I’ve been having the same conversation with property managers for months now. Something has shifted with Airbnb, and it’s not subtle.
Recently, I sat down with Steve Taggert, who runs My Getaways, Brighton’s largest property management company. Steve manages just over 100 properties across Sussex, and he’s been in this business for more than a decade. He’s exactly the kind of professional operator Airbnb was built on.
Two months ago, Airbnb accounted for 35% of his bookings. Recently, that number hit 7%.
This wasn’t performance decline. This was choice. Steve actively moved his business away from the platform that helped build it.
The story of how we got here matters. Not just for Steve, but for every property manager trying to figure out what comes next.
This article draws on insights from a recent episode of The Check-In podcast, where my co-host Sarah Nan DuPre and I spoke with Steve about what’s really happening on the ground with Airbnb’s policy changes.
The Partnership That Built an Industry
Let’s be clear about something. Airbnb helped build markets like Brighton.
When Steve started My Getaways just over 10 years ago, the short-term rental landscape looked completely different. People were still using Owner’s Direct and subscription-based platforms. The booking process was clunky. The reach was limited.
Then Airbnb arrived and changed everything.
“Airbnb opened up a new way of people being able to stay in apartments or in houses with gardens and parking,” Steve explains. “It really was a home from home. That’s actually how it worked so well in the beginning.”
The platform didn’t just provide technology that individual hosts couldn’t access. It built something bigger. It created a culture around weekend stays, around getting out of London, around experiencing places differently.
The relationship felt genuinely mutual. Hosts paid commission, yes, but they got marketing muscle and expertise in return. Guests discovered properties they’d never have found otherwise. The reviews flowed both ways. People left notes thanking hosts for the homely touches, the tea bags, the ability to put their feet up in a living room.
“It was much less of a business transaction than it has become over the years,” Steve notes.
Brighton benefited enormously from this. So did thousands of other destinations. Airbnb helped normalize short-term rentals in places where they’d been happening for generations but never with this level of accessibility.
For Steve and operators like him, Airbnb wasn’t just a booking channel. It was a partner in building the business.
That’s the relationship everyone remembers. That’s what makes the current moment so jarring.
When the Partnership Broke
The shift didn’t happen overnight, but Steve can pinpoint when it started.
COVID.
“Since COVID, the relationship with Airbnb has started to change,” Steve says. “We as hosts were pretty much thrown under a bus by Airbnb.”
When the pandemic hit and countries started shutting down, Airbnb made a decision. They refunded guests in full for non-refundable bookings, regardless of cancellation policies hosts had set. These were bookings that should have been covered by travel insurance. Bookings where both parties had agreed to terms.
Airbnb overrode all of it.
“A lot of hosts that were not in the financial position we were in went bust as a direct result of a policy that was enforced upon them,” Steve explains. “It was not in the policies of Airbnb. It was not in any agreements we’d signed. It was literally: you’ve got a non-refundable booking that should have been covered by the guest travel insurance, and hey, we’re just going to refund the guest in full.”
The industry eventually accepted this. Unusual times, unprecedented circumstances, perhaps understandable given the chaos. Operators rebuilt. Life returned to something resembling normal. The post-COVID boom helped. People wanted to travel again.
But something had changed in how Airbnb approached the host relationship.
The quiet period after COVID lasted maybe two or three years. Then the policy changes started accelerating.
“The last couple of years, Airbnb have fundamentally started moving the dial towards guests,” Steve says. “It feels like it’s almost on a monthly basis now.”
Commission increased from 15% to 15.5%. Cleaning fees got lumped into total costs to create parity with hotels. Cancellation policies loosened. Guest support became increasingly aggressive in siding with guests over hosts.
Steve shares a story from a few months ago that crystallizes the problem.
A guest booked a non-refundable stay months in advance. A week before arrival, they asked to reduce from three nights to two. Steve’s team said no. The booking was non-refundable, it was their quietest period, and they had no chance of filling that Sunday night on short notice.
The guest argued several times. Steve’s team held firm. Everyone had agreed to these terms.
The guest stayed anyway. First two days were fine. On day three, they contacted Airbnb claiming they had no WiFi and couldn’t work from the property. They had to leave.
Airbnb refunded that third night without contacting Steve’s team. Without asking if there was actually a WiFi problem. Without any intervention at all.
Steve had a team member nearby. They went to the building, tested the WiFi, got 70-80 meg download speeds. They photographed the speed test with metadata showing location and time. They sent this to Airbnb.
Eventually, Airbnb paid Steve back for that third night. But the guest kept the refund too.
“At this point, something had changed so dramatically,” Steve says, “that even with a professional property management company like us that have very good relationships at a reasonably high level with Airbnb account managers, this can happen. Most hosts don’t have an account manager. They’re literally stuck with the support team.”
He mentions another example from a recent conference. A property manager showed how a guest had used ChatGPT to add blood stains to a photograph of a sheet, then submitted it to Airbnb support claiming the property was unsanitary. Airbnb refunded the entire stay. Even after the host proved the image was manipulated with metadata.
The goalposts keep moving. And hosts aren’t the ones moving them.
The Great Rebalancing
So Steve made a decision. He had to find another way of attracting guests.
The numbers tell the story. Two months ago, Airbnb represented 35% of My Getaways’ business. Direct bookings were around 20%. They were reliant on OTAs like most urban markets are, using their marketing muscle to reach guests.
Steve went all out for direct bookings. He diversified across other OTAs. He increased rates on Airbnb to account for the additional risk the platform now carried.
Recently, direct bookings hit 60% of the business.
Airbnb dropped to 7%.
“Airbnb is now becoming an insignificant part of our business,” Steve says. “If we find Airbnb more challenging in the future, it may be a time where we have to stop working with that platform.”
Brighton’s largest property manager, someone who benefited enormously from Airbnb’s growth, is now seriously considering whether continuing the relationship makes sense.
This isn’t isolated. It’s a pattern I’m hearing repeatedly in conversations with operators.
The question becomes: where did that 28% go?
Why Other OTAs Still Feel Like Partners
Some of Steve’s business moved to other OTAs. Booking.com. Vrbo. Others in the mix.
What’s fascinating is how different those relationships feel.
“The relationship with all of the other OTAs hasn’t really changed in 10 years,” Steve says. “It’s remained consistent. It’s felt like a partnership as it used to with Airbnb.”
The terms and conditions haven’t been constantly updated. The fraud protection measures have actually improved over time, making Steve trust them more. When there’s a dispute, these platforms try to negotiate between both parties to resolve the problem.
They don’t just reflexively side with guests.
“I have no interest in not working with OTAs,” Steve explains. “I’m happy with that relationship. But don’t keep moving the goalposts on us because we will have to react.”
If you’re evaluating which OTAs might work for your portfolio, we’ve previously compiled a comprehensive guide to Airbnb alternatives. But the bigger story here isn’t which platform to switch to.
It’s whether you should be relying on any platform as your primary channel at all.
The Real Answer Isn’t Another Platform
The 60% direct booking number is what matters most in Steve’s story.
Going direct means taking control. It means owning the guest relationship. It means not waking up to policy changes you had no input on.
It also means taking on responsibilities the OTA ecosystem used to handle.
When you’re operating primarily through Airbnb, you get certain protections built in. Guest verification, damage protection, dispute resolution, payment processing. These aren’t always perfect, but they exist. The platform handles it.
When you go direct, you need to recreate that infrastructure yourself.
This is where professional tools become essential. Guest screening isn’t just about protection anymore. It’s about building the same trust signals that guests expect from booking through established platforms. You’re proving you’re serious, that you have systems in place, that you’re not just winging it.
Damage protection works the same way. You’re not just covering your risk. You’re demonstrating to potential guests that you operate with the same standards they’d find through an OTA, but with better service and direct communication.
Think of it as building confidence. When someone books direct, they’re taking a small leap of faith. They’re bypassing the platform they know. Your job is to make that feel like the smarter choice, not the riskier one.
Professional screening and protection tell guests: “We’re not some casual operation. We run this properly. You’re in good hands.”
This is how you compete with the OTA ecosystem on trust without giving them 15% or dealing with constantly changing policies.
What This Means for Your Business
Steve’s advice for operators looking to reduce platform dependence is straightforward. Start with your software stack.
“You need to get your property management software to be able to manage more than one channel at the same time,” he says. Finding the right PMS is foundational. If you’re evaluating options, here’s what to look for in a vacation rental management system.
Then comes marketing. You need a web presence. It doesn’t need to be expensive or overly complicated. Steve mentions tools like Lovable for no-code website building. You can add booking functionality through plugins like Shopify.
“These are things you can do cheaply,” Steve notes. “We don’t do it like that because we’re obviously quite a large company, but these are easy enough plugins to plug into a website and you can have a model where guests can check out on your direct site straight away.”
For more detailed guidance, we’ve previously covered how to build a direct booking website and strategies for getting direct bookings.
Marketing your site comes next. Paid advertising through Google or Meta. These tools are intuitive now. Many campaigns can be run cheaply, and they get you higher in search rankings quickly.
“The data and information is all out there on YouTube for you to set these things up pretty quickly, even if you don’t have a lot of experience with technology,” Steve says.
But the most important piece of advice isn’t tactical. It’s strategic.
Diversify. Even if you don’t want to pursue direct bookings aggressively, diversify the OTAs you work with. Don’t put all your inventory eggs in one platform’s basket.
“If one of them starts playing the games that we’ve seen recently, you can do something about that,” Steve explains.
The goal isn’t to abandon OTAs entirely. It’s to make sure no single platform has enough leverage over your business that you can’t walk away if the relationship stops working.
The Invitation That Matters Most
There’s one more piece of Steve’s advice I keep thinking about.
When I asked him what Airbnb could do to repair trust with operators, his first suggestion was simple: “Start attending conferences. Start being visible. Listen to your property managers on what the problems are.”
It’s telling that this feels like a radical suggestion. That the idea of a platform showing up to hear from its supply chain feels like it would be noteworthy.
“We are not just part of the supply chain,” Steve says. “We are your supply chain. Airbnb doesn’t exist without companies like me and without individual hosts.”
This is what partnership actually means. Partners show up. Partners listen. Partners don’t make sweeping changes in a boardroom and expect no backlash.
The Airbnb partnership model is changing because one side stopped acting like a partner. Individual hosts and professional operators are adapting because they have to.
Some are diversifying across OTAs. Some are loading Airbnb rates higher to account for increased risk. Some are going all in on direct bookings.
Steve did all three. His business is stronger for it.
The floor has moved. The question is whether you’re moving with it.
If you’re ready to build a business that’s less dependent on any single platform, start with the fundamentals. Professional guest screening and damage protection give you the confidence to operate outside the OTA safety net. The rest follows from there.
Want to hear the full conversation?
This article is based on an episode of The Check-In podcast, where Leo Walton and Sarah Nan DuPre discuss the future of short-term rentals.
Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
