TravelSkills

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Airbnb tests a new luxury category

This Airbnb guest house in Santa Monica lists for $160 a night. (Image: Airbnb)

Do you hesitate to book an Airbnb stay because you’re not sure that it will provide all the comforts and amenities that you know you’ll get at a hotel? Airbnb is working on a way to change your mind.

According to a Bloomberg News report, Airbnb is planning a pilot program that would create a new category of luxury properties. The new category could give the home-sharing netowrk a way to attract affluent consumers and business travelers who haven’t yet tried Airbnb.

The company would use a team of property inspectors armed with a checklist of all the special touches that an upscale customer might reasonably expect. Properties that pass the inspection would be eligible for inclusion in the new luxury category, with priority placement on its website and its app.

 The company is using the name Airbnb Select for the test program, although a permanent identity hasn’t yet been firmed up.

Airbnb will pick potential Select properties based on the quality reviews they have received from customers. Hosts will have the option of whether or not to subject themselves to the inspection.

If they agree and are approved for inclusion in the luxury category after a property inspection, hosts would be eligible for special benefits from their Airbnb membership, like having a professional photographer take pictures of the property for the Airbnb website, and having access to a consultation with an interior decorator provided by Airbnb.

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Watch for big changes in TSA screening procedures

Overstuffed carry-ons will soon bring new procedures to security checkpoints. (Image: Jim Glab)

Last week, two rocks I brought back from Georgia landed me in the slow lane at ATL for a hand inspection of my carry on. Earlier this year some cheese I had in my carry on bag resulted in the same procedure.

As travelers stuff more things into their carry-ons to avoid checked bag charges, the Transportation Security Administration is finalizing new procedures that would ask them to remove some of those things from the bags before they go through x-ray machines.

The agency has been testing various options at select airports, and TSA officials told the Wall Street Journal that they are likely to decide on new procedures within a few weeks – although those procedures probably wouldn’t be implemented until the summer travel rush is over.

The problem is that the more various items travelers cram into their carry-ons, the harder it is for TSA agents to interpret what they see on the x-ray screens, slowing down the process and requiring more bags to be pulled aside for a separate search. Thus TSA is expected to tell travelers to remove certain kinds of things from the bags and put them in separate bins for the x-ray machines, as they do now with laptops and liquids.

On the bright side for business travelers, TSA officials told the newspaper that the new rules are not likely to apply at the PreCheck lanes. (But as we all know, PreCheck is not always a given…)

What’s in that carry-on? Overstuffed bags are hard to screen . (Image: Jim Glab)

The article said that the kinds of items being considered for removal from bags include food and any electronic device larger than a cell phone. Some other possibilities are less than obvious – the agency briefly tested a requirement that travelers take any paper items out of their carry-ons, but that didn’t work well and was dropped.

But officials told the Journal that the type of items to be removed from bags could vary from one airport to another, or even one screening lane to another. Removing the items wouldn’t be mandatory, but travelers who didn’t comply might have their bag subjected to a hand inspection.

In any case, a new regime of carry-on unpacking is likely to cause considerable confusion at the screening lanes, especially when the new procedures are first introduced.

And there’s more… according the the WSJ, the TSA is considering changing the way it checks traveler IDs and boarding passes. A snippet from today’s paper:

Meanwhile, the possibility of an expanded U.S. ban on in-cabin laptops and tablets for non-stop flights from Europe continues to simmer. U.S. officials agreed to put it on hold for a while following talks with their European security counterparts last week in Brussels, but an expansion is still a definite possibility. The two sides are meeting again this week in Washington D.C. to continue their discussions.

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