Rooms: Airbnb announces new Rooms category, to offer more info about home-owners – Times of India

Airbnb is a US-based online platform to book short- and long-term homestays and experiences. The site has an option named Rooms that helps users to rent a private room in the host’s house. Airbnb is now making a bigger push into the Rooms category. The company has recently updated its blog post to announce that it’s launching a dedicated Rooms category. On each listing, this new category will also offer more details about the host that users will be staying with.
Airbnb Rooms category: How will it work
Users will now be able to select the Rooms tab on Airbnb’s website and app. This new tab will show a list of all the rooms that are available for rent in the location they want to stay. Along with the host’s photo, the company is also adding a section named “host passport” which will be available in the bottom-left corner of every listing.
Whenever users click on the passport option, it will reveal more information about the host. This info includes their ratings, reviews, and how long they’ve hosted on Airbnb. It will also include other information that the host’s chooses to share, which includes their interests, job, pets, key highlights about their homes, or the types of food they can cook.
Host passports will also confirm whether a host has verified their identity, email address, and phone number with Airbnb. The company also mentioned that every Room listing will even have other important information like — if the bedroom door can be locked, if bathrooms are private or shared, and whether someone else is staying in the home besides the host.

Airbnb Rooms: Importance
Airbnb is marketing Rooms as a cheaper way to travel. The company claims that this change will address the “current economic environment”. Airbnb also noted that more than 80% of private rooms cost under $100 (nearly Rs 8000) per night. Meanwhile, the average price of a room is around $67 (nearly Rs 5,500) per night. The company also confirmed that currently, around 1 million private bedrooms are available in the Rooms tab.

Other features coming to Airbnb
Apart from Rooms, the Airbnb platform is set to go through several other changes. These changes will include improved filters. The new filters will help users to switch between Rooms, even homes, and all other listings. Airbnb will also get a new price filter that will show users the number of listings that are available in the offered price range more clearly.
Moreover, Airbnb will also show more transparent pricing information and checkout instructions on listing pages. The company will also remove listings with “repeated low ratings from unreasonable chores.” To promote longer stays, the platform will also provide users in the US and Canada a buy now, pay later service.