I've been an Airbnb guest on 3 continents with good experiences. On 12 November this year, I became an Airbnb host by listing my beach pad for rent in Queensland Australia. What a shock. I am trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Christmas is mid-summer in Australia. With the southern states coming out of lockdown, and my area COVID free, demand for beachside properties on the Sunshine Coast has never been higher.

The first two bookings went fine. I was having a great Airbnb experience. Then the 3rd and 4th bookings came in at less than half price. I couldn't understand it because Christmas is the peak period of demand, and my new property was the only one listed in the area. All other comparable properties have already been booked for the Christmas-New Years period.

The support staff said the pricing was a result of "Smart Pricing". That's a "feature" that defaults to ON, along with Instant Booking, which means an algorithmically generated price was locked in.

But surely it's a bug to offer a price below the low season minimum for the busiest week of the year, which should rent for 2.5 times that price? And I had set a Custom Price for that week, which "Smart Pricing" ignored!

The support ambassador said she could see my point. She did a search for comparable properties and verified that mine was the only one. She agreed something had gone wrong, and said she would investigate.

I spoke and chatted with 4 different support ambassadors over 5 days. All were professional, polite, and agreed there had been an inexplicable mistake. At 3am on the 5th day, a supervisor unilaterally closed the case via chat, saying "Smart Pricing is based on the type and location of your listing, the season, demand, and other factors. For instructions on how to turn Smart Pricing on or off, visit our Help Center article. I will be out of the office from Nov 17-18. Should you wish to cancel the reservation or
need further assistance please know that we are here with you all throughout your Airbnb journey, please don't hesitate to reach out to us."

I didn't want to cancel because this is clearly a bug and I want Airbnb to fix it, for their own sake as well as mine and my guest. My guest over Christmas is an experienced Airbnb superhost, who agrees it is a bug in Airbnb's platform. She doesn't want to re-book either, so we agreed to go through the support process and get a correction. She hoped for compensation.

22 days later, we still have no resolution. 3 days ago, the support ambassador said the issue would be escalated to the Product Team, but to do that, she had to close the support ticket. She said if I wanted to know the status, I could call them back. I asked her which team is working on the problem. She said it's a secret.

I am not the only host to experience this problem.

The problem is evidenced during periods of peak demand e.g. Xmas-NYE in Australia and New York, Spring Break in Hawaii, Winter in Florida. Hosts report "Smart Pricing" has imposed the low season minimum nightly price or below, instead of a high season price.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Smart-Pricing/td-p/...

That's a bug! Hosts lose confidence in Airbnb's platform because "Smart Pricing" costs them money or administrative overhead at precisely the point when Airbnb should be delivering maximum value.

Surely someone at Airbnb can see the value in fixing this?