Building trust in our local communities

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Building trust in our local communities

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Building a safe, trusted community doesn’t end with hosts and guests. The neighborhoods you host in are an important part of the equation, and maintaining trust within these neighborhoods makes our entire community stronger.

 

We know that disturbances from Airbnb guests or visitors can have a significant impact on hosts and their local communities. So we’ve been working on a few important initiatives to help prevent those types of disturbances from taking place, and to give neighbors a better way to report them when they do.

Clarifying our new “party house” ban

You may have heard the news about Airbnb’s “party house” ban. We want to clarify that we aren’t prohibiting authorized parties and events. We know that most parties booked through our platform are organized by respectful guests for things like family reunions, baby showers, corporate off-sites, and more.

 

Instead, our goal is to address the small number of guests who act irresponsibly and those rare listings that become persistent neighborhood nuisances. With that in mind, the new “party house” ban covers:

  1. All “open-invite” parties and events
  2. Any large parties and events in multi-family complexes, like apartment buildings and condos

Your top questions, answered

What happens if a guest throws a party in my space without my permission?

Any type of unauthorized party—meaning a party that violates House Rules and is thrown without the consent of the host—is prohibited in all listings. First, we’re working to stop these parties before they even start by strengthening our risk-detection technologies. When they do take place, depending on the level of disturbance they cause, the guest will be given a warning, or may face suspension or removal from the platform.

 

What is considered an “open-invite” party or event?

This is when a guest or one of their visitors hosts a party or event with limited knowledge of the attendees. If a party is advertised on social media, or charges an entrance fee at the door, that’s a pretty good indicator that it’s an “open-invite” event.

 

I host in a multi-family complex. What’s considered a “large” party or event?

These are large parties or events like weddings, baby showers, corporate events, or something similar. This type of event is now prohibited in apartments and condos, even with the host’s permission and even when there’s a restricted, invite-only guest list.


Does this ban on “open-invite” parties or events apply if I run a boutique hotel, professional event space, or other traditional hospitality listing?

If you run a more traditional hospitality listing, you can set your own rules around open-invite parties. Still, even for these types of listings, Airbnb will monitor for any complaints and follow up with these venues as needed.

 

Can I still allow guests to host parties in my single-family home?

We’ll continue to allow hosts of single-family homes to make their listings available for closed-invite parties and events, which you can specify in your House Rules. We know that a “single-family home” can range from a farmhouse listing without any neighbors nearby, to a quiet residential street where even small gatherings are potentially disruptive. So we prefer to address these on a per-listing basis as opposed to a sweeping policy, which could unfairly impact certain hosts.

 

There are lots of nuances, but our goal in all cases is simple: If the parties are negatively impacting neighbors and we receive complaints, we’ll take appropriate action. We’ll start by working with hosts with affected listings to change their House Rules to prohibit parties. If complaints persist, hosts may be suspended or removed from the platform.

Improving Neighborhood Support

When a property that’s listed on Airbnb is causing a disturbance—whether that’s excessive noise, a disruptive party, or unsafe behavior—members of the local community can report it using our Neighborhood Support tool. Until now, though, that tool hasn’t been easy enough for neighbors to find or use. So we’ve been hard at work revamping it, and we’d like to share some of those changes with you.

 

Making it easier to access Neighborhood Support 

Community members can now find Neighborhood Support in the list of links at the bottom of Airbnb’s homepage and all other main pages. They can also access the link right from a phone without having to download the Airbnb app.

 

Connecting the community to emergency services

The Neighborhood Support tool now provides a link to local emergency services, so if a community member is facing an urgent safety issue, they can get the help they need right away. They’ll also have access to the new Neighborhood Hotline number, where they can report a party that’s still in progress.

 

Communicating with Airbnb

We know that in the past, we haven’t been good enough about keeping members of the community in the loop once they’ve submitted a concern on the Neighborhood Support tool. Now, when they report an issue, they’ll get a message from us explaining what happens next.

Keep the feedback coming

We know there’s more work to be done—but these are critical steps toward elevating trust and safety on the platform and within the neighborhoods that hosts call home. As always, we want to keep the lines of communication open until we get this right, so please keep sharing your feedback, and we’ll keep working on improvements that benefit the entire Airbnb community.

51 Replies 51
Mark-and-Julie0
Level 3
West Bloomfield Charter Township, MI

I think this policy is a very positive step forward.

Not enough yet. Hosts can be suspended If an unauthorized party takes place at their listing? The Orinda incident occurred bc the guest lied about her intentions. Airbnb needs way better risk scoring metrics and identification tools. Guests have too much leeway. 

Tony661
Level 1
Ulverstone, Australia

Unauthorized parties only occur when the host is not near or cannot be easily directly contacted. I would really like Airbnb have a box that can be ticked to show that the host can be directly contacted by guests. As the occasional guest I tend to only stay at hosts who are contactable (live in the best).

Not necessarily so... We had very bold guests who threw a party while we were still in the house. We were only able to stop the tide of people coming in by throwing out the group and threatening to call the police. Airbnb was not at all helpful to us.

Emilia42
Level 10
Orono, ME

Why are minors allowed to book and trash a home:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/House-trashed-by-a-minor-guest/m-p/1196635#M289078

 

Why is Airbnb helping to rehouse a guest who has a previous horrible review for throwing a party:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Guest-booked-for-a-party-and-Airbnb-is-rehousing-him/m-p...

 

Are these guests banned from the platform yet?


@Emilia42 wrote:

 

Why is Airbnb helping to rehouse a guest who has a previous horrible review for throwing a party:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Guest-booked-for-a-party-and-Airbnb-is-rehousing-him/m-p...

 

Are these guests banned from the platform yet?

 

I have had airbnb try and book guests who had been kicked out of my mother's listing into my listing.  

These types of guests should be booted and forced to book a hotel. 


 

Airbnb should learn from the mistakes of Uber and Lyft. If a driver sexually assaults a passenger, is it enough if the platform just makes sure these two people will not be paired again? letting the driver stay in the system does nothing to protect other passengers. On the contrary, it puts them at risk. I believe the same logic should be applied here.

Michael4565
Level 1
Los Angeles, CA

What about when the host has an unplanned party in a shared listing? This happened to me as a guest when the host decided to have a full on house party at 4:30am and got belligerent when I said it was unacceptable. Had to leave immediately. This policy only focuses on guests. You need to address the host issue as Airbnb never fully did right by me in this scenario. 

Seems like a very fair question..

Susan17
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

@Airbnb 

Are you all living in some some sort of parallel universe, up there in Airbnb towers?? You keep on saying that you're listening, but you sure as hell aren't hearing us!

 

Another round of vague, convoluted, arbitrary policies, and a bunch of rapid response lines" and "emergency lines" and "neighbourhood lines"  or whatever lines (were we not already supposed to have all that stuff?), are not a great deal of use when hosts are already slap-bang in the middle of a crisis at 4am, frantically trying to shut down raging parties and evict dozens of rampaging revellers, while their royally pissed off neighbours glare at them from across the street, after been kept awake half the night by the blaring tunes and shrieking partiers.. It's all a bit too late by then - the damage has well and truly been done. 

 

And you can add all the buttons to the local emergency departments you like, but even you guys must have heard by now, that the police in many jurisdictions are taking their own sweet time attending callouts by hosts these days, (that's if they turn up at all), on account of so much of their time and manpower being wasted on callouts to Airbnbs which far too often turn out to be for civil matters that should have been dealt with between the host, guests and Airbnb. They're gonna just love the increased volume of calls this new button is going to flood them with.

 

If you genuinely want local residents to stop hating on Airbnb, and you're serious about wanting to earn the trust of the real-life communities in which you seek to operate, then at least have the decency and integrity to immediately put the safety and security measures in place that will PREVENT  rogue guests from booking in the first place, and stop our homes from getting trashed and our neighbourhoods from being disrupted. Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, with half-arsed reactive proposals, really isn't showing the love for hosts, or for our communities.

@Susan17

 

We should call them washing line, where hosts are hung out to dry.

Hey Susan17:  You've hit the nail on the head with your comment about how local police must feel about Airbnb downloading the "noisy party" problem onto their already-stretched police force.   This will only piss off municipalities more and they already blame Airbnb for a whole range of social ills from homelessness to housing inequity.

Airbnb is pure and simple a business. It makes money from us hosting guests.  Under the laws of capitalism as I understand them, Airbnb will do everything in its power to maximize profits.  That means pushing through every booking no matter how sketchy.   Each time a potentially terrible guest books, Airbnb runs an algorithm that measures profit against risk.   Since WE as hosts take 99% of the risk of our homes being damaged and our neighbours upset, why on earth would Airbnb stop making as much profit as possible? 

All this nice language on Airbnb's part is window-dressing, dancing around the edges of the issue.  Don't expect Airbnb to change.

 

I do my own screening of guests and live on the premises to supervise the use of my rental space.  This is a "host beware" situation. 

From:  Lorna

John4405
Level 1
Atlanta, GA

I am all for this.  Home owner associations are starting to pass very restrictive regulations regarding short term rentals.  

Susan1860
Level 1
Brooms Head, Australia

It is good news that AirBnB are responding to the recent incidents which have made the media and tarnished AirBnB's reputation.

Please expand on your statement that you are "working to stop these parties before they even start by strengthening our risk-detection technologies".  What strategies is AirBnB working on?

A host support telephone link would be appreciated when unexpected events do occur as the local country/state/council/police regulations may be restricted in responding - or responding in a timely manner - for example in regional or remote areas (there are many of these in Australia) and by local noise regulations which prevent council officers or police from acting up until certain time limits.

Thank you