Airbnb Cuts Host Sign-Up to 10 Steps and Announces Two Flexible Searches (May 2021)

From the record. This is a look back at May 2021. The desk wrote it on 11 October 2026 from sources published at the time; Stay Gazette opened in July 2026 and did not report this as it happened.

On 24 May 2021, Airbnb announced what it called the Airbnb 2021 Release: more than 100 upgrades to its website, app, community support and policies. For the people who rent out homes, two changes stood out. The company said it had cut the process of becoming a host from dozens of steps to 10, and it announced two new ways for guests to search, Flexible Matching and Flexible Destinations.

Airbnb's newsroom page for the release prints no date; the publication date in the page's own data is 24 May 2021. That is also the date on the reports that CNBC and TechCrunch published, both of which described the announcement as made that day. Airbnb's letter to shareholders of 13 May 2021 had said the announcement would come on 24 May.

Brian Chesky, Airbnb's co-founder and chief executive, said in the company's announcement: “The lines between travel, living and working are blurring and we are upgrading our service to make it easier for people to integrate travel into their lives, and for more people to become Hosts.”

Two new searches and one that was not new

Airbnb presented three ways to search: Flexible Dates, Flexible Matching and Flexible Destinations. Only the last two were new that day. Flexible Dates, which let a guest look for a weekend, a week or a month in place of fixed dates, had been rolling out since February, the release said.

Flexible Matching showed homes that fell just outside a guest's search. Airbnb's example was a guest looking for a beachfront home with a maximum price of $250 a night, who would still be shown options priced just above that.

Flexible Destinations was for guests who cared more about the kind of place than about where it was. Airbnb gave three examples of what it would surface: ryokans in Japan, trulli in Italy, which the release spelled trullos, and castles in Spain. Travolution, reporting on Chesky's recorded presentation, said this search was due to go live on 30 June.

Listing a home in 10 steps

Airbnb said the process of becoming a host had been simplified from dozens of steps to 10, and CNBC reported the same count on the day. Software did part of the work. According to the release, computer vision models arranged a host's photos by their appeal to guests, and text suggestions helped with the title and description. In the United States, a link to publicly available real estate data filled in details such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Airbnb's pitch to anyone thinking of listing was speed. Of the new listings that were activated and booked in the first quarter of 2021, it said, 50 percent received a reservation request within four days of activation.

What existing hosts got

For hosts already on the platform, the release's highlights included four things:

A new home screen, a tab named “Today”, showing new booking requests, upcoming reservations, details of current guests and links to the most used host tools.
A faster inbox. Airbnb said messages loaded up to 10 times faster. Quick replies answered a guest's common question with one tap, and scheduled messages sent reminders such as checkout instructions.
A dedicated support team for Superhosts and Host Community Leaders.
Refreshed cancellation policies, listed with the changes for guests, which Airbnb said were clearer for guests and hosts.

Airbnb also said it was doubling the number of support agents in the summer of 2021 and expanding support coverage from 11 languages to 42. Travolution reported two dates for the Superhost team: North America from 30 September and worldwide from 15 December. Those were plans announced in May.

The trade site ShortTermRentalz, which put the number of changes at 103 where Airbnb said more than 100, picked out one more for hosts: an update that let them dispute reviews left by guests who had violated party bans.

Why Airbnb wanted more hosts

Airbnb's letter to shareholders of 13 May 2021, published with its first-quarter results, had set out the plan behind the release. It listed four areas of focus, one of which was recruiting more hosts and setting them up for success. It said Airbnb was simplifying the creation of a new listing from dozens of steps to 10 and would share that work on 24 May. It described the announcement planned for that day as the most comprehensive update to its service in 12 years.

The same letter showed where supply stood. Active listings in non-urban areas were almost 30% higher than in the first quarter of 2019, but the overall number of active listings and experiences was, in the letter's word, consistent with the fourth quarter of 2020. Skift reported on 13 May that the company believed it would be short of the hosts and properties needed to meet demand, above all outside cities.

Sam Shank, Airbnb's head of guest experience, told TechCrunch that the aim was to make supply both larger and more varied. He said Chesky's view was that Airbnb had the right number of hosts for the summer of 2021 and the capacity to add millions more.

What Chesky said to professional hosts

TechCrunch published an interview with Chesky on 25 May. Its interviewer put it to him that many of the new tools were geared toward individual hosts, and asked how Airbnb thought about features for professionals. He answered: “Individuals are the most important priority for us because we think that’s the thing that we uniquely do and really no one else does. That being said, I want all professionals to know that they’re welcome on Airbnb.”

He said Airbnb was working to improve the calendar and other products professional hosts needed. The interview as published gave no dates for them.

The interviewer also raised the tension between professional hosts and Airbnb over refunds during the pandemic. Chesky said he had overridden many of the company's cancellation policies in 2020 and understood why hosts were upset. He said he stood by the decision. Professionals were more upset, he said, because most individual hosts had flexible policies that did not need overriding. Then he put a figure on what the company had sent to hosts: “We took $250 million off of our balance sheet to send to hosts. It wasn’t enough to make them all whole.”

TechCrunch wrote that signing up more hosts through more automated tools carried a risk to quality. Skift, in the assessment printed at the top of its 13 May report, said Airbnb had reason to worry, because its effort to sign up hosts had been hard going over the previous six months.

The Gazette Verdict, looking back

This release was a recruiting drive, and a working host had reason to read it that way. Airbnb's own letter described its active listings and experiences as consistent with the fourth quarter of 2020, and Skift reported that the company expected to run short of hosts and properties. So the headline change was a listing process cut to 10 steps. The gain was Airbnb's first: more homes to offer in a summer when it expected demand to outrun supply. Existing hosts got new tools, a faster inbox and a promise of better support, with dates that ran to 15 December. The hosts whose cancellation policies were overridden in 2020 got an admission that $250 million had not made them all whole and, in the sources cited here, no new money. The lesson for a host: take the tools, and assume the platform will keep making it easier for the next host to list beside you.

The other side

A marketplace with more homes in more places draws more guests, and existing hosts share in that. The release gave working hosts practical things: an inbox Airbnb said was up to 10 times faster, one-tap replies, scheduled messages, a Today tab and, ShortTermRentalz reported, a way to dispute reviews from guests who broke party bans. Flexible Matching put a listing in front of guests whose filters would have hidden it. Flexible Destinations was built to show guests homes in places they had not thought to search. Chesky's view, as Shank relayed it, was that Airbnb already had the right number of hosts for the summer. And he said in plain words that professionals were welcome.

What it meant for hosts

For someone thinking of listing a home in late May 2021, the barrier was lower than it had been: 10 steps, with the bedroom and bathroom counts filled in from public real estate data in the United States.

For a host already on the platform, the practical changes were these:

Price filters stopped being hard edges. Under Flexible Matching, a home priced just above a guest's maximum could still appear in the results.
Superhosts were told a dedicated support team was coming, on the dates Travolution reported.
Hosts with unusual property types were promised a new route to guests through Flexible Destinations, due on 30 June by Travolution's account.

Professional managers got less: a welcome, and a calendar that was being improved with no date given. Every host faced the same fact. Airbnb had said in writing that it wanted more hosts, and it had just made joining a 10-step job.

Sources

Airbnb Newsroom, Airbnb 2021 Release: 100+ innovations and upgrades across our entire service (24 May 2021).
CNBC, Airbnb announces a big new update focused on flexibility — here's what's new (24 May 2021).
TechCrunch, Airbnb doubles down on flexible search, improves the host flow in preparation for summer 2021 (24 May 2021).
TechCrunch, Brian Chesky describes a faster, nimbler post-pandemic Airbnb (25 May 2021).
Travolution, Airbnb focusses on flexibility and simplicity in its 2021 upgrades release (25 May 2021).
ShortTermRentalz, Airbnb announces “most comprehensive” service updates (26 May 2021).
Airbnb, Inc. (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing), Q1 2021 Shareholder Letter (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K filed May 13, 2021) (13 May 2021).
Skift, Airbnb Posts $1.2 Billion Loss and Turns Attention to Expected Supply-Demand Mismatch (13 May 2021).

Airbnb Cuts Host Sign-Up to 10 Steps and Announces Two Flexible Searches