complaint about superhost

[Alex6676]

I own a seaside property and listed it on Airbnb with a Superhost partner to manage the bookings and the guests. The Superhost partner was negligent when guests left 2 days before our national lockdown, by failing to check or secure the property, and we suffered damages. What is my remedy against the Superhost?

[Anonymous]

@Alex6676  Airbnb only acts as an intermediary between the listing's host and the guests. So if the guests were responsible for the property damage, there is a procedure your Superhost partner could have followed to pursue compensation (unfortunately, the window of time to initiate this has closed).

Based on your description, it sounds more like your business partner was the one responsible for the damage. This is outside of Airbnb's jurisdiction for two reasons:  their client is the listed host, rather than the owner; and because a "Superhost" is not an employee or agent of Airbnb.  So it appears that your best chance for restitution would be through small-claims court or whatever the judicial equivalent in your location is.

Since you've presumably terminated your working relationship with this host, it goes without saying that they should de-list your property (I don't think there's a protocol for transferring a listing from one primary account to another). If you'd like to continue on with this platform as an owner, you might consider having the listing set up on your personal account, and registering your next partner as a Co-Host. That way, they can still manage all the functions of hosting, but you can receive payments directly into your account, initiate damage claims, and remove the partner's access to your account at will if necessary.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Alex6676 Your remedy will depend on 

a) What contractual relationship you had with the person

b) What you are willing to do with respect to a claim in terms of litigation etc.

I'm not sure what help you hope to gain on this forum as we have next to no information.

As @Anonymous says the one thing that is certain is that you will have no comeback against Airbnb.

[Helen3]

Hello @Alex6676 

When you contract with someone to help you manage your STR business it is up to you to agree terms through a contract with the person or organisation that you are commissioning to provide you with this service.

In my country, I would take the co-host to court to claim for damages if they had not provided the service as outlined in the contract, it is difficult to comment though as we don't know which terms in your contract the co-host broke and how that led to damages to your property.

So for example, if your contract says that 'the co-host must check and secure the listing within XXX hours of the guest checking out' or some such and the host did not do this, you would then have to be in a position to demonstrate it was negligence on the co-hosts part and that no-one else had access to the listing, for example.

I do hope you get things resolved.

My comments are on the assumption that you have already tried to negotiate a resolution with the co-host and have been unsuccessful.

One thing I was puzzled about - your listing doesn't appear to show on your profile, have you deleted your listing?

[Anonymous]

@Helen3  That's a good question - my advice was under the assumption that  @Alex6676  had let the "Superhost" partner list the property in his/her own account, rather than as a co-host. But either way, I agree that the terms of the contract between the owner and the host is the most relevant factor here. 

[Alex6676]

Hi Andrew, Helen and Mike, thank you for your guidance, it is much appreciated.

We do have a contract with the Superhost partner and are suing her for damages. 

The facts are that a hard lockdown was announced by the South African President on Monday night 24 March, to commence at 00h01 on Friday 28 March. The guests had to leave and get home by Thursday or they would be banned from travelling. They left on Wednesday 26 March with the house in disarray. Doors were left unlocked, indoor furniture was left outside on the deck, there was dirty laundry as well as clean wet laundry (we did not know this at the time). Our co-host was obliged to check the house after the guests left but she never went back to the house although she lives only a few minutes away. We could not go there ourselves as we live 1100km away and cannot legally travel. The house was left in that condition for 7 weeks. We only discovered what had happened when we were able to send a cleaning service there last week. 

We will seek a delisting of our property, which is in the name of our former partner.

My remaining issue is whether we have a channel to AirBnB to object to our former partner's status as a Superhost. Can you please give me advice on how to do this?

[Anonymous]

@Alex6676  That particular issue is not worth pursuing. You can't appeal against someone's Superhost status, because this is determined by an automated process based on specific criteria (star ratings, response rate etc) rather than a subjective assessment of whether the host is genuinely "super."  Those criteria certainly don't include whether an owner was satisfied with their work as an agent. So this is not something Airbnb will ever take an action on based on complaints.

However, if you have terminated the contract but this person is still taking bookings and misrepresenting the property as their own, this would be fraudulent. If you submit evidence that this person is no longer permitted to access your property, Airbnb would be obliged to remove the listing and possibly suspend the account.