From a purely user point of view I wonder if they could automate this classification and let me use it as a search filter. AirBnB's compelling use-case for me is as a "paid couchsurfing": people renting out spare rooms in their residence, the whole residence while they're temporarily gone, etc. In many cities those are indeed the main kind of result. But in a few cities there are a lot of listings that are more like a commercial operator, depending on the location ranging from "DIY hostel" to VRBO-style listings. I'd rather just exclude those from the search, because I don't find AirBnB to be a very useful portal to that kind of property (most of the legit vacation-rental type stuff have their own websites where you can rent directly, and the "DIY hostel" stuff I'd rather stay away from). As is I have to spend a good bit of time manually trying to filter them out.
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From a purely user point of view I wonder if they could automate this classification and let me use it as a search filter. AirBnB's compelling use-case for me is as a "paid couchsurfing": people renting out spare rooms in their residence, the whole residence while they're temporarily gone, etc. In many cities those are indeed the main kind of result. But in a few cities there are a lot of listings that are more like a commercial operator, depending on the location ranging from "DIY hostel" to VRBO-style listings. I'd rather just exclude those from the search, because I don't find AirBnB to be a very useful portal to that kind of property (most of the legit vacation-rental type stuff have their own websites where you can rent directly, and the "DIY hostel" stuff I'd rather stay away from). As is I have to spend a good bit of time manually trying to filter them out.