Airbnb Removes Top Host In Asia From Its Service With No Explanation

Comment

Image Credits: Stephen Rees (opens in a new window) / Shutterstock (opens in a new window)

‘Sharing economy’ companies like Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit and others have grown popular for offering new types of work, and by association, additional incomes to people worldwide. While making a little side money comes in handy, a cautionary tale from a top Airbnb host in Asia shows the potential perils of becoming too reliant on these services.

Last week, Airbnb suspended the account belonging to Bangkok-based Kelly Kampen, one its ‘Super Hosts’ and a top Airbnb ambassador in Asia, with immediate effect and no explanation, as he explained in a post on Medium.

The move is particularly odd since Kampen was a prolific host, having welcomed over 700 guests to his Bangkok-based home over the past two years, netting himself more than $40,000 in revenue in the process as he previously disclosed. Kampen is well known inside Airbnb, too. He was scheduled to speak at Airbnb’s ‘Open’ event in Paris this coming November — with the company covering his flight and accommodation — and had been involved in the company’s community events.

Kampen told TechCrunch that he is unsure why Airbnb terminated his account. While he received notification of his suspension via a phone call and emails, none of this correspondence nor his subsequent conversations with company representatives, explained Airbnb’s decision. An email that he sent to Airbnb’s three founders elicited a response from CTO Nathan Blecharczyk who promised to look into his case, but there was never any follow-up.

Airbnb declined our multiple requests for comment on Kampen’s suspension, but it did provide a general statement in response:

We do not generally discuss confidential information regarding individual hosts and guests. There may be many reasons why people are removed from the platform including quality or safety concerns. Dedicated members of our team continually review host and guest profiles. While these decisions are difficult, ultimately there is nothing more important to us than the safety of the people who use Airbnb.

In this case, you’d think that Airbnb might be inclined to be more specific — since other hosts may well be concerned that they, too, might experience a similar nightmare — but that’s all that we have.

Kampen told TechCrunch that he didn’t believe that user safety — one aspect flagged by the company’s statement — was an issue. In the event that a guest had lodged a complaint against him and his rooms — and there is no evidence that this is the case with Kampen — you’d expect that Airbnb would look into the issue and weigh in a host’s history, rather than making a snap decision to remove them based on a single piece of feedback.

Another area of safety could be that it appears that Kampen’s account had been accessed by a third-party. Reviewing his account, he noticed that an iPhone had been logging in as him from different locations across the U.S. over the past couple of months. Since Kampen hadn’t left Bangkok during that period — and he confirmed he doesn’t have a VPN client on his phone — it wasn’t him. He flagged the issue to Airbnb, but didn’t get a direct response. In the event that his account had been comprised by a third party, terminating his account in this way is certainly an extreme response.

It’s interesting to note that, according to Kampen, Airbnb representatives in Thailand and regional team in Asia told him that they had “fought” to retain him as a host. Since the decision was never reversed, it stands to reason that it was made by Airbnb HQ in the U.S. and that it was a contentious one. Conspiracy theorists might argue that the company didn’t like Kampen’s very public declaration of his revenue, or perhaps felt that he had become too influential a figure, though there is no evidence for either motivation.

Whatever the reason may have been, this example is one of caution for others who make money from Airbnb listings.

“Hedge your income with other services,” Kampen warned other hosts. “I am already on 9flats, Flipkey and others [but] prior to this I never put any serious thought into other services.”

More TechCrunch

Tags

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

Featured Article

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

8 hours ago
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help…

India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai

Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.

FCC proposes all AI-generated content in political ads must be disclosed

Want to make a founder’s day, week, month, and possibly career? Refer them to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024! Applications close June 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. TechCrunch’s Startup…

Refer a founder to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is officially launching DMs (direct messages), the company announced on Wednesday. Later, Bluesky plans to “fully support end-to-end encrypted messaging down the line,”…

Bluesky now has DMs

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult that even…

Peter Thiel-founded Valar Ventures raised a $300 million fund, half the size of its last one

Featured Article

Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Several hotel check-in computers are running a remote access app, which is leaking screenshots of guest information to the internet.

11 hours ago
Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Gavet has had a rocky tenure at Techstars and her leadership was the subject of much controversy.

Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet is out

The struggle isn’t universal, however.

Connected fitness is adrift post-pandemic

Featured Article

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized…

13 hours ago
A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

HoundDog actually looks at the code a developer is writing, using both traditional pattern matching and large language models to find potential issues.

HoundDog.ai helps developers prevent personal information from leaking

The changes are designed to enhance the consumer experience of using Google Pay and make it a more competitive option against other payment methods.

Google Pay will now display card perks, BNPL options and more

Few figures in the tech industry have earned the storied reputation of Vinod Khosla, founder and partner at Khosla Ventures. For over 40 years, he has been at the center…

Vinod Khosla is coming to Disrupt to discuss how AI might change the future

AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known…

Truecaller partners with Microsoft to let its AI respond to calls in your own voice

Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to…

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses now let you share images directly to your Instagram Story

Spotify launched its own font, the company announced on Wednesday. The music streaming service hopes that its new typeface, “Spotify Mix,” will help Spotify distinguish its own unique visual identity. …

Why Spotify is launching its own font, Spotify Mix

In 2008, Marty Kagan, who’d previously worked at Cisco and Akamai, co-founded Cedexis, a (now-Cisco-owned) firm developing observability tech for content delivery networks. Fellow Cisco veteran Hasan Alayli joined Kagan…

Hydrolix seeks to make storing log data faster and cheaper

A dodgy email containing a link that looks “legit” but is actually malicious remains one of the most dangerous, yet successful, tricks in a cybercriminal’s handbook. Now, an AI startup…

Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14M led by Microsoft’s M12

If you’ve been looking forward to seeing Boeing’s Starliner capsule carry two astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. The…

Boeing, NASA indefinitely delay crewed Starliner launch

TikTok is the latest tech company to incorporate generative AI into its ads business, as the company announced on Tuesday that it’s launching a new “TikTok Symphony” AI suite for…

TikTok turns to generative AI to boost its ads business

Gone are the days when space and defense were considered fundamentally antithetical to venture investment. Now, the country’s largest venture capital firms are throwing larger portions of their money behind…

Space VC closes $20M Fund II to back frontier tech founders from day zero

These days every company is trying to figure out if their large language models are compliant with whichever rules they deem important, and with legal or regulatory requirements. If you’re…

Patronus AI is off to a magical start as LLM governance tool gains traction

Link-in-bio startup Linktree has crossed 50 million users and is rolling out the beta of its social commerce program.

Linktree surpasses 50M users, rolls out its social commerce program to more creators

For a $5.99 per month, immigrants have a bank account and debit card with fee-free international money transfers and discounted international calling.

Immigrant banking platform Majority secures $20M following 3x revenue growth

When developers have a particular job that AI can solve, it’s not typically as simple as just pointing an LLM at the data. There are other considerations such as cost,…

Unify helps developers find the best LLM for the job

Response time is Aerodome’s immediate value prop for potential clients.

Aerodome is sending drones to the scene of the crime

Granola takes a more collaborative approach to working with AI.

Granola debuts an AI notepad for meetings