Airbnb’s move to obscure guest phone numbers with VoIP lines and use proxy emails isn't an accident—it’s a quarantine. They want to ensure that the guest remains their customer, not yours. If you rely solely on their platform for communication, you are essentially a ghost-host; you provide the roof, but you don't own the relationship.
To break this quarantine, you must treat the "In-Stay" period as your only window of opportunity. Once the guest is on-site, the platform's digital walls disappear.
This is where physical touchpoints matter. A QR code on the fridge that leads to a "Guest Feedback Survey" or a "Join Our VIP List" tablet in the entryway are your only ways to "onboard" that guest into your own database. If they leave your property without you having their real, personal email, you’ve lost the ability to ever market to them again without paying a 15-20% commission to a third party.
Topics: question=How did Airbnb's recent changes make it harder to build a guest database? • intent=OTA platform changes
