Airbnb Hosts Almost Never Get It Right. Here’s Everything Your Customers Really Want (An In-Depth, Practical Guide)

Born from equal amounts of experience and frustration

Charlie Brown
7 min readMar 15, 2023
Image courtesy of author. Bucharest, Romania

Despite my very public (and viral) breakup with Airbnb, I still want to write this guide. A guide to exactly what people want from their short to medium-term accommodation.

Partly because I’ve spent 10 years on the platform — the last 3 of which have been full-time — and thus I’ve stayed in hundreds of the things.

Partly because I’ve had conversations with hundreds of users and acted as a consultant for tourist boards about Airbnb and I’ve noticed the same issues come up time and again.

And partly because I’m beyond frustrated with how easy (and cheap) it could be to turn an Airbnb from meh to 5* with just a smidgen of thought and intention.

As more and more people use Airbnb and similar platforms to go on vacation, business trips and to live in, it’s time to address the elephant in the room.

Most Airbnbs aren’t that great.

But they could be. It doesn’t even have to cost that much to fix.

This is a practical guide as to how.

Above all, get your basics in…

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Charlie Brown

Writer of opinions. Wine & food pro. Editor of Rooted, a boostable Medium food & drink pub. Niche-avoidant. Also at thesaucemag.substack.com