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Airbnb rolls out a bunch of new perks for hosts • TechCrunch

Airbnb has more than 4 million hosts managing accommodations and experiences on its platform. Now, since it looks like it will drive more bookings, it’s getting more sought after. After the introduction a big redesign for the customer Earlier this year, Airbnb is now turning its attention to improving the experience for new and existing hosts. Today, it’s launching new intros, payment features, and improved insurance tools.

Besides, across North America, it is also rolling out the previously announced product. anti-party technology to prevent disruptive booking.

Airbnb’s moves come after posting growth last quarter, but it is doing so amid a host of challenges facing travel in general.

The world has moved from weathering the pandemic to weathering the economic crisis, and Airbnb has operated in the midst of hardship and hardship. Back in 2020, it was one of the first big tech companies staff cuts as it figures out how to run its travel-dependent business during the mass travel shutdown and quarantine in place. Now it has to think about how to make its tools and services relevant to a market that may not want to spend money on migration for other reasons: to be more budget-conscious.

With servers and hosting, Airbnb is turning that into a pitch to make more money.

CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky told us in an interview: “Today, just like during the Great Recession of 2008, people are particularly interested in earning extra income through organizing office. “That’s why we’re introducing an easy way for millions of people to use their home through Airbnb.” (If this sounds familiar, it is almost identical to his boxed statement on his last earnings call… but we’re pretty sure we talked to a real Brian Chesky.)

But it’s not a perfect science: last quarter The company says Night and Experience bookings are up 25%, with total bookings up 31%. But the current servers have complained about discount booking per server, partly due to the increased number of servers and partly due to the economic situation around the world.

Overall, Airbnb’s goal seems to be: get hay when the sun shines. That is, add servers now while everyone wants to try to earn extra income, so that the platform as a whole does not suffer from asset shortages in the future or face supply constraints, as is often described. describe.

However, he dodged the question of what that means for Airbnb itself, namely whether it will lay off or actually hire more people amid the current wave of job cuts that have left hundreds of thousands of tech workers become redundant compared to their Airbnb counterparts.

“We have 6,000 employees and we made $3.3 billion in free cash flow,” he said. “Over the past 12 months, we have generated nearly half a million dollars in free cash per employee. And we’re generating over a million dollars in revenue per employee. So we’re really skinny.

More on the new features below:

Server hosting

Airbnb launches a new workflow for easy integration New server last year. Now it’s adding a new feature to Airbnb Setup that pairs new users with a Superhost to guide them through the setup and hosting process. Airbnb says 1,500 Superhosts — people with at least 10 bookings or 100 nights, with a rating of 4.8 or higher — have subscribed so far as “Ambassador”. For context, Airbnb has 980,000 active Superhosts today; It will be interesting to see how many of them sign up.

New hosts who have just set up a listing can contact dedicated support via email, text, or video/audio chat — or can now match a nearby Superhost with a similar property type. on one’s own. Superhosts can be given access to listings to help edit them live.

It should be noted that the super hosts do not help out of their kindness; they can expect a slight increase in income from doing so, from $50 to $150 per host after the new host’s first guest has checked out.

Image credits: Airbnb

Server protection

One of the key factors in attracting hosts and rentals on Airbnb is protection, both in terms of who booked the room and what happens if something goes wrong. The first of these is receiving a tweak where new listing managers can now restrict initial offering to only experienced guests (who have at least three bookings and no have any warnings against them), instead of the vet after the reservation is made.

In addition, Airbnb is increasing the limit of AirCover — a program that protects hosts from damage introduced last year – from 1 million dollars to 3 million dollars. The new protection will also cover damage to cars & boats, pets as well as works of art & valuables such as artwork, paintings, jewelry and collectibles. assessed value.

pay

In addition to more features to help and protect hosts, Airbnb is also increasing its focus on hosts’ bottom line: how they get paid.

It is rolling out a new feature called Quick Pay in the US — developed by Airbnb itself — to pay out in less than 30 minutes for hosts who have signed up for a Visa or Mastercard payment method. The company charges 1.5% with a maximum of $15 at launch.

This method is much faster than Other payment system like a bank account or PayPal, it can take one to seven business days — and it looks like a repeat of an experiment from years ago to pay to select servers half the amount three days after the guest has booked their property.

Airbnb already has solutions for handling multiple currencies and payment methods, but Chesky said Airbnb wants to do more with payments.

“We are not a payments company but we process close to $400 billion through our platform in 220 countries and 60 currencies. We hold billions of dollars in custodial cash at any given time,” he said. “We also have money transfer licenses in every state of the United States. Payments is one of the most underrated core competencies at Airbnb and I think we can do a lot more with it.” He added that direct-to-account transfers, bypassing the card and thus charging the card, could be an area to explore.

The company is also thinking about better payment solutions in countries like India and Brazil, as well as other countries where it is more difficult to move money in or out. When we asked if this means a wallet in the future, Chesky said it’s “something we’re looking at”.



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