Guest vs. visitors - big party reform please help air bnb

[LaCooVs0]

We have a very serious problem with air bnb. Same problem that most people seem to have quite frequently and honestly the reason why cities across the world are banning air bnbs and every neighbor I’ve ever had at my 10 air bnb properties hates me. Air bnb needs to deal with this issue especially now that it is a publicly traded company and especially if they want to remain profitable and forego being band everywhere. 

Guest regularly list a  number of guests who will be sleeping at the houses and then proceed to have 30, 40, 50 or even 100+ guests to our house some times. We very aggressively try to prevent this with a $50 per extra guest over 6 fee. We write no parties on every description, house rule and information page of our listing possible. We clearly say that there will be a $50 charge for each person over 6 who enters the house. We are very good at catching parties with our cameras, around the outside of our smart house we document the people coming in and we even have full remote control of wifi, lighting, TVs etc. and we shut them all down during parties. Unfortunately that doesn’t always stop them. Our neighbors constantly are calling us and complaining, this is the reason why we have converted 9 of our 10 properties to regular rentals because it’s to much hassle even though we love air bnb when we have respectful and honest guests.

Here is the biggest problem, when we catch these parties and we submit our charges to air bnb for $50 per extra guest air bnb regularly states that since the extra guests didn’t stay we cannot charge them - This is completely absurd! If guests want to turn our house into a nightclub we should be able to collect our door fees and air bnb should enforce these for us when we have proof. Listen, if you say you’re  having 6 people and 10 show up and they don’t trash the house we don’t make a big deal or try to collect this but if your disrespectful throw a huge party and trash our million dollar house you should be held accountable. Especially during covid times when they are potentially putting our lives at risk when we have to clean up their filthy nasty messes. I guarantee that if air bnb starts enforcing these fees the first time a guest throws a 50 person party and gets a $2500 bill they are not going to do that again. But you guys do not back us up on this at all!!!

This is me calling out to air bnb executives -   @Brian chesky @Nathan Bleckarczyk @joe gebbia  @Beth Axelrod, and especially @Catherine Powell as head of hosting. Please for the sake of dedicated hosts / shareholders such as my wife and I, please I am begging you to update this policy. People are running rampant on your platform throwing huge house parties and smearing the name of air bnb in communities across the globe. This problem needs to be dealt with and this is a solution that is proven to work for me in my 8 years of experience in the platform. Usually just threatening the fees is enough to get the parties shut down but when it isn’t we need you guys to step up and collect the charges! I need you guys to back me and other hosts up on extra guest fees and these are not only for guests spending the night but also guests entering the house. We are not hosting nightclubs and party dens. Trust me every host on the platform will thank you tremendously for allowing us to charge and collect these fees with documented proof - This needs to change! 

Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you need any clarification or if there is anything I can do to help you guys implement these changes. It would make the community so much more respected and trusted.

[Fred13]

I usually zoom first to see what is being charged for the listing, you wisely picked up on it @Ann72 . 

[Pat271]

In @LaCooVs0’s defense, I don’t think she means to condone trespassers, but rather to discourage them from trespassing in the first place.  If extra people crossing the threshold carried a $50 fee, and if booker knew this $50 would indeed be enforced, they may well not book, which solves the bitter neighbor problem.

I would be more inclined to make it $200 per guest per visit, to seal the non-deal.

[Inna22]

@LaCooVs0 I do not allow "visitors". Anyone who comes to the property- just steps into the door way to say hi, is helping decorate or staying for a week has to be registered. I have party squasher installed and I announce it all over my listing. When I get a local booking, I send them all of this in another message along with a reminder that the city ticket for overcrowding is $2500. I also have a contract with a local security company. I tell the guests that the company monitors the party squasher and compares it to the number of registered guests I have submitted. They would automatically come out and kick everyone out if there is a discrepancy (this is not exactly how it work but I want them to think it does). There are still guests who test limits every once in a while though

[LaCooVs0]

@Inna22  Yeah, we see every guest that enters with cameras at all doors so pretty similar to party squashers except that we have actual proof of the people going in. Unfortunately even with this proof air bnb will not actually reimburse the cost of sending a security company or even enforce the extra guest charges that we have listed, that’s the real problem IMO! 

[Inna22]

@LaCooVs0 I think you are missing my point. Your goal should be preventing this behavior, not getting reimbursed. I also have a proof with party squasher. More so, I do not need to watch my cameras like a hawk, worry about someone disabling them or disclosing them properly in the listing (make sure you are doing that). I just set it to the number I allow and get a notification when more people arrive. If cameras are a better set up for you- that's fine however it does not sound like they have stopped anyone so far. As for security company, I do say that the guests will be charged for the call (you do have deposit set up, don't you?). I never had to actually get them out but I would imagine between this being listed as one of my fees and party squasher proof I would be able to collect it. Of course with airbnb one can never be certain. Again, my main goal is to show the guests who are thinking of having a party that they will not get away with it, it will not be a fun night and realize that it is not worth taking the chance and not to actually catch them in the act and try to get associated fees covered

[LaCooVs0]

@Inna22 Okay, you might not have as much experience as us... We are in downtown seattle, very dense populations lots of houses and people around so I don’t think this device would work properly around our location, but sounds like it works good for your set up. With us reimbursement is our main concern because unlike you never having to call security to escort a party out we have to basically do this about one to two times per month. I’ve probably had to break up 200 parties in my experience with our 10 properties we’ve had on air bnb, 9 of which are now regular long term rentals because of these problems. So to answer your question no air bnb will not take the money to reimburse you for calling security out of the renters deposit. We have a $1,000 deposit but air bnb policy is “ if the extra guest didn’t spend the night, they don’t reimburse you.” For us here in seattle we have to obtain special short term rental licensing and pay lots of extra taxes and fees to operate an air bnb, so hey if someone really wants to have a big party at the house and pay $50 for each extra guest than okay, we will deal with it. We pay to play and they should have to also. At the end of the day we don’t really want to deal with parties though, if we have to, which we constantly do, we deserve and demand more money. Neighbors being upset are a secondary issue and probably a bigger problem for the reputation of air bnb than for us since we don’t actually live in our rentals or see the neighbors much but we do clean the rentals ourselves and we feel for the neighbors and don’t want to drop a party house in the middle of their lives. We do want to continue to provide nice accommodations for the 90% of our responsible guests who make air bnb such a great marketplace and continue to fund our real estate investments. So for us we deserve way more to clean to deal with parties if renters decide to be dumb enough to go against all of our warnings then air bnb should back us and other property owners like us up with enforcing these charges .

[Inna22]

@LaCooVs0 I am not going to compete with you on who has more experience. I have six large properties literally downtown Chicago. If you do not think my advice is relevant, I do not know whos is. Good luck

[Fred13]

@LaCooVs0 In case you missed the memo:  "Parties" are a sore subject nowadays in the rental business because they can be a death knell to:

1. Airbnb (and any other booking company) since they translate into very bad press, or worse.

2. You because of the damage they may cause to your property.

3. Hosts because it makes it that much more difficult and costly to even start an STR in many places now.

4. Higher hosts fees (now only 3%), but as managerial costs go up they are passed on to > all other hosts in general.  

5. Neighborhoods because a 'party' out of control easily turns any neighborhood into a battle zone.

What constitutes and  tends to cause a 'party' is of course subject to interpretation, but the accumulation of an 'excessive'  number of people in one place with little supervision with nothing to loose ( Airbnb 'deposit' is not really real), much-too-often leads to very unruly obnoxious human behavior. At all costs that is what must be prevented and is the sole responsibility of every host individually, its their neighborhood not Airbnb's. 

[LaCooVs0]

@Fred13  Yes, we should do our best to prevent them... enforcing fines works really well for society in general. Why does law enforcement give speeding tickets and courts give fines? Because fining people for inappropriate behavior is a really good deterrent. If they don’t get the picture and keep causing the problem they are fined into confinement and they can no longer afford to go out and cause problems. Therefore air bnb should not only allow our fines on their platform, they should also back us up on enforcing them!

[John5097]

All of our local municipalities have restricted STR to owner occupied listings only. The yearly application fees and inspections pay for the cost of policing for illegal listings on STR platforms. I agree that its gotten even worse. ABB's primary strategy appears to use lobbyist on the state level to restrict local municipalities from regulating STRs. We just had a recent house party downtown where guest and a neighbor walking their dog got shot when a fight broke out. This one was legal STR, an ABB listing as well, as it was in the commercial overlay district, the only place that allows STR without owner occupied can opperate.  But the lack of security policies in place, where ID isn't really verified, host don't even have the name of the guest, most use a different location in their profile, no real security deposit, no real host guarantee, that is so misleading and disingenuous it raised the issue of fraud. Bad guest who abuse the rules, host parties, are also allowed leave retaliatory reviews that lead to responsible host being marked down and delisted. Until ABB address some of these core security issues it will likely keep getting worse. Who would want an ABB party house next door?  Util their policy changes more whole house properties will likely opt for long term rental. Just my opinion. 

[Ann72]

@Inna22 @Fred13 - @LaCooVs0  wants to have parties.  He doesn’t want Airbnb to deter them - he wants Airbnb to send someone over to stamp wrists, count heads, and collect the entry fee.  He figures enforcement will net him more schekels annually than regular payouts.  The low nightly fee is just a honey trap, set to lure in parties.  He’ll do this until his neighbors force him to turn it into a long-term rental.  In the meantime he only cares about the money and he’s mad that Airbnb won’t collect the party cover charges for him.  He thinks they’re being stupid, but they know what he’s trying to do.  That’s why they won’t  play his “enforcement” game.

[LaCooVs0]

@Ann72 .... honey trap? Wow the listing says everywhere no parties, description, house rules, welcome message all say no parties. But you think instead of fees we should discriminate between guest - Maybe you should check your logic Ann! 

but Im sure this is not a problem you’re experienced in. Nobody I know has ever said hey, let’s go to Maine and rent a cabin in the middle of nowhere to throw a party. my homes are in downtown Seattle. 

[Ann72]

@LaCooVs0  LOL of course I didn't read your listing - I only looked at the pictures - sound familiar?  Your posts above sound less concerned with the parties than with the fees.  I'm a pragmatist and if I were in your shoes, I would have figured out a way to either shut the parties down or collect the fees long ago.  Or get paid a lot more than $200 a night for my aggro.  I honestly don't understand your pricing.

[Lorna170]

@LaCooVs0 Get an event license and be at the front door every night that your guests are there throwing parties.  Then you can collect your "extra guest" fee.   Either that, or charge your guests $1000 or $2000 per night.

[LaCooVs0]

@Lorna170 Either your not a very savvy business person or your trying to be funny, I’m not sure. But neither a last minute event license and sending a doorman to collect door fees or charging a nightly rate so high that we don’t get any stays would be plausible options.. back to the drawing board for your next joke.