Airbnb 2021 Winter Release: What Hosts need to know

As living, working, and travelling blur together, new tech and new realities are fueling a travel revolution. People can now take more frequent and longer trips, visit more locations, and even live anywhere.

At Airbnb, we’re constantly evolving to help you host every kind of guest. Back in May, we rolled out over 100 upgrades to improve every aspect of Airbnb. Today, we’re introducing over 50 more.

We’re particularly excited to share the innovations that you, our Hosts, inspired—all designed to help make hosting easier. These include:

• AirCover, which offers top-to-bottom protection—free for every Host
• New pricing tools, such as the ability to add a pet fee
• A redesigned calendar that lets you customize your view
• Translation Engine, which will automatically make your listing and reviews available in 62 languages
• A tool to easily test and showcase the wifi speed in your listing

You’ve told us in listening sessions, during workshops, in the Community Centre, and through the Host Advisory Board that you needed more protection: What if a guest smokes in your space, and you need special cleaning? What if a guest’s dog makes a snack of your sofa, and you need to repair it?

You’ve also told us that the reimbursement process isn’t always straightforward, and it was stressful to get your reimbursement requests submitted before your next guest checked in.

We heard you, and we’re happy to share AirCover. In addition to $1 million USD in liability protection, AirCover expands the $1 million USD in damage protection for Hosts, with new coverage for pet damage, deep cleaning, and more.

Learn more about AirCover

Fine-tuning your pricing strategy can help you add value for guests and meet your financial goals as a Host. So, in the coming weeks, we’re introducing some features you’ve requested to give you greater control over your pricing and fees.

The new tools can assist you with three specific tasks: adding a pet fee, offering lower cleaning fees for short stays, and previewing the price guests will pay.

Learn more about these pricing tools

As a Host, keeping track of your bookings couldn’t be more important. So we’re changing how the calendar shows up in your Hosting view on Airbnb.com—and making some other updates—so it’s easier to navigate.

For example, we’re adding a feature that lets you show or hide key details like nightly price, promotions, notes about upcoming stays, and more.

Learn more about the calendar updates

Hosts welcome guests from all over the globe, and setting clear expectations is an important part of providing great hospitality. To support your efforts, we’re launching a state-of-the-art Translation Engine that automatically translates listing descriptions and reviews written by Hosts and guests into 62 languages.

Made exclusively for Airbnb, Translation Engine is the most advanced translation technology ever offered to our community—and it gets smarter with use.

Learn more about the Translation Engine

Fast, reliable wifi is one of the most searched-for amenities on Airbnb. Now you can test your listing’s internet connection from the Airbnb app—and once the test results are saved, your wifi speed will show up in your listing amenities.

For speeds above 50 Mbps, we’ll highlight “fast wifi” on your listing. With this upgrade, guests can book stays with the confidence that they won’t miss a Zoom meeting or their favourite streaming show.

Learn more about the wifi speed test

These changes are only a few of more than 50 improvements we’re introducing today. We encourage you to try each of the new tools and features and give us feedback on how we can continue to improve.