Airbnb Suspends and Deletes Accounts - How To Prevent This From Happening To You

Okay, welcome back, everybody, to the Boostly podcast. Let's get the microphone up here. This is a live recording, a very special one because it's time to talk about Airbnb. They are actively going out their way to cancel and suspend listings and accounts. And this video is going to delve into a couple of stories, a host that's reached out to me and asked them to remain anonymous because they don't want this getting out, especially to reveal their identity. And we're going to talk to you at the end about how you can prevent this happening. So if you're tuning in with me live, or even if you're on the replay, leave a hashtag live. Let me know where you're in from around the world. Share your Airbnb horror stories below. And let's dig into this. Okay, welcome everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. And like we said in the in, in that little introduction video, share this in Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, we've got to spread the message around here because there are so many people, there's so many stories that I've seen, and I guarantee if I've seen it, there's loads that I'm not seeing as, as well. And this is happening more and more over the last couple of months. And what is happening is hosts are waking up and especially the host that maybe be over reliant on, on Airbnb. And all of a sudden they'll find that their account is suspended or even worse, it's been deleted, removed off platform, and they don't know what to do. And there's been YouTube videos about this, Instagram posts about this, there's been posts in communities, there's been posts on Reddit, there's been stuff in the actual Airbnb community pages as well. And there's something that needs to be done about this. This video, I hope, will be able to be shared with you if this happens to you. So you know what you need to do. And also as well, I want to give a couple of shout outs to a couple of other hosts that are sharing their experiences and what they did to turn it around. Share your stories in the comments. Has this ever happened to you? Has your account been suspended, temporarily suspended? Has it been shut down and deleted? And let me know what you did, because there's so many people that this is happening to. And this is why it's important, because even if your account is suspended for a week or for a month, if you can't get access to it, if you can't get access to the people that are booked with you. And if you can't potentially bring in new bookings, then your business is being harmed because of it. And even if you can get it back just like this host did, and I'm going to share like a story from some that was emailed to me and she still suffers from it now, is that this could really set your business back. Now, at the end of it, I'm going to show you how you can prevent it. Go down a couple of steps on how you can make sure that this won't affect you in the future. But this is why it's important to share these stories with you. So first and foremost, let me share my, let me share my screen. We're going to dig into the first one. So everybody please go and check out John Hildebrand. Go and check out his amazing YouTube channel, which is Hildy Holmes. He put a video out about a month ago where his account was suspended. Now, to give a bit of context around John and you know, you can go dig into his YouTube videos, there's an interview with Boost Lee. He's, he's now a client of Boost Lee, which is fantastic and glad we'll be able to help him. But John is a, an Airbnb super host. Not only that, he actually works as an ambassador for Airbnb. If anybody should have privy of being behind the scenes to see what's going on, it should be him. But even John was, was, was suspect of this. Let me just play a first little clip of his video that you can go and check out on his YouTube channel.

My Airbnb account was suspended, completely locked out, no bookings, couldn't do anything. Took me over a month and a half to get it back up. Then it got suspended again. So in this video, I'm going to explain all about what I learned. So if you're an Airbnb host.

So as you can see with this, John is an ambassador. He, he has access to people that he can talk to at Airbnb. And one of the reasons why his account was suspended, reactivated and suspended again was just some little tweaks behind the scenes that he didn't tick boxes. Now, there's a, as a. John goes on to explain in that video that he has discovered that Airbnb are actively going through, whether it's a bot or whether it's people, and they are cleaning up old accounts, unreactive accounts, maybe fake accounts, etc. For trying to clean up all of that. But in the process of it they are swooping up and they are removing actual businesses off there. And this happened to him and the sole reason was it was just a little bit of an administration issue in the back end that he didn't do. So first things first, how can you combat this? Number one, go and watch the video. It's 19 minutes long. It is. Got a lot of information in there. He explained the process that he went through. And then go into your settings and make sure that you've got all of the admins sorted. If you, you know, you make sure that all your taxes are all sorted and set up all of that on there so that they can't just remove you and say, hey, we thought you were in an active listing. So that's number one. Number two, we're going to showcase another one. Rafa Loser. Now, Rafa posted this up. Please go follow his account. As you can see, it's Rafa underscore L0ZA Rafa posted up a couple of stories and this is a common issue, but it's happening a lot now, unfortunately that the stories aren't there anymore. But you can still go and check him out and I'm sure there'll be a YouTube video coming around shortly with, with his views on it. But the simple fact here is that every host, every responsible host looks to protect their properties in any way, shape or form. You've got, in some instances, seven figure properties, sometimes it's not even yours. You know, you're doing the arbitrage or the management model and so you want to make sure that those properties are looked after. You want to make sure that the guests that say they're going to be staying there are the ones that stay in your property and that nothing else could happen in terms of break ins, etc. So to do that, you put security cameras on the outside of your property. Now you're never ever going to put them on the inside of your property, obviously, because that goes against every single T's and C's that are out there. But on the outside that is fine. And it is fine not only in your policies and your setup, but also Airbnb policies as well. Now what happened with Rapha is happening with so many people that I see. And Rapha was able to document this, document the pain point that he was going through. And also as well, he has come out the other end and he's got his, his listings back. But he was without his account for six weeks, a good six weeks, which again meant that he was without being able to use a market in channel like Airbnb in a very busy time, which was July and August, to fill up his, his properties. And what happened was that a guest complained to Airbnb that the place that they were staying had a camera on the inside, inside of the property. Now, this is false. False, because it's, it's not the case. It was on the outside. And he has proven this. He proved it with document and every single aspect of his business and his listing. But Airbnb didn't reach out to Rafa like what a normal partnership is, what they keep saying partnership would do. They would normally, you would reach out and say, hey, this has been a complaint. What can you prove otherwise? They just suspended his account, delete his account, got rid of it, suspended, couldn't get access to it. Now, luckily, Rafa is a detailed person. He has detailed every single part of the property. He showcased everything and he was able to send proof. Now, when he first contacted the rep, the rep was somebody who didn't really know what they were doing. The problem when you're a company like Airbnb and you grow to the scale that they have done and they have to hire and hire and hire and higher and higher is the more that you grow and the more that you scale, the less that you hire a players. And you know, as a, as a business owner, myself, and we're growing ourselves, like we're always looking to hire a players, but as you get to the level of Airbnb, you're going to start hiring maybe CD or E. And unfortunately, when you call these companies and everybody's got a horror story on this, just go to the hospitality community and look at the rants. When you have to contact these companies and speak to a rep@booking.com or rep@ Verbo Expedia, Airbnb, more often than not, you're speaking to somebody who's not properly qualified. They've never been a host, they've never been in property themselves, they've never been in hospitality, and they're literally reading from a script. And so when Rafa comes to him and says X, Y and Z, first and foremost, they just say the same thing you say on a script, send it in on an email. So they send it in on an email, but when you do that, you then join the massive backlog of emails, the millions of emails that Airbnb must get on a daily basis. And so when they said, hey, we're going to deal with this within X amount of hours, it wasn't dealt with. If it wasn't For Rafa consistently having to go and chase them up, chase them up, chase them up, keep showing and saying, hey, what's going on here? Utilizing his, his team of virtual team members to chase them up and chase them up, he was able to get it back, but it wasn't for a very long time. Now, in this game, especially in peak season, and if you're relying on, you know, one source of traffic for your bookings, and if you're doing the, you know, the arbitrage model or whatever model where you've got bills to pay, you've got staff to pay, and you not getting new income coming in, this is really going to affect you in the short medium and the long term as well. So what happens to Rafa? You know, he has got his listings back now, but this has happened to so many people now. If this has happened to you, leave a comment below. Whether it's on the live or on the replay, let us know your experiences because it's time to start calling them out on here now. The main lesson to learn from this, John's lesson. Make sure every single little thing behind the scenes is up to date on your Airbnb. Make sure that all of your settings and all of your business information is up to date with Rafa's lesson. Make sure everything is documented on your properties. Make sure you have proof that you can send in at an instant, but also keep chasing them up whether it's you, you know, and ideally not you remember who, not how. That amazing book that we keep talking about, if it's not going to be you, have a team member do it. Have them as their sole KPI that, you know, that their sole job and their sole focus is to make sure that they, they read it and they deal with it. Okay, so I'm going to move on to the next one now. And this one, no, it's sent to me anonymously. I'm not going to share who sent it in, but it is a bit of a crazy story and again, it just goes to show how little Airbnb are treating hosts like partners and just treating them more like a number. So this host got in contact with me on an email recently and, you know, she shared her experiences with Airbnb and again, she said she asked not to be named or anything like that. And I said, yeah, sure, no problem. So here we go. So here's the story and you can read it with me. I've just taken it from the email and I've put it into a Google document. So a guest made A booking and a guest claimed that I didn't allow their service animal. So a service animal like guide dog etc and then to stay with them. So they, the guest never informed the host that it was going to be a service animal. And Airbnb, without talking to the host through them off Airbnb basically suspended, deleted their account. This host had been a super host for two years straight and not only did they suspend them, they cancelled all their future bookings and future guests as well. So they cancelled the guests. She was instantly inundated with emails from guests asking why they had cancelled on her, but she couldn't respond because Airbnb had them blocked. So after 48 hours of reaching out to all my guests by text or email and she made sure that she got so she was doing the right thing. She made sure that she got all of the emails via her property management software and she got all the text numbers. So this is another big thing. Make sure that if you are going to use Airbnb, make sure if you are going to use booking.com or Verbo that you're connected via a PMS property management software. Property management software, uplifting guesty, etc, etc. So she was able to reach out to her guests. The the senior Airbnb associate who only worked 1am to 6am in her time zone decided to turn their account back on. So obviously after 48 hours there was like a little internal discussion. They looked at it and said, hang on a second, something's gone awry here, we'll turn her back on. Then the host asked Airbnb to reinstate the bookings, reinstate every booking that they, they canceled and they said they wouldn't do that. So the host had to go and recover over $20,000 worth of bookings herself. Now, what she did is what everybody should do. So she convinced the guest that, you know, she wasn't a lunatic, wasn't a serial killer and it was only a dog issue. And she told them the whole story. But by telling the whole story, she was able to cover all but three guests and Airbnb didn't help in any way, shape or form. And again, this is like, this is one message. It's crazy message, a crazy story. And she's got, you know, PTSD over this now. Obviously not back on on Airbnb. Luckily she is going down the direct booking room. But for a lot of people to have an experience like this, you just won't come back from it. And a lot of people wouldn't have the, the sort of the foresight or the knowledge to, to make sure that you've got a system in place, a blueprint in place like a pms to make sure that you can deal with it. So my tip with this, number one, make sure that if you are going to be listening on these platforms, make sure you've got a strong PMS that when a booking comes in, you're instantly collecting the data, I. E. Text, ie, email. So if anything does happen that you can cancel the guest straight away. And this is another reason why it is important. Brand new update from, from Airbnb on the host cancellation policy. Now there's been a lot of videos on this. I'm going to share with you a YouTube video. You can go see where they dig into it in a bit of detail. But everybody will know about the new host cancellation policy, something that they're bringing in as of now where cancellation fees. Now cancellation fees or canceling a guest isn't uncommon. Anybody who's had to deal with booking.com in the past, you'll know that this is, this is a, this is something that we've had to do regular. If for whatever reason you have to cancel a booking on, on booking.com then you need to then find them a place to stay, etc. Etc. But Airbnb are going a step further where they're going to be imposing fines. Now what's really important here is that number one, never ever, ever cancel an Airbnb or an OTA booking. Never. Be it. You be the person who cancels. It always has to be the guest that cancels the stay. And obviously there's going to be circum circumstances that you're going to have to cancel. It could be for whatever reason, could be an issue with the house, it could be personal issues or whatever. Sometimes you're going to have to do it. And instead of going through the platform, Airbnb, for example, you got to go direct to the guest. You've got to, you know, humanize, explain in full what's happened and ask them to change, not cancel. And if, and if they, for whatever reason can't change, you say, listen, really apologize. But we've had to do this. Can you just go, we can't do this. Can you just go and cancel your booking on, on, on Airbnb, you know, you can go a step further. Just say, hey, just to, just to say sorry for this, for this circumstance, we'll be able to give you x could be $50, $100, whatever in petrol vouchers or whatever, Amazon or whatever Just say, we'll do your best to try and find you another place to stay. You can reach into your local community, into your local network, but be human with them and get the guest to cancel. There's no ramification for the guest. There's no financial fees that the guests will have to pay, especially with the new commission model rolling in from Airbnb where they're going to get everybody on a flat 14 rate commission, where the guest doesn't have to pay a service charge. So there's no financial ramifications for them. It's just the only thing that they'll have to do is find a new place to stay. And if you offer that support and help, it's a lot beneficial than you canceling that booking on Airbnb because number one, they're now going to fine you. And depends on how much it could be, it could range up to a thousand dollars, which is ridiculous. And also as well, the thing that they're not talking about is that when you cancel a booking on Airbnb, your super host status is pretty much going to disappear and they'll pretty much ghost you on the platform. They don't want host canceling stays. This is why they're bringing in these new things. Now, if you want a video that goes into a bit more of a deep dive onto this, then go and check out the the real estate Robinsons. I'll just bring up the screenshot on here. The video is titled Airbnb will suspend your account if you do this. It's a 15 minute video and I love these two. Their videos are always entertaining, they always keep me tuned in. But this digs into some, some really good examples of how they may use that. It's over on YouTube. Go and check them out. All right, final thing, how can you prevent this in the long term? Well, number one, what you need to do is you need to treat the OTAs like they work for you and not the other way around. If you are over 80 reliant on bookings coming in from one platform, you are not a business owner. You work for that platform because if it's Airbnb, Brian Chesky is your boss and you never want to be in that position where you are always reliant on one platform for your income. So make sure, number one, get a PMS property management software. Number two, make sure you're spread in number of places, not just verbo, not just booking.com, not just Airbnb. Go and get furnish finders, go and spread your wings a little Bit more use that ICAL feature. Make sure that you are creating your own direct booking website and you are adopting your own direct booking market strategies. Now if you want a place to start, go and grab this. It's the book Direct Playbook. It is on Amazon right now. You can get it on Audible, Kindle and all that cool stuff. Coming very soon is the book Direct Workbook, which is going to be the workbook to associate with the planner, with the Playbook. Because there's so many tips, there's 101 tips in here and you've got to make sure that you're able to put it into practice. Go and do that. Go and be awesome. Stay proactive, never be reactive. And number one, go and make sure that your business is secure on all these platforms. Don't be in the same situation. Don't have that, that heart stopping moment when you wake up one morning and get an email from Airbnb saying your account has been suspended. So make sure you protect yourself, make sure you, you put the things in place. And then once you've done that, let's go and see how we can increase your direct bookings. Now all I ask for this, number one, make sure you go follow John Hildebrand, go follow Rafa, go follow the real estate Robinsons. Make sure that you like this video, you share this video and most importantly, share it in these Airbnb groups because they need to know this because there's so many people that are over 80% reliant on Airbnb for their bookings. We need to spin this the other way where it's 80% direct, 20% third parties and it can be done. And I know so because there's so many people part of Team Boostly who are doing this. So that's the end of this for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll be back again with another episode of the Boostly Podcast. As always, my name has been Mark Simpson, giving you the tools, the tactics, the training and the confidence to increase your diet bookings. And I'll be back very soon. Thank you. Thank you so much for checking out today's podcast episode. Now, before you head and go anywhere else, before you click to the next episode, please, before you do that, do me one big favor and go check out boostly.co.uk trust IPRAC are the sponsors of all of the Boostly content. And the reason why I work with them and the reason why we spread the message of IPRAC is that when a host or a company is looking to get more into direct bookings. The main question they have is around trust, as in will a guest trust that I am a true and real business? Will IPRAC take care of all of that? And they've got a special offer that is only available to Boostly people. But to do that you need to go to Boostly, which is b o o s tly.co.uk trust you can find out all the information there. You can book in a demo, book in a call, and then you will get your super special offer that is only available to Boostly peoples. Thank you again for tuning in. Do go check out iprac. We'll be back again very shortly with another podcast episode, but until then, we'll see you all very soon. Take care.