Not that I would ever aspire to defend Airbnb, but I'd have to believe that with millions of active hosts and guests, it's inevitable that there will be all sorts of unsavoury, even tragic happenings, and a real challenge to prevent it. Probably just plain impossible. Although attempting to hide it is pretty dubious IMO.
Still, I seriously doubt Airbnb is the only booking platform that's plagued with this. Booking.com, for example, has very little protections against this sort of thing. Both ways. They don't vet the hosts much, and they certainly don't vet the guests. In fact, on booking.com, everything is instant book, and both hosts and guests are obliged to accept whatever they get. Their customer support is abysmal, and they assume no responsibility for anything. We quit them long ago, just for that reason.
I've yet to receive a booking from an "exemplary" guest on VRBO, for example. Every booking has been somewhat "undesirable" so far. And VRBO doesn't deliver even 1/4 of the bookings Airbnb does, which implies at least, that a far higher percentage of VRBO bookings are "something less than ideal".
Even now, with the rapid decline in guest quality many hosts are experiencing through Airbnb, at least 30% are still rather "ideal" guests. I now count that as a blessing in these times.
It never used to be that way. But now, there's millions in the pool.. and that's inevitably going to incubate problems, with murky relief.
Still, Airbnb could do a lot more vetting, by simply being a bit smarter about it, and giving hosts more tools to prevent "bad" guests, along with actually enforcing penalties against such guests, instead of blindly finding in their favour so often.
At the risk of being repetitive, you can't rely on the platforms to watch your back. It's not their core interest. >You< have to be vigilant about who's booking, and not be afraid to scare them off if there's any doubt.
Watch your back. Prevention is always the best cure. Unfortunately, it's your problem to cure.
