamlined instead of defaulting to, let’s just book a hotel. This is too hard. Removing friction is what these updates are, of like, how can we just get everyone being able to speak on the same platform?

[00:04:15] And this is genius too, of like, you’re keeping them on the app communicating, and then it’s like, this is our spot. Let’s do it. I think that is actually really, really genius. And then they’re masters again, always at design. So of course, on keeping your group in the loop, they’re like postcards, and it’s like you want to go back to it and see where you’re getting ready to stay.

[00:04:39] Sarah: To invite your group to a trip, you can send them an invitation, and they’re quite beautiful.

[00:04:44] Annette: Yeah. So I’m like, I want to go to Tuscany.

[00:04:46] Sarah: Well, it goes back to, again, experiences and if the experience can start at the time of reservation, and your friend–

[00:04:54] Annette: The planning, the hype phase.

[00:04:56] Sarah: The friend sends you that we’re going to Santorini, and you get this message from Airbnb, and it’s this beautiful postcard of like, this is where you’re going to be staying. That already gets people excited in their brain. They’re going to start thinking about how this app is delivering.

[00:05:11] Annette: It just goes– and then they’re helping them take better profile pictures, so that’s imagery. And then also where they’ve been with passport stamps. So it just goes back to Airbnb knows how visual we all are and how that helps in the execution of everything. So they’re just continuing to play on that, and I’m here for it actually.

[00:05:36] Sarah: Here are the updates for hosts. If you haven’t noticed yet, hosts, maybe some of you actually are mostly in your property management software, in your unified inbox, but if you’re still on the Airbnb app, messages did get a whole lot nicer. You can now have group messaging with the entire group that is traveling to your property, and when it comes to responding to them, you can, just like in a text message, double tap and leave a like or a heart.

[00:06:07] Annette: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:07] Sarah: For those Annettes out there who don’t like to chat with their host, but they want to–

[00:06:12] Annette: I want to be able to scroll through a note from the first chat to the final chat. Okay, when can I check in? When can I check out? What do I need to know? But I want to be the one to–

[00:06:18] Sarah: And you can acknowledge that you saw the chat without having to actually have a conversation. They’re also using AI to prompt responses to our guests which is helpful.

[00:06:28] Annette: I think that is going to be game changer, and they’re going to continue to just infuse that more. And then another smart thing is they’re just improving their reporting historicals, giving you more insight into your historicals.

[00:06:40] Sarah: The historicals is huge.

[00:06:41] Annette: Yeah. Deeper insights. And listen, this is something that– before, we would always tell hosts, like, always download all those historicals because they will go away, and you want to be able to track your year over year performance. And now they’re helping with that tremendously.

[00:06:58] Sarah: They’re also updating the profile for guests. And so profiles now feature tips for guests to capture better images as well as new travel stamps. So you can get a clear picture of where they’ve been, who they are. We’ll see.

[00:07:14] Annette: Yeah. At least they’re making that effort there. I feel like this was on the last update of having AI help with photo tours. I feel like they’re reiterating.

[00:07:24] Sarah: Yeah. It’s getting a little bit better. Although now when you’re in the app as a host and, say, you want to grab a picture of one of your listings. It’s really hard to skip through the photo tour to just get to a photo of your property. Also, if you manage or host more than one property, we used to have these nicknames because sometimes our titles, we change them all the time.

[00:07:49] They’re not really identifiers for our properties, and so we had a little nickname underneath it. In most cases, it was just the property address. Well, now in certain areas of the app, I can’t see the address anymore, so it’s really hard for me to go to the listing I want to share with the guests so they book something that’s more appropriate for them, or whatever the case is.

[00:08:07] I’m hoping that’s just a glitch and oversight in the updates, and we’ll get that back, but that’s also been a little bit of frustrating from the user experience. Here’s what does not change. Airbnb’s talent for keeping us in that app.

[00:08:22] Annette: I want to compare it to YouTube. So it’s time and app. They want to keep you there. That’s like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, all of it. And that’s why they’re like, let’s let the group message together. Let’s let the group plan together. Because the longer that we’re all on the app, the–

[00:08:39] Sarah: More hooked we get.

[00:08:40] Annette: Bigger the bottom line.

[00:08:42] Sarah: And I get it. First of all, I want to make this disclaimer that Annette and I will always and forever attribute where we are today to Brian Chesky’s idea of Airbnb.

[00:08:53] Annette: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. The user experience knocks it out of the park.

[00:08:58] Sarah: It really does. And how seamless it is when you’re in there. And I understand there are hosts out there who actually don’t want anything to do with direct booking because they make it so easy.

[00:09:09] But then time after time, especially in our mastermind, because we have a private Facebook group with all of our members in our mastermind, we see these hosts who were once experiencing an influx of guests from the Airbnb side who are drying up. And they’re doing all these things to try to “get a booking,” and they don’t have a website. They’re not on other platforms.

[00:09:30] And I don’t know about you guys, but I just got hit with the 15% host fee back in October. Annette and I actually just had a deal come across our desk to buy three properties, all in one, seller financing, amazing terms. But that 15% Airbnb fee really changes deals these days on top of interest rates already being high.

[00:09:50] Annette: Significantly.

[00:09:51] Sarah: It’s tough.

[00:09:52] Annette: And if you’re gasping, or whatever, Booking.com just announced their 15% across the board in Europe, so it’s–

[00:10:02] Sarah: Vrbo is still at 5%, I believe. So it’s like, wait a minute. Vrbo has been sleeping over here. The user experience is not as easy. It is, in my opinion, pretty darn clunky to navigate it. But 5%, let’s go.

[00:10:18] Annette: Right. If you haven’t checked out the updates, just do it. The video is entertaining to say the least.

[00:10:24] Sarah: It is. And the chat is really cool. Let us know what you think. Hit us up in our Instagram via our DMs. We’re always there. You can email us, hi@thanksvisiting.com.

[00:10:34] Annette: But make sure to call the Hosting Hotline. Leave us question.

[00:10:36] Sarah: Yes, go to hostinghotline.com. Ask your questions. If you want help with any aspect of your hosting business, we are here for you. If you have a question, that means there are other hosts that have that question. So you are honestly helping other hosts make their hosting business even better. If we don’t have the answer, we’ll get an expert on who does. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:10:56] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we’re–

[00:10:58] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:10:59] Sarah: Talk to you next time.