Catherine Powell, global head of hosting at Airbnb, joined Cheddar News to discuss new updates for the home-sharing platform this winter, transparency in pricing and a new seamless process to become a host.

Catherine Powell, global head of hosting at Airbnb, joined Cheddar News to discuss new updates for the home-sharing platform this winter, transparency in pricing and a new seamless process and to become a host. 

Airbnb Executive Discusses Platform Enhancements

well, budgets are getting tighter and more people are looking at side hustles to earn some extra cash or Cheddar this past year. Airbnb is noticed that 30 million people have looked into hosting to create supplemental income and now the platform is announcing extra support for users looking to offer their properties on its platform. Cheddar news. Senior reporter Michelle Castillo talked to Airbnb Global, Head of hosting Katherine Powell about the new updates and what the company expects this winter. Take a look. Well, it's, we're in incredibly volatile times economically and more and more people are turning to hosting and to this opportunity to earn a really important incremental income. And since the pandemic, 60 million people have visited our host pages on our website and these are pages where you can learn about how to host. And that's why we've launched Airbnb set up. We want to make it even easier to be a host. And one of the great advantages with Airbnb setup is that we will match you with a super host. Super hosts are our best hosts. They've been on the platform for some time. They understand great quality hosting and we want to match every person who's interested in hosting with a super host in their area who can answer any questions they've got, which might be everything from how to design an attractive home to what the regulation and taxes in my area and they will take them through to the first booking. You know, that's a really interesting point as someone who uses Airbnb quite often? Sometimes those new listings kind of might scare some people off. Are you noticing that Airbnb users are okay going to a new listing that might not have that many reviews, interestingly we have a lot of hosts who are guests, guests who are hosts and great guests will leave really constructive feedback for our host and this is why we've got the option in Airbnb set up to host an experienced guest. So this is someone who's been on the platform for some time, has no bad reviews, no incidents. And we know that they will give a new host a great experience for a first booking and will give them really constructive feedbacks and tips on hosting. Now there are concerns about the recession and you point this out in an inflationary costs, it's affecting budgets, but are you seeing a decline this holiday season in the number of travelers than you would have expected? We've just had a really strong Q3, we have record income, record revenue, record guest arrivals, 90 million guest arrivals. So our business is really strong and even for Q four we're seeing continued trend in cross border. We're seeing urban continue to being visited but you know, we're cautious. It is a challenging time and we want to ensure that our guests find affordable listings that they need. We have listings at every price point on Airbnb if you want a private room, we have a private rooms category with 1.2 million private rooms that goes back to the origin story of Airbnb you can find that through to an entire home and we're seeing our guests travel as parties, 3-4 people or five people in a party where they can share the costs of a home which again makes it makes it cheaper. So we want to ensure that we are an affordable platform that offers value and so in the same sense we also want to ensure that our hosts have the tools to price competitively. Now one thing that I thought was really interesting was you guys recently announced you're simplifying pricing so people know all their fees up front. So what was the impetus behind this decision? We heard loud and clear from our guests. They wanted transparent pricing. They wanted to know what price they were going to pay for their reservation. And so we were introducing this toggle where you will see the price that is the total price of your trip, excluding taxes throughout your search experience. So when you search, when you have a listing page, when you look at the map with you have a wish list you will see that total price that has all fees included. Now on the other side, when you made this announcement you also made sure that hosts made reasonable request for checkout, you know everyone's used to taking out the trash and maybe doing some other cleanup activities but what do you feel is reasonable and what you felt was crossing the line? We we expect our and hope that our guests will treat our hosts homes as their own. And if you leave your home for some time, it is reasonable to turn out the light to lock the door to take out the trash, hosts may have a hot tub, so it is reasonable to ask to put the lid on the hot tub before you you leave. What is not reasonable is to asked to vacuum the house to wash and dry and put away all the dishes and so we want to work with our hosts so that they understand what reasonable checkout requests are and that these requests are visible to guests up front so they know exactly what they're going to be asked to do at the time of booking and they can leave a review on that checkout experience afterwards. Now remote work is still popular but many companies are calling people back to the office. So I know that Airbnb had talked a lot about this live work remotely, has this affected your business now that people might have to go back to their home cities? We remain committed to offering true flexibility for our employees and that flexibility, The choice to come to the office if you need to come to the office or want to come to the office or to work remotely. And we've had 11% of our employees who have asked to relocate somewhere within the us and we also have the opportunity for employees to live in one of 170 countries for up to 90 days. And we've had hundreds of requests for people to move there. And I have, I mean I have members of my team who are in Argentina and in Mexico and we're seeing employees respond really well to this and we you know, we match this with important gatherings bringing our teams together, bringing employees together at key moments so that we can continue to connect something that is really important in a in a remote world. Now we're heading to the winter month at least in the Northern hemisphere and here in the U. S. Are you noticing any destinations that are really popping for people where they want to go? Especially at this time. It's it's great to see how people are inspired and how they're looking for travel through our categories. And we're seeing this winter that the most popular categories remain, It's always been a popular one is amazing pools, but also national parks and beach and beach front. So people are looking for sun and sand and water. Thanks there again, Airbnb is global head of hosting Katherine Powell with better news is Michele Castelli. Oh