Airbnb’s Latest Tools: 'Guest Favorites,' AI Photo Tours, and more

08.11.2023 - 16:05 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal

Airbnb unveiled its biannual set of product enhancements Wednesday, and much of the attention will surely focus on new badges that identify customers’ favorite homes – “Guest Favorites” – and a tweaked ratings page. But hosts will benefit from several other features as well.

Among them, Airbnb said hosts will be able to create photo tours of their homes “in seconds” that are “powered by a custom-built Airbnb AI engine.” That tech uses some 100 million images to recognize photos and assign them to 19 rooms, according to the company.

Guests want to understand the layout of homes when choosing which ones to book, and this new tool will help hosts to organize them in a snap, the announcement said. There are glitches in any new tech rollout so one safeguard is that hosts will be able to edit their photo tours at any point.

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Airbnb will stick a Guest Favorites badge on 2 million of its 7 million properties — helping consumers to pick stays based on homes’ ratings. The Guest Favorites rate higher than 4.9 on average, Airbnb said, and reviews and reliability will be taken into account. Consumers will be able to filter searches for Guest Favorites, and Airbnb will display the badge in search results and on listings pages.

“Guest favorites have a superb record of reliability, with host cancellations and quality-rated customer service issues of 1% on average,” the company said.

Reliability in short-term rentals is a hot-button issue. Rival Vrbo as been kicking hosts off its platform who cancel too frequently without valid reasons, and the vacation rental company has been imposing stiff penalties.

In addition to the ability to create an AI-powered photo tour of their properties, hosts will be able to use about a half-dozen new features, including:

Airbnb is revamping ratings and reviews to make them more guest-friendly, the company said.

Among the changes, guests will be able to sort reviews by when they were written and by the rating score. There will be a chart to depict counts of positive and negative reviews, and there will be more information about the reviewer.

For example, reviews will describe how long the reviewers stayed at the property, where the reviewers are based, and the type of trip they took, including whether they traveled with family, another kind of group trip, or with pets.

We didn’t get to try out the new features in advance, but some things to consider:

The Guest Favorites designation may turn out to be a benefit to consumers, but it is also a marketing tool for hosts and Airbnb. More clicks on search results with those badges will likely turn into more bookings for Airbnb. Win, win? If 28% of homes will be designated as