My older sister Melanie is the sun the rest of my family orbits around. In a way, she's my family's Taylor Swift.
25.08.2023 - 13:51 / skift.com / Srividya Kalyanaraman / Catherine Powell
With no strict timeframe, this is what we can expect from Airbnb: A marketplace where hosts might pay to contract cleaning services, tax-inclusive pricing in places where it doesn’t do so already, an academy for hosts, and partnerships with destinations to promote tourism.
Speaking to Skift CEO Rafat Ali at the Future of Lodging Forum 2023 in London, Catherine Powell, global head of hosting at Airbnb, discussed the importance of hosting and her experience as a host. She highlighted the company’s recent product introductions, such as Airbnb Setup, which simplifies the onboarding process and connects new hosts with mentors. [See the video and transcript below.]
Powell also emphasized the power of the Airbnb community, with clubs and community leaders helping new hosts. She said that while the company’s focus is on individual hosts, Airbnb also works with property managers to ensure a consistent quality of experience for guests.
Powell also addressed the issue of unexpected fees, explaining that Airbnb has introduced an all-inclusive pricing option — excluding taxes — to improve transparency, and eventually may include taxes in a first look at a property’s price. Finally, she discussed a partnership with Visit North Carolina to promote sustainable tourism and host academies in rural areas.
Ali: Well, thank you, Catherine for being here. I interviewed you exactly at this exact conference last year in New York. You’re responsible for all the bile that the hosts put on Airbnb. So thank you for absorbing all the bile that hosts post … I’m kidding.
Powell: They put lovely things as well.
Ali: They are emotional and very invested in the brand, which is obviously an incredible thing. So you recently became a host.
Powell: I did.
Ali: And you have a house in Santa Monica Hills, which too if anybody of what’s happening in California, but you tell the story.
Powell: Yes. I live in the Santa Monica mountains and it’s pretty high, about 2,400 feet as they say in the US as opposed to 2,400. And it’s pretty remote. We have a guest house and I have wanted to host for some time. Being global head of hosting, I spend all my time with hosts, but I’ve wanted to host, but I’ve had a child, a son, living in the guest house. So I just took the decision to boot him out, which people always look alarmed. And it’s like, he’s not 12, he’s 27, and he has somewhere else to live. And so we just took the decision to boot him out, turn it over onto Airbnb. I then made my husband a co-host and he only discovered in fact that I’d put it on Airbnb by being notified by Airbnb that he was a co-host.
But he’s actually really embraced it, and it’s incredible. It’s very different, listening and supporting hosts, which is what I’ve done since
My older sister Melanie is the sun the rest of my family orbits around. In a way, she's my family's Taylor Swift.
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