One month after Airbnb confirmed plans to verify all of its listings, the home-sharing giant has announced additional efforts to protect its hosts and guests.
Airbnb will provide a “clear and actionable enforcement framework” for scenarios, including excessive noise, major cleanliness concerns, as well as unauthorized guests, parking and smoking. The company, expected to go public next year, is also banning all “open-invite” parties and events from locations booked on its platform.
Unauthorized parties have long been banned from Airbnb homes. The new policy seeks to halt certain guests from hosting events not approved by hosts, such as a recent Halloween party hosted at a California Airbnb rental in which five people were killed.
Finally, Airbnb is launching a new hotline for mayors and city officials to discuss Airbnb’s new policies with the company.
“While home sharing is a time-honored tradition in many cultures around the world, the rise of digital platforms like Airbnb has brought it within reach of more people than ever before,” Airbnb’s vice president of trust Margaret Richardson writes in today’s announcement. “In turn, Airbnb has worked to collaborate with cities around the world and with our host and guest communities to ensure we are creating a framework that allows millions of people to trust one another.”
Airbnb, founded in 2008, has long avoided verifying listings and incorporating stricter guest standards, instead looking to its thousands of hosts to devise individual house rules. As the company matures and crafts its pitch to Wall Street, we can expect to see additional updates to its policy to protect hosts, guests and communities.
Early last month, Airbnb said all properties would soon be verified for accuracy of photos, addresses, listing details, cleanliness, safety and basic home amenities. All rentals that meet the company’s new standards will be “clearly labeled” by December 15, 2020, Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky noted in a company-wide email last month. Beginning this month, Airbnb will rebook or refund guests who check into rentals that do not meet the new accuracy standards.
The company last month also outlined plans to launch a 24/7 Neighbor Hotline to give guests access to a real Airbnb employee from any location at any time. The company will fully roll-out the service next year.
Airbnb’s Richardson developed the above changes alongside Charles Ramsey, a retired police commissioner and co-chair of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and Ronald Davis, the former director of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing’s Services.
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