Please make "fragrance-free" a filter

[Brian450]

There is now a HUGE number of people who are fragrance-sensitive or have MCS. I'm one of them.

The odours of conventional cleaning products, air fresheners, dryer sheets, etc. make me sick. They give me headaches, burning eyes, feelings of tightness and tingling, respiratory irritation, heart palpitations, nausea, dry mouth and many other symptoms. I've had more than one vacation ruined by fragranced bedrooms that were making me ill. Surveys indicate that about one-third of the population in the US and other countries is fragrance-sensitive or has MCS or prefers fragrance-free spaces.

Please AirBnB stop ignoring this incredibly large group of people. You currently have filters for 13 different accessibility features. Could you PLEASE add another one, "fragrance-free"? Fragrance-free properties actually exist, it's just that you can't easily find them, at least not on the airbnb site itself. (Google search can be used as a workaround, but it's far from perfect.) Thanks!

[Lana913]

How would you know if she’s over estimating how effective the filter would be when you obviously don’t have MCS yourself?! As someone who needs to stay in hotels constantly it would be awesome if they had a couple of rooms separate for people like us. Or safe Airbnb’s. But there’s  practically none for us! Are we just supposed to camp out? No matter what the weather is? In the middle of a city? 

[Lana913]

That’s what baffles me! That there’s the market for it and that they are missing it! Assuming all the other companies also don’t have a filter for fragrance free listings, they would already be standing out!

[Chris16834]

I recently stayed at “The Flower House” in Red Lodge, MT and the host was kind enough to remove fragrance diffusers and refrain from using scented laundry detergents. I’m not severely affected by chemicals but my reactions are substantial. The absence of those things made the stay immensely more tolerable and I was super grateful. I would love a fragrance free filter! 

[Brian450]

Lots of examples like these suggest the existence of a "dark market" for fragrance-free properties. Properties where air fresheners and scented laundry products are not used, or at least not used on request, but this fact is not advertised. 

This makes life unnecessarily hard for would-be travelers who want or need fragrance-free spaces. Literally everything else is advertised and disclosed. There is no reason why use of fragrance in properties cannot be routinely disclosed as well, the same way smoking/non-smoking is always disclosed. 

There is no practical reason why this cannot be done. The problem is lack of awareness. AirBnB and other big players in the hospitality industry need to realize that a need exists. 

[Morgan559]

fragrance is disgusting.  Even if you do NOT have MCS, these are very toxic chemicals that people just accept as normal, but they are FAR from normal (or healthy).  I think this is a very reasonable request, and not just for people with MCS, far from it!  a LOT of people are sick of stinky chemicals taking residence in their nostrils...it's a huge issue, not a small issue.  It's important to provide this filter option, and really ask people.  The people who are aware will know about his issue, the people who are profoundly ignorant will not even understand why the question is being asked.  You might have a dropdown with these options. 
1-we do NOT use air fresheners or fragrances in this space, this is a fragrance free home.
2-we DO use air fresheners and fragrance
3-we don't understand the question,  huh? we spray fabreze all over everything is that bad?

[Brian450]

you raise a good point.. by making the issue invisible, AirBnB is preventing market mechanisms from working. Steinemann's surveys suggest that about half of the population would prefer fragrance-free accommodations if given the choice. 

[Gordon0]

Stick to the facts, @Morgan559, and you might garner some sympathy, but throwing around phrases like 'fragrance is disgusting' (something that's nothing more than your opinion) isn't helpful. Likewise,  your average Joe isn't spraying 'toxic' chemicals around their home.

[Brian450]

Whether fragrance is disgusting is clearly a matter of opinion, but that quite a few people like Morgan559 experience fragrance as disgusting is a fact. 

Every hotel and every AirBnB host wants guests to be comfortable, so opinions and perceptions matter. Surely if you stayed in a BnB where you were disgusted by cockroaches in the kitchen, you would not be happy if the host told you to "stick to the facts" and dismissed your complaint with "cockroaches being disgusting is nothing but your opinion."

Opinions matter when they are the opinions of paying guests. AirBnB hosts who spray Febreze with the best of intentions, to make their guests more comfortable, or wash the laundry with Tide, because they falsely believe that all guests will love the wonderful fresh scent, need to reconsider their assumption that everyone reacts in the same way to these kinds of products. 

[Lana913]

If they are using anything with the word fragrance in it. They are! Do you know how many chemicals are in the word fragrance? 500-1,000! How many of those have been study? 5

how many of those have been study in combination? None 

[Jane3704]

I join the request for a fragrance-free filter on your site. So many of us would find this valuable! This would actually increase the traffic to your site once word got out. 

[Brian450]

That's the irony. We're basically asking AirBnB to stop ignoring that gigantic pile of cash that is just waiting to be grabbed by serving the demand (and facilitating the supply) for less toxic lodging.

40% of Americans (Pew Research, 2016) eat "most" or "some" organic. 

Over 50% (Steinemann, 2016) would prefer public accommodations to be fragrance-free.

This illustrates the size of the market that would potentially be drawn towards less toxic lodging options.

[Huma0]

@Brian450

Interesting figures. 

I can't speak to the whole of America, let alone the world, but I have now hosted hundreds of Airbnb guests, including many Americans, and not a single one, literally not a single one, has ever requested I don't use fragrances in the house. The only guests who have ever mentioned fragrance has done so in a positive way, i.e. to say that they like it. I've also never had a guest have any kind of allergic or otherwise negative reaction to it. 

Now, I am not saying that there aren't a lot of people who are adverse to fragrances or even severely allergic to them, but those numbers sound out of whack according not only to my hosting experience but to the people I know and meet and work with.

As for organic food. Well, I can only think of a couple of American guests out of many that bought SOME organic food, even though it is widely available here. Those were only people that had lived in California. I am not joking.

Sorry, I know it's not very PC to say, but I suspect that a lot of people simply do not tell the truth when filling out surveys or participating in research and the surveys themselves skew questions to get the answers they want. As a journalist, I get sent loads of emails every day with research results and most of them appear to be extremely biased in favour of whatever outcome the researchers would like to achieve.

[Lana913]

@Huma0 You probably haven’t had any because they might have it mild (I did for years), some might not know they have MCS, I didn’t know it for years. I though it was just a symptom, not a health condition on its own.  The ones with severe mcs try not to travel unless they have to. And even if they have too, they might not. I know a lady that avoided going to her mom’s funeral because she couldn’t fly in. Most of us are broke, so we won’t have much money to travel for fun. We usually have to see naturopaths (don’t take health insurance), but supplements (that aren’t covered by health insurance) have to drive far to see a doctor, etc. BUT for those that have a little money to travel might actually travel if there were FF Airbnb’s! Also I don’t see many people with food allergies either. Like 3 in 16yrs, but we all know about them, right?! MCS is going up 300-300% per decade! So I bet you will hear from one soon!

[Huma0]

@Lana913 

Yes, it's quite possible that I will hear from one soon and also quite possible that have have hosted someone with milder conditions who wasn't aware of it. I am just surprised that no one at all has mentioned it, neither any of the hundreds of guests I've hosted over the years nor friends, families, colleagues or acquaintances. Perhaps there is less awareness of it here in the UK. Then again, I've hosted many guests from the US and around the world and, as I host in my own home, people do tell me about their allergies, to pets, dust, pollen, certain foods etc. but no one has ever mentioned fragrance.

Don't get me wrong. I do sympathise with people with allergies. I was diagnosed with a chronic one in my 30s but the doctors couldn't figure out the cause. While I was suffering from this, my life was hell, I was frequently in tears and it was a big factor in me leaving my job. This allergic reaction initially only flared up when I was in my workplace so I naturally assumed there was something there that was setting it off, but I was met with hostility when I brought it up to my manager or to HR. One colleague even told me she had thought that I was being a drama queen and making it up until she witnessed me having a very severe reaction.

The problem is, it's often very difficult to diagnose the cause of an allergic reaction. I feel like hosts would be opening themselves up to all sorts of liabilities by offering a fragrance free listing, but each to their own. If a host is willing to take that risk, it is of course their choice.

[Nikki575]

It's not uncommon for people who don't suffer from MCS to respond in a strangely hostile way to the mention of it. It's very possible your guests haven't said anything in an effort to keep the peace. I'm not saying you  would be hostile, just that people don't want to risk drama while travelling. I have seen some pretty gnarly comments in threads on this topic that make me want to avoid trying to explain myself to someone who can't relate to the misery of this condition. So there may be more of us than you realize. It's probably easier being honest on a health research survey than directly to a host/stranger that you're afraid of offending.