Airbnb Changed the Rules. Amex Picked a Side.

0:20Hey, hey, hey. Happy Wednesday. You know, it doesn't have the same ring yet, but we'll get there. We'll get there. Uh, it is, it's still a work in progress for me over here, figuring out the Wednesday podcast after six years on Monday, but you know, new traditions begin. So, uh, excited to, to figure this path out. How are you? Good. So I I'm going to try to play Brandy and I'm Jamie Lane. This is Michael Gordon. We're the hosts of good morning hospitality. Nice job, Brandy. nice job but yeah uh was off last week uh in puerto rico for my wife's birthday and our anniversary and then took the kids camping this past week in our first cub scout camp uh which was uh a ton of fun nice we've we've been exploring joining the cub scouts has it been been a good journey this is our first year um i went all the way through it i started in in lions and got my eagle i did that whole thing so it's it's fun like i hadn't been to this camp in 30 years uh camp bird adams and it was fun to sort of reminisce on the old uh the old days ground yeah yeah i i never did it but my son is a lot more like building and outdoorsy and all of that than i am so yeah we'll probably give it a try in the next year or so yeah and just get i'm giving a five-year-old a slingshot archery going fishing like and it was not things that we would do in our normal weekend uh and we do some of that already down here in alabama yeah but uh not a lot of opportunity for archery in the city yeah i get that probably probably for the best.

2:14Yeah. Yeah. So you want to jump in? I feel like we've got a huge topic and a lot of things to discuss. There have been so many opinions. And if you're following LinkedIn, if you're following Reddit, if you're following Twitter, I've gotten calls from my mom. I've gotten calls from my uncle. Hi, Jenny and Alan, who I told to listen, mom, for my opinions on this topic. But it feels like everyone has an opinion on Airbnb's new rules. Well, I mentioned it last week, and I think this is just a new normal that we're going to have to get used to, which is the rate of change is going to continue to accelerate because the OTAs are trying to figure out their path in the future with, with these new LLMs and agents.

3:09And it's not their playbook they've run the last 10 years. And so I think a lot of the changes will come back to that. Um, some of them don't, some of them are, are probably honestly for the better for most people, uh, and the people crying a foul for some of them might be more of the long tail hosts where the professionals are already say cleaning the house. But then some ID changes we'll get into, I think are pretty bonkers. Yeah. So let me do a quick rundown through the changes because they're a lot. So what's changed? So this impacts reservations happening after November 20th. So we've got about three weeks until the change going to a place.

3:57Airbnb now offers seven standard house rule categories. So maximum overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, photography, and locking up at checkout. So all other instructions go into requests. So Airbnb says that these are things that guests are encouraged to respect. and in general, hosts cannot ask guests to perform substantial cleaning tasks, including washing and putting away dishes, stripping beds, starting laundry, taking trash off site. They can request simpler actions like leaving dishes in the sink, gathering towels, or separating waste into designated indoor bins. They have to be disclosed before booking, and they cannot introduce new requirements through messaging signs or conversations.

4:51And they cannot impose their own fines or restrict access to advertised features. And some of the more controversial things, I think, for professional managers, you cannot have separate contracts except where legal or community or your OCHOA designates it. and you cannot collect additional personal data. You cannot have someone give their ID, whether it's through an app that you collect that ID through. You cannot have sort of information collected through Wi-Fi to get access to that Wi-Fi. That's a big one. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big one. And there's a few exceptions, Airbnb Lux, monthly stays, things like that.

5:52But in general, that's a rundown of the changes. There's also, and we'll get into it later, and Airbnb will now mask the guest phone number coming up. So the Airbnb host will not get the guest's actual phone number and the guest will not get the host's actual phone number. And we can talk about the sort of wins for guests. We can talk about the wins for hosts from all this, and we'll talk a lot about the pushback and maybe some of the overreach. But before we get into that, I got one question before we get into Brandy's thoughts on all of this, which we'll hear for the first time as well. So we're excited to get into that.

6:39Some of this still is a little opaque for me and maybe you can clear it up or maybe it's just something we'll have to do more research on, but you can't charge fines. So what if someone smokes in the unit and you have a smoking fee? What if someone brings a pet and they weren't supposed to bring a pet? And what if someone does a late checkout and they aren't supposed to do a checkout. Like, are those fees still blocked? Can you get your listing taken away by charging a fee? No, from what I've seen is that for the rules that Airbnb is allowing those seven rules, like Airbnb will help enforce those rules, whether through additional fines, that's what air cover is meant for.

7:24And so if someone's smoking, and now you've got to get it and fumigated to get all that smell out, like Airbnb will input, you send the receipt and Airbnb will, will, will charge that guest for those fines. So my understanding is for those things that are allowed, you're allowed to charge like, um, and then for additional things, like, and I stayed at a property professionally managed one, and I had a list of all the things that if I did not do on their list, like if I did not clean all the dishes, if I did not strip the beds, Each one of those came with a fine for me if I didn't do them. So that would be not allowed.

7:59Love that that's going away. One that's not under those seven rules that you said is a late checkout, not leaving early. That costs money, especially on a turn day, like a lot. And it costs guests reviews on the next guest who's trying to check in on time and will be late. So I think we'll see this continuously evolve. But first, let's get some Brandy thoughts. Yeah. Hey, guys. I am so sad I'm missing today's episode. As you can tell, I am in the airport. Or maybe you can't tell, but I'm in the airport. And it's like 530 in the morning. I have a flight today. And I'm sad I'm missing a chance to really rant about these Airbnb changes.

8:44You know, in an effort to kind of keep this short and sweet, not being able to have Wi-Fi portals that require an email login, not being able to check guest ID, huge. The phone number masking, rental agreements, all of these things are huge ways that you have to change your operations around Airbnb-specific guests. And I think if you look at, let's say, the Wi-Fi portal floor example, if Airbnb is a quarter of your bookings, are you now changing the operations of your home for a quarter of your bookings, it just like, it really throws again, another wrench into how are we operating? I think the bigger picture is that these OTAs know that there is this kind of, with AI, this maybe more democratization of how all of our listings get out there.

9:34And this is a real clamp down on controlling the guest and controlling the guest experience, which I think is interesting from Airbnb's perspective, like Airbnb really wants to control the guest experience and they don't control the product. And I think the big issues, phone masking, the wifi portals, and that not being able to like digitally verify IDs. That one actually to me is the biggest because we're at a hotel. We don't have like a centralized front desk where you can physically check things in person. A lot of these businesses are very geographically diversified. So how do you ensure that you're managing the home on behalf of an owner and also the protection of your employees?

10:17How do you verify that that person is who they say they are? Personally, I know you can forge Airbnb accounts. I've literally seen it, experienced it happening. So I think all of this comes down to, again, don't rely just on Airbnb. This is another strong case for channel diversification and figuring out your direct strategy. How do you adapt to the, you know, onslaught of AI technologies that are going to help get your product out there? Michael, this is a great plug for Kismet. You know, and Ferbo must be thrilled that Airbnb is coming in with like another bombshell. Because again, this is like not a lot of warning.

10:58You know, the phone mask, phone number masking was supposed to happen in December. Now it's happening now. So like that's a huge scramble of like, how do you prepare, especially a large business to handle that? And again, this is like the whiplash of like, how are we just going to have to keep like whack-a-mole-ing these changes that the OTAs are making? And unlike Verbo's, which was a commission change that I think you, I mean, had to have seen coming at some point, these are like operational changes. And it really impacts how you run the business day to day. So I'll leave it at that. I'll let you guys argue about this.

11:34I think we're all going to agree on a lot of things. And I wish that I was there to get feisty with you on air.

11:45So I love it. I think she did a good job of encapsulating the changes and some of the challenges operationally. And Airbnb rolled all this out at the same time. And some of them are for the guest benefit. The example you just gave, a fine for not putting the towels in the laundry, that's for the guest benefit. I think everyone understands that's probably good for the traveler, which means the traveler has a better experience, which means better ratings, which means for Airbnb, the guest comes back to them. But a lot of these changes are for Airbnb to protect their relationship with the guest and ensure that you do not have a relationship with the guest.

12:29the, the wifi portals to Brandy's point. If you use one, how on earth are you going to turn it on or off based on which channel the guest comes through? Do you just turn off wifi for Airbnb guests? That'd be, that'd be pretty crazy. Uh, you want them to be able to have, uh, access to the internet, but at the same time, like you don't want to shut it off for the other 75 % of your bookings where you're not only capturing traveler guest data, the booker data, but also their guests' email addresses. And those we see time and time again at Kismet, those can be turned into bookings themselves. So they don't have to be the primary booker.

13:14I think the fact that they don't control the products, but are trying to control the product all the way down to such a granular level is going to be a challenge. And we've heard people over the past few weeks, really seven to 14 days screaming at the rooftops, a handful in particular. And a lot of it's right. I don't know when the point that people start taking their listings off because a lot of these changes are fine if you're a single host. If you're a professional manager, these are pretty tough things to swallow. So let me break out that distinction because for a lot of the individual hosts that I've been hearing from, it is about the dishes.

14:00If you've got a 10 plus property that has five bedrooms at the beach and people are staying for the week, they're doing the dishes every day, they're loading the dishwasher, they're running it every day. Now, all of a sudden you can't ask them to start it one more time before they leave. like, how is that not a reasonable request for a guest when they're already doing it? If you're in a rural property and it may be one or two days before the cleaner comes out there and to ask that they don't leave dirty dishes in the sink and that they clean them so that an ants, rodents don't come in. Like that is a reasonable request for a rural property in my opinion.

14:40And I think a lot of hosts are arguing that and that is where it's rubbing them for the wrong way. And then for a lot of professional managers, and it's clearly not about the dishes, right? They are doing guest verification. They have safety rules that their insurance companies require that them to disclose to the guests and get them to sign off on. Like they're worried about sexual exploitation and who's actually in their properties and that But a part of the service that they are providing to their owners is that they are verifying the identities of these guests. And they are sex trafficking that they are making sure that what the property is being used for is for what those owners are wanting to rent out their properties for.

15:33And the safety concerns are real. Like Airbnb clearly called out that you cannot have additional rules. and sort of labeled at your property. And a lot of those rules are very safety oriented, like what you can do in and around the pool, what you can do in and around the hot tub, like what are the issues? Like if you've got trails on property, if you've got access to a lake that you are making sure you're covered in terms of liability and I'm sort of where the gray line is between a house rule and a property rule that is meant to protect the guests and is not clearly defined out. And I think Justin Ford has been very vocal about that on socials and wanting clarification.

16:20So I think that's some of the things I've heard. I agree with you, Michael. It is somewhat about control. A lot of these things that hosts are making guests go through, it is about being able to remarket to them, right? And so many people like, oh, one of the easiest ways to get your guests' identities is require that they fill out a contract and fill in their name, phone number, and email. You know who has Wi-Fi portals? Thousands of hotels that Airbnb is signing up. And the reason why they do it is because if someone books through an OTA and okay, now if you want free Wi-Fi, Like you got to give me your email because I, and we want to be able to remarket to you.

17:11We want to get you a part of Marriott Bonvoy. And the fact that Airbnb is allowing hotels to continue to do that where Airbnb hosts are not. And I think it, it shows what they think about the professionalism of the average host that they're not allowed to. It shows who they think they control. And I want to pull a quote that Marilee gave in a Skift article. Airbnb is trying to solve problems created by a subset of amateur hosts with rules applied across the entire platform. It risks alienating the professional operators that provide so much of its high quality supply. I think that perfectly sums up the description, the argument that's going on.

17:58Professionals aren't arguing about cleaning the dishes in the sink. Professionals need to make sure they're providing a safe experience. They need to know who's going in the home for many, many reasons. And then yes, they want that guest data. So then they can remarket to them, provide a good experience, a specialized offer to them the next time they come back. And I mean, we'll see how this plays out. You can see it from the guest side though of like, all right, I booked this property. Let's say when I book a Sonder property, now I have to, they make me download the Sonder app. I've got to go through the selfie guest verification.

18:43I've got all this work. And then I book another property in the same building I'm managed by an individual host. And I don't have to do any of that. And the consistency of what I have to do across different listings and Airbnb wanting to, and sort of create consistency for guests, Like that is a noble thing to want to have for that guest experience. But for a lot of operators, I think that crosses many lines on what they can do. Yeah. I mean, that guest portal or in-app check-ins, I think that was a 2025 change that you couldn't force a guest to do that. I agree that it is an experience that maybe I wanted in-app because I go to the same building or the same brand over and over again.

19:30But there is a line, and I think guests probably want to know who they're staying with as well. So the other big news coming out of Airbnb this last week was their partnership with Amex. We love talking about B2B deals, and this is probably one of the biggest B2B deals out there. I'm credit card and loyalty are big ones. So the headline Amex says that now a million or over a million Airbnb homes are now bookable through Amex. You can now use your Amex travel or lodging credit for Airbnb Luxe homes. So you get$600 to spend on lodging. The Airbnb Luxe homes are now bookable. And this is a pretty big partnership announcement.

20:32It's a good one out of the gate for Airbnb. Historically, to give context, Amex had direct relationships with a number of well-known and bigger brands within short-term rentals. But this takes their supply, to Jamie's point, over a million. I think you shared some numbers ahead of time that were 1.2 to 1.5 of swag. But the exclusivity is an interesting component because it seems to be blocking Airbnb from then going in and doing deals with other credit card or banking platforms. One, I guess for context, Arian Gorin, the CEO of Expedia, shared a couple of years ago So in their B2B bookings, about 30%, and this is a couple years old, 30 % of their bookings were travelers redeeming points, miles, etc.

21:35It wasn't a cash transaction. It was a points transaction. That's an enormous amount. And it shows how much the loyalty and the membership within all of travel looks like. but I suspect Amex is going to be maybe even north of 30%. Yeah. I suspect there's a lot of people that are now excited to be able to use their Amex points on Airbnb. And there's a lot of hosts excited to be able to capture those bookings. So I did, I pull some data. And because when I hear a million homes now bookable, I'm like, that's great, but there's 9 million Airbnb listings. What do you have to do to then be bookable?

22:21And I think it's most people, when they saw the announcement, they might've gone and checked their own listings. I checked mine. It was bookable. Linda on my research team checked hers and it was bookable. So did a deep dive on it. And so what it looks like to be able to appear on Amex listings or the Airbnb listings on Amex, you've got to have at least 10 reviews. You've got to be an entire home property and you've got to have a rating 4.85 or better. And then of all that, almost all the properties are either guest favorites or super host listings. So that's how, and Will, if you've got the graphic, pop it up, but that's how you get from the roughly 9 million listings down to about 2 million that are then eligible.

23:14And then we see about 1.2, 1.5 million listings on Amex. And then the other one is on Airbnb Lux. So Airbnb Lux has been sort of not talked about a lot lately. And the fact that the Airbnb or the Amex lodging credit can only be used on the Airbnb Lux properties. There are only about 10 ,000 properties in the Amex Lux program, so less than 1 % out of the total. So that is a very small percent that are now eligible for that. They're going to be booked up. Yeah. And yeah, there's all sorts of additional criteria. Someone actually has to go and tour and sort of certify that property that it meets the criteria.

24:08So you can see why Amex might be holding out for a bit more. But I think it does. And it's interesting, the gates and 4.85 on a review score, that's going to exclude a lot of professionally managed listings. And getting the guest favorites and super host badges is going to exclude a lot of professionally managed listings that are part of this sort of B2B agreement. Well, at least people don't have to go do their own dishes now if they're not booking with a professional.

24:43I want to go back. I saw a note from Jimmy Repp in here. Will, if you can bring that back up. So Jimmy says, hosts are confused and uncomfortable. Property managers and co-hosts are now left to be the educators to Airbnb's policy changes as it's left to Jamie and I as well. Airbnb continues to double down on how they partner with professional managers. They just had an event in San Francisco, and I heard people coming out of that event like, man, Airbnb finally hears us. They're on the pro host side. And then less than a month later, some of these changes come out. I kind of feel like you should talk with your hosts that are going out there, investing their time and money to go chat with you.

25:36I feel like you just got to roll that out then. Eat the frog. So it's tough to say you're pro host friendly and then things like this come out shortly after you spend a week together. Yeah. No, I think that, and one, the narrative probably would have been entirely different coming out of that meeting. The energy might have been a little different. Yeah. I talked with a lot of professional managers too, coming out of that. And they're like, man, like, and have a good taste in our mouth about Airbnb coming out of it. It does feel like they've made a lot of changes for the positive for them. And now you're hearing those exact same people sort of pushing back and, and, and yeah, it wouldn't have been all the warm and fuzzies, but it's been a real conversation in the room as opposed to not talking about maybe what would have been or what is now the elephant in the room about all these changes.

26:34Yeah. Yeah. Well, one last topic to cover on the hotel side, some pretty big naming updates. Best Western changes its name from Best Western to BWH, and now it's World Hotels. Changing parent company's names is not a wild concept or idea. We've seen it happen with Wyndham. We've seen it happen with IHG that used to be intercontinental. So I think this is a good change because Best Western has a lot more brands than just Best Western. But at the end of the day, I don't know how much this really affects the market. Yeah. And I sort of see it like the Facebook sort of announcement, like Facebook sort of launching.

27:36The new parent name is Meta. And it maybe more represents the entire portfolio of what you're building and world hotels. And maybe a lot of people don't know the name Best Western if they're booking one of the other brands and within their platform. And it sort of gives them a better sort of platform to sort of grow off of. So yeah, and it's an interesting change. Yeah, so Skift covers that there were in 2019 about 3 ,900 open hotels. And now there's 3 ,920. So having a brand refresh, I think is a good idea. Give it some new life, give it some new energy and excitement, put some polish on it and get back out there and sign up more locations.

28:35So I like it. I think we'll see. how some of the co-op members receive it. Cause I'm not sure they had a huge say in this. Members didn't get a vote on the change, but I can't see anyone being too, too upset with it. Yeah. And it's not like when you do a brand refresh and you've now got to change all your signage and you got to do everything like - It's not costing the franchisees anything. Right. And if it ultimately helps them show up better in AI or show up better on different platforms or allows them to maybe better market their listings outside the US or in. Like, great. Yep, move upscale or have new brands launched.

29:26So yeah, well, I have a feeling a lot of these stories we covered today, Jamie, are gonna be continuously evolving. We did see Vrbo walk back, rate parity, a week or so ago. I can't recall a time where Airbnb walked back changes, but I suspect they might walk some of these back. Wi-Fi portals being one of them. ID checking being one of them, but maybe not. I mean, they do want to control the guest And that is what is most important in this AI world. Yeah. I think ultimately if they can show that and show to hosts that guests now are booking more often and that the consistency of rules is actually leading to higher conversion rates and more bookings across the platform, you're going to get...

30:29And I have to believe that they saw the differences in rules and saw the differences in which properties get booked and which ones stay booked and that they've got some data behind and why they're making this change. and I haven't heard any and yeah, there's been like there's a change.org position and some people organizing but I haven't heard of anyone or any mass movements of delisting on Airbnb. People are generally and they don't like the rules. They're going to learn to live with them and they're going to have to make some changes of their operation and cleaners probably aren't going to be happy and walking into more properties where guests realize that they now don't have to do these things or maybe leave the dishes on purpose because they heard that they didn't have to do it.

31:26And I think most of my guests are still going to continue to do the dishes. I know I'm still going to continue to leave the property, leave the dishes in the same way I found them when I came to the property. And I think that's a reasonable expectation for most people. Yep. Yeah. Again, there's the arguments between what pro hosts are arguing for in these changes and what the long tail is arguing for in these changes. So we will be here. We want to hear your thoughts and inputs and any news that you guys hear on your own. Please chime in and let us know. But otherwise, fun episode. Yeah, we'll be monitoring the comments on LinkedIn.

32:10If you've got some some additional comments as you listen uh drop them in we'll we'll we'll we'll add in our two cents as well awesome well michael see you next week yeah uh anything big next week you around uh yeah well we got halloween this weekend so boys boys costumes have come in and uh they're excited to get all the candy what are your kids going to be um our three-year-old is going to be an astronaut and he put it on yesterday as the cutest thing in the world and then the seven-year-old is going to be riding a dinosaur one of those inflatable t-rex things so yeah so about you we've got two pikachus so two pikachus both kids chose the exact same costume and it's it's pretty cute awesome all right well we'll see you next week sounds good

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