Now that the Covid vaccine is being rolled out, we're seeing a lot of hosts asking questions about how to make vaccination a condition of entry. I'm not personally in favor of hosts asking for private medical documents, and in many jurisdictions it would be illegal to do so, but these are exceptional times and it's understandable that in-home hosts are trying to find a way to host safely again. As long as Airbnb grants an exemption to the cancellation policy when guests say they've tested positive, hosts have every reason to prefer guests who aren't at risk of this.
So far, the vast majority of people who are able to travel have not had access to the vaccine, but this will hopefully change over the next months. And even though it's a thorny topic, this is the time that hosts really need Airbnb to issue some guidance about how hosts can set requirements here. Can hosts request medical documents, even if they're not qualified to authenticate them? Will the Non-Discrimination Policy be applied to hosts who discriminate against unvaccinated guests?
@Catherine-Powell I hope this is addressed in the next policy update from Airbnb, because it's increasingly clear that most in-home hosts have no real intention of adhering to the "protocol" that they were aggressively bullied into saying they would follow. If Airbnb is willing to allow people to require guests to be vaccinated, I hope we'll have an on-platform format for guests to enter their data without compromising their medical privacy. But otherwise, I hope we can at least have a loud and clear announcement of what hosts can and can't ask for, so we don't have people's businesses destroyed weeks later by a complaint that they fell afoul of a policy that didn't exist yet.
