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Something has to change: Important Features often don't work as they should 😥

  • June 17, 2026
  • 5 replies
  • 367 views

Stef
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I am sometimes really frustrated that great new features Hospitable invents prevent old features from working properly: a lot of things are only flawless in theory, but often not well thought through, and therefore not easy to use – that is my criticism. The examples below make this completely clear.

Regarding all of these following everyday problems and missing, obvious mini-features, I have opened tickets over the last 12 months, and virtually nothing has happened. I don’t need new features if the old ones aren’t at least thought through the end.

Examples:

  • To this day, I cannot decline or delete Airbnb inquiries. I have to go to the Airbnb app to decline them, but the inquiry still doesn't disappear in Hospitable. Discussions with ai hlep chatbot follows to delete this.
  • Changing a booking (alter reservation) via the internal Hospitable tool does work, but to this day, the amounts are incorrectly labeled. I mean… without words.
  • There is an app, but it is still just a web app loading all the stuff over and over again, has no caching for calendar within one session and so on – instead of finally making a fast, native app (that is no rocket science nowadays, I develop apps myself). Recently I was on vacation, and the internet was bad. It was almost impossible to run my business. And then I hear in the Townhall that it is supposed to have gotten faster. I have a modern phone and could make a video every day showing how slow everything is at home with a 100 Mbit/s connection. 
  • If you want to extend a guest's stay, it would be great if the dates for smart devices like locks could simply be changed. A common everyday scenario: block the following day and then extend the smart lock? Just doesn't work, and will not (“unsolveable technical issues”). Alterations concerning the smartlock has to be done painstakingly via the platform, which then charges fees again. I had to develop it myself and delete the smartlock in Hospitable. 
  • There is a webhook integration that is supposed to trigger when you change something about a booking. However, this does not apply to all booking details (updating notes or language for example). 

I love Hospitable for so many things in the programming world. All these betas are great too, that's exactly my spirit. I love that special team and the support ♥️But every host has examples like mine, and I would just love it if existing features were ultimately integrated so well that they simply work the real world  - and in a way we need them to.

Hope this leads to a discussion, making Hospitable better.

Greetings,

Stefan from Germany

5 replies

Kristijan Laco
Hospitable Team Member
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  • Hospitable Team Member
  • June 18, 2026

Hi Stefan, Kris here from the Smart Devices team 👋

I agree with the broader point you're making: it’s frustrating when a feature is technically there, but the real-life workflow around it still feels unfinished.

Regarding smart locks specifically, I wanted to clarify one point: you don’t necessarily have to alter the reservation just to update the lock code. You can go to the Devices dashboard, click on any of the codes, and edit it directly there.

So the code can be managed independently from the reservation, which should cover cases like extending access, changing timing, or fixing a guest code without having to go back through Airbnb and trigger platform-side changes or fees.

That said, I do agree that this kind of thing needs to be obvious in the product. If hosts don’t know the workflow exists, or it takes too many clicks to find, then it still feels broken in practice.

But for this specific smart lock case, the tool is there, maybe the bigger issue is making that workflow easier to discover and use.
 

 


Stef
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  • June 18, 2026

Dear Kristijan,

Thanks for your reply regarding the smart lock, but I wonder: Cause that’s not quite right. Hosts actually can't extend a stay over several days with it without editing it directly on that menu you screenshoted:

  1. The Hospitable chatbot says only the time can be adjusted.

  2. Pierre-Camille says the same thing, April 2026 (Source: https://help.hospitable.com/en/articles/8170325-smart-locks-access-codes-how-they-work)

If it actually is possible to extend the date there (more days than booked), you might want to have a quick word with your boss about his help post 😅

This conversation highlights the exact problem: the feature is there, but it can't do what is urgently needed. Just like all the other examples, which remain unresolved til now.

What do you think? Or the others of the Hospitable team?

Thanx, Stefan


Kristijan Laco
Hospitable Team Member
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  • Hospitable Team Member
  • June 23, 2026

Hi ​@Stef ,

You're right, I stand corrected on that point. users can only adjust time.

Unfortunately, I can't promise when or if this specific improvement will be implemented, but it's actually something I'm currently looking into so I can better understand it put forward a concrete proposal internally.

Thanks for taking the time to explain the use case in detail. Real-world examples like this are extremely helpful when evaluating where existing workflows create friction for hosts.

Kris


bsumwalt
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  • New Participant
  • June 23, 2026

Right there with you on the declining inquiries, and alteration accounting numbers always being incorrect! I brought this up with Hospitable a year ago and was told some version of the speed and reconciliation of pricing information pushed from Airbnb was the issue.
 

Among many other things - speed of calendar sync and data sync for reservations on the “Reservation” top left tab within the inbox - all of these are incredibly slow as you mentioned. It easily adds 20%+ time to my workflow sometimes just waiting for these things to properly load or having to refresh them. Using new devices, internet speeds of 800Mbps. 
 

Another is that reviews, alteration requests, and cancellations do not always populate to the top of the inbox (sometimes, but not reliably always). We have to monitor and filter our email notifications for these cases and then reverse lookup within hospitable search function to be able to address or find them. Weird UI choice to not be pushing those actions to the user host in the same priority as a new message. Many other cases. 


Eli Stoughton
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  • June 24, 2026

Right there with you on the declining inquiries, and alteration accounting numbers always being incorrect! I brought this up with Hospitable a year ago and was told some version of the speed and reconciliation of pricing information pushed from Airbnb was the issue.
 

Among many other things - speed of calendar sync and data sync for reservations on the “Reservation” top left tab within the inbox - all of these are incredibly slow as you mentioned. It easily adds 20%+ time to my workflow sometimes just waiting for these things to properly load or having to refresh them. Using new devices, internet speeds of 800Mbps. 

 

I’ve been burned by the alteration issue; and because of that I don’t really trust alterations on Hospitable so I am sticking to doing them through Airbnb. I must admit that people have been complaining about speed for a while, but I hadn't noticed it. But over the past few weeks, I have noticed issues with the app and website.

My inbox has so much stuff in it that I don’t worry about deleting things.