Vacation rental company Airbnb has announced the launch of new features as well as product upgrades to drive more guest bookings.
The company disclosed the launch of new onboarding, payment features, and improved insurance/safety tools.
Despite recording up to 25% on Nights and Experience bookings in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022, hosts have complained about the drop in bookings per host due to the global economic meltdown.
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However, having benefited from the strong return to travel following the ease of COVID-19 restrictions, as consumers’ appetite for travel increases, the company is now turning its attention to improving the experience for new and existing hosts.
Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky disclosed that the company is doing everything possible to make its tools and services relevant to prevent it from facing supply constraints.
In his words “One of the things we’re trying to do is get more and more everyday people to put their homes on Airbnb.
“The more supply we have, the more guests we have. I think if we add more hosts, we’ll get more demand. One of the things I don’t want to do is get into a supply-constrained era. We are predicting a lot of demand, hence we are trying to get ahead of that.”
In addition to more features to help and protect hosts, the company is also sharpening its payments feature by upgrading how hosts are paid.
It is set to introduce a new feature called Fast Pay in the U.S, which is developed by the company, to enable payment of funds within less than 30 minutes to hosts who have registered a Visa or Mastercard payout method. The company will charge a 1.5% fee with a cap of $15 at launch.
This method has been disclosed to be much faster than other payout systems like bank accounts or PayPal, which can take from one to seven business days.
Also, Airbnb will pay super hosts who help first-time listers by offering a small percentage of earnings but however failed to disclose the range. Hosts can also choose to rent their first booking only to a guest who has stayed in at least three other Airbnb and has a good track record.
One of the gating factors for attracting hosts and hosting activity to Airbnb is the issue of safety, both in terms of who books and what happens if things go wrong.
With respect to this, the company is upping its damage protection rates to $3 million from $1 million, which will now cover boats, Arts autos, and other valuables at their appraised values.
For people who need to file claims, the company says it is making the damage protection system easier and simple.