The Plus Program
Airbnb unveils new category of rentals rated by inspectors.
SAN FRANCISCO — Airbnb is dispatching inspectors to rate thousands of the properties listed on its home-rental service in an effort to reassure travelers they’re booking nice places to stay.
The Plus program, unveiled Thursday, is aimed at winning over travelers who aren’t sure they can trust the current rating system drawn from the opinions posted by past guests. The misleading pictures drawn by Airbnb’s rating system have become a big enough problem to spawn a website devoted to horror stories spanning from an overcrowded, dirty “hippy commune “in Pasadena, California, to a Paris vacation ruined in a moldy, bug-infested apartment.
“You realize over time that you do have to take more responsibility for your platform, you have to be hands on, you have to make judgments,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The hands-on touch built into the Plus program comes 10 years after Chesky and his former roommate started Airbnb in a San Francisco apartment in hopes of bringing in more money to pay their own rent.
Airbnb’s internal surveys have found nearly threefourths of the travelers on its service are willing to pay more for inspector-certified properties, allowing homeowners and apartment dwellers to quickly recoup a $149 fee to participate in Plus.
Human inspectors will review properties based on a 100-point checklist covering everything from the speed of the Wi-Fi to the comfort of the bedding. Properties that fail can still be part of Airbnb’s regular listings; the company will also offer advice on improvements to qualify.
The program will initially cover about 2,000 properties in 13 cities — Austin, Texas; Barcelona, Spain; Cape Town, South Africa; Chicago; Los Angeles; London; Melbourne, Australia; Milan; Rome; San Francisco; Shanghai, Sydney and Toronto. That’s a small fraction of the roughly 4.5 million properties listed on Airbnb in 81,000 cities worldwide. By the end of the year, Chesky foresees verifying 75,000 homes in 50 cities.