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Airbnb just literally dropped a bomb on the hosting community last week and a lot of people are freaking out they think the end of the world is here but what we're going to do in this video is explain what the update was why people are so upset about it but most importantly what can you do as a host today in order to continue to thrive and grow your hosting business let's dive into it so this is your first time joining us welcome I'm Katrina Michael

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Here and we are the co-creators of STR Wealth Academy please make sure to like subscribe and follow us on all social media platforms for everything short-term rentals Airbnb we've been in the industry for 8 years we've been able to grow and scale our short-term rental business to over 73 listings and going and helping 400 students be able to do the same thing so let's get into this video today this is sending shock waves across the entire hosting community

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Airbnb is pissed they are not happy and you know for good reason but I think this is going to be a really big update that they're going to have to do a lot of tweaks on so let's get into it so on April 11th I woke up and I got this email in my inbox so as soon as I read it I felt a little bit of tension in my chest because this was a major update and had some pretty big implications so basically said they've updated their offsite payment and fee policy so what

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We're going to do is we're going to take you guys through line by line exactly what this means and most importantly what can you do about it so essentially what's happening right now is Airbnb has gotten wise to the fact that a lot of people are using Airbnb in order to get a guest through to their property and then they're essentially collecting that guest data in order to remarket to that guest for future stays so they would come back and book direct which in

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Essence cuts Airbnb out of the picture they were seeing that this was happening so with this update they've essentially dropped the hammer to try to put an additional moat around their business model so that it's trying to make people even more dependent and even more reliant on Airbnb so let's kind of go through the policy line by line there's about six main policies uh that they're introducing here and at a high level we want to give you our perspective on it

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Our thoughts what we're going to really see happen and kind of maybe the reasoning behind it too but as Michael said even on the first line was moving current guests future ones or repeat bookings off of Airbnb so one of the biggest say maybe gaps or something that Airbnb has seen over year after year is that a lot of guests are actually starting to book direct so hosts have become wise started getting direct booking websites either if it's through

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Boostly or creating their own direct booking website they started creating this and a lot of people are driving these customers off of Airbnb so they don't have to pay these Airbnb fees but obviously this is how Airbnb makes money so they want to prevent this as much as possible said "Hey we found this client for you through our platform they need to stay here and we need to keep you know collecting our pound of flesh essentially." Well and to be fair I mean

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Airbnb does spend obviously millions of dollars on advertising and marketing so from their position they're essentially saying it's like well we are incurring a massive cost in order to get people to use our platform in order to send you the business so we want to keep that person's information and contact details with us rather than being able to provide it to you so for this first point here they're basically saying they're almost eliminating to this

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Extent where you're asking current guests to either extend their current stay book a future stay or have a repeat booking with anyone else other than Airbnb and they're not joking around here guys they're saying they either want to suspend or completely ban your listing if you break any of these rules so they're really coming in strong on this and saying "Hey if you don't follow this you're not even going to be able to be allowed on our platform anymore."

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Which as we know Airbnb is you know the juggernaut of short-term rentals where you do find quite a bit of the bookings 100% so that's the first part of the policy the second one is failing to disclose reservation fees at the time of booking now this is fairly big because if you watch some of our other videos we're big proponents of having you know pet fees late check-in fees early check-in fees and the most important thing with this is essentially what

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they're saying here is all of these prices now have to be built into your nightly rate which could be very significant if it's not properly done and it's not disclosed in your listing and it could also really reduce the amount of income that you could actually make if this isn't done properly and guys with this as well so point number two about failing to disclose this is probably one of the biggest ones on here because there is so much more that you

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can make on top of a booking and this is what is really frustrating as hosts I would say because you know there's let's say you want to have groceries like delivered to your house or like some kind of menu or something right you can't necessarily advertise that or include that in the rate because sometimes they don't even have a feel for it or something like that in there so it's a little bit frustrating and even on top of it so for pet fees for

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instance there's a certain way around that and the way we do it and a number of our students is we actually collect pet fees after because sometimes we have a lot of midterm rental bookings so what do we mean by that so it could be week to two weeks so sometimes multiple months and when you're paying at a per night rate for a pet that gets super expensive for uh guests coming in so we actually try to attract people that are staying longer to have a flat pet fee on

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that case but the Airbnb platform does not have that flexibility and so we that's why we collected it after now they're saying you have to have it up front else you can't collect it at all so this could be obviously very problematic for collecting additional fee income but also having the flexibility as a host to be able to negotiate or give incentives and discounts on this additional fee income which I mean to give you guys an idea

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like last year in our business just pet fees alone added almost $60,000 in total to our company so it's not nothing this is something that typically happens with Airbnb is that they will announce a policy they'll get a ton of backlash and then they'll come up with three or four different versions of it and then eventually they'll settle on the finalized policy so it's still early i suspect that there may be some leeway given here in terms of what the final

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version is going to be but it's still early guys so we'll have to take a look and see what happens from here yeah and in the point number two as well it talks about security to deposits so this is a massive massive point so it says failing to disclose a security deposit most hosts are not allowed to charge a security deposit is what it's saying and this is very very um well number one this is dangerous to even have this without a security deposit of anyone

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coming and we've been doing this for years and we coach and train our students to be able to collect this and this has been a really contentious point between back and forth with hosts and Airbnb for years to be completely honest they had already restricted it that you couldn't take it through the resolution center anymore that was an update we saw about a year or a year and a half ago and then now they're saying "Hey if you just do not disclose the security

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deposit at all you cannot collect it." So you're really flying blind on here and relying on Airbnb's air cover which is kind of a crapshoot as well right it's not guaranteed that they're going to you know pay you out for what your home is actually worth and the damages has what been fully caused so what's really important here as well is that you have to make sure you're an API connected software so in order to collect security deposits you have to be

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an API connected and approved software with Airbnb this is good and bad so us and quite a number of our students use an API connected software so it's a channel manager that directly integrates with Airbnb and is able to actually disclose what the fees look like and the security deposit before you book this is good and bad but part of it is when a lot of people have just one or two a lot of people do not have these softwares because they only have one or two

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properties that's actually the majority of listings on Airbnb so not a lot of people have these softwares usually you're going to see it when you're starting at scale or some of these businesses so it's kind of leaning towards hey if you're a business you can have this but not if you're a mom and pop only having one so if you're wondering what it looks like to be an API connected software that has a direct integration to disclose that you require

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a damage deposit here's an example right here where you can see this host actually requires a 500 damage deposit collected separately from the Airbnb platform and actually discloses it before you book so that's what Airbnb means when it's an API connected software so if you are using a channel manager that gives you the ability to have that direct connection with Airbnb the good news is that you can still collect the security deposit separately

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after the booking is made so that is still you know if you are a professional host that's in you're freaking out you're like "Oh my goodness." So the good news is you can still collect that which is going to be obviously very helpful let's keep moving through this okay now this is probably the next major announcement that's come out with this big policy change so one of the things that they're saying is asking guests or using any kind of contact or identity

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information in ways unrelated to her stay that compromise the quality of their stay that's very broad which is this is very loose language um I don't really appreciate this cuz it can be kind of twisted in any which way u but essentially they're saying here asking guests for contact information prior to booking okay if you're asking for like a phone number but that has been a rule it's not new you know they block out the phone number they will well the email

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rather phone number and email if you haven't booked correct right so you have to be very careful doing that already so that's not new trying to collect information before a guest books so the other thing that's obviously huge here is that they want to obviously limit your ability to collect guests emails because if you have their email well then you can directly remarket to that guest in order to take that guest off of Airbnb in order to book direct with you

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which again cuts out the middleman which you know Airbnb does not want and they want to have that control this is really big though because uh larger companies like SE what they were essentially doing was when a guest booked an Airbnb through Sonder they would literally require guests to download an app which would give all of their check-in details and they would have to give their contact details in order to get the app in the first place so Airbnb is

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essentially dropping the hammer on this saying "No all of the check-in details and all of the pertinent information that guests need in order to get to the property has to be communicated on Airbnb and cannot be communicated off of the platform." So what's really important about this guys is that essentially they're saying they want everything to happen through the Airbnb platform only they don't want any transactions they don't want any

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communication literally nothing to happen outside the Airbnb platform because they also just want to make sure that they keep their guests on there and only on there so let's go to point number four here taking people off the platform for feedback and reviews this is important in particular our business when you start to get to scale because we not only get Airbnb reviews we also you know request guests to do Google reviews or any kind of um feedback and I

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think this is so important for our business we make sure we get direct feedback from guests on Google and these other platforms so we can improve our hosting business but Airbnb says no you can only go through our feedback loops and what we have and that's really frustrating because Airbnb's review policy is quite stringent it's really hard to remove a review you know I don't actually agree with that at all because one of the biggest drivers we have for

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new people wanting to book with us or stay with us is through Google and that we've been able to I think accumulate over 500 Google reviews because we've asked guests to do this correct and this has been a major driver for new management clients for our business because you know when they go and search on Google short-term rental management company city name Airbnb management company city name and we pop up it's a major driver of business for us so

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obviously we're going to have to pivot and figure out an alternative strategy in order to keep those reviews coming in but like again you know like anything else you got to be able to pivot you got to be able to be flexible because you know since we've been in the industry over the last 7 8 years here it's a moving target and it's something that you got to stand on your toes for okay the final point here and we've already kind of touched on this again is

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basically requiring guests to use other websites or apps to physically access the listing now in our business we had used tools prior uh such as Autohost where you basically have guests complete pre-arrival requirements now as of right now we still don't know what's going to happen with these third party tools because they essentially built their entire business off of being able to have these services to get guests to complete pre- arrival requirements or to

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give contact information outside of Airbnb this is a huge blow to these third party apps like they've built their entire business around this right there's safely there's Truvy there's like where they collect security deposits or waivers like there's so many of these and it's a gray area right now a lot of people a lot of these third party apps are scrambling trying to figure out what does it actually because it's very loose wording as I said before

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right um but you do want to protect your property right when having either a waiver or damage deposit and of course you disclose this before this is the biggest thing is make sure you disclose this on your listing because that will be your first line of defense is having an other things to note or additional information as much time even just in the conversation when you're saying hey thanks for booking as you know we disclose you have to do xyz right just

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make sure you have your first line of defense so you can protect yourself when you just upfront and disclose it but it's kind of a gray area and I think there's going to be a lot of reiterations on this because there are lots of third party apps that require this but there's even some for instance like digital house manuals right that take you off the platform and Airbnb is now saying you can't have a digital house manual no no no you have

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to have it on the platform and only on the platform and that is a whole entire industry in itself too having these digital so long story short of it guys you can kind of see on here like this is really really tightening up all the restrictions around what you can do with a guest on the Airbnb platform which is very honestly kind of shocking to me in my personal opinion is a bit of overreach I understand why they're doing it but this I would say the penalty with

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it they're saying suspend and remove your if you have violations in this right so it's quite strict yeah it's not just even the listing it could potentially be your entire account if you have repeated infractions so in terms of what you can do about this here's the most important things to remember if you are using an API connected software that directly integrates with Airbnb you can still collect a security deposit separately

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after the booking is made so that can still happen other factors such as uh requiring guests to do ID verification or sign a rental agreement having background checks that's that's you're probably not going to be able to do that anymore unfortunately so yeah so it's a little bit iffy on those cases um like I said we're going to see some reiterations this is not I think fully going in until May 10th or 11th and you know I think a lot of feedback so Airbnb

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wants a lot of feedback on here they have like a suggestion area where you have it and it's going to be really important for hosts to speak up on this especially if you're protecting your property or if you're a manager i mean we're at 73 listings we're protecting other people's properties and doing background checks checking IDs this is huge especially if you have like the police involved with any kind of incident you always need IDs and thing

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is on Airbnb you don't get access to those IDs even though it's on the Airbnb platform you don't get access to it so we'll see how it kind of shakes out on it but those are some major updates the other ones I would say I mean it's going to be very interesting they're essentially saying you can't have even in your property certain like pamphlets or brochures to be able to do direct I don't know how they're really going to be able to control that but that's the

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level that they're doing in this kind of update that you can't even have a fridge magnet or anything like that they're saying you can't solicit to guests to book direct at anywhere yeah I think there's going to be a little bit of blowback on that uh as far as pamphlets and fridge magnets and stuff like that that's something we've been doing in our business for several years now and I think that's not something that's going to be easily monitored or sustained over

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the long term so again as a business standpoint you need to protect yourself and if this isn't a wakeup call for you to start going multiplatform if you're only listed on Airbnb you're introducing a lot of risk into your business because you know we've seen this time and time again and nobody thinks it'll happen to them until it does and then one day you can wake up and if they don't like you anymore you could be out of business just like that so what you can do from

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here is again make sure you have everything properly disclosed we're going to drop the links to the policy you can read it in full and really understand what to do but the second thing is you got to get multi-platform now okay so if you're just on Airbnb you for sure need to get on Booking.com you for sure need to get on VBO and direct bookings right but just be very careful how you solicit those direct bookings right make sure you have a Google

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listing make sure you have really good SEO you could have blogs you could have your own social media platform or you promote it like Airbnb cannot control those elements right and that's what you can control and start driving traffic to that 100% and that'd be the third point with this is again focus on what you can't control you or I or us we can't control what Airbnb is going to do next from here but what we can control is we have a lot of other tools and channels

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available make sure you're using those as much as possible because at the end of the day Airbnb is not responsible to make your business successful you are you are so hopefully you found those updates really helpful to kind of in our perspective into it again I think we're going to do more videos down the road of this to see what kind of tweaks and reiterations we're going to be seeing um but make sure you give Airbnb their feedback on it and I want to hear your

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guys' feedback as well like drop some comments here in the YouTube video down below i want to hear your guys' comments on these new updates and what you think will shake out from this so again guys please like and subscribe and follow us on all different social media channels and we'll see you in the next video we'll see you there