Discrimination?

[Joseph123]

Hey everyone.   I am a lawyer and singer from the Cincinnati area. I was recently featured on NPR Music and was invited to perform at a sold out private show on March 30th. I've heard positive and negative reviews about Airbnb but decided to give it a try and booked a room in Chicago's West Town.   The room is just a few blocks from the venue and was exactly what I was looking for.  The host waited until about 20 hours after the booking and contacted me stating,  "I can only book that unit to guests with past positive reviews. We've recently had some bad experiences with that unit and the owner is super spooked!"  

I thought that this was a bit strange as Airbnb seems to encourage new accounts and diversity.  As a black man, I have read stories about various complaints but wasn't sure what to think.  This put me in a very unfortunate predicament as the other few places near the location that I could've booked are no longer available.  How can I book a room to get feedback if places will not book me without any?  Any recommendations on how to handle this situation?

Thanks,

Joseph 

[Personal information hidden]

[Joseph123]

Thanks so much!

[David126]

@Helen3 Sounded to me like it was a booking enquiry and that was the basis I responded on.

[Annette33]

@Joseph123, now that you fleshed out your profile, I bet you won't have any problems getting bookings! Come out here to AZ, would love to have you ! 🙂

However, lots of new guest have no profile so your original question still merits some thought: here in this forum you mainly meet dedicated and savvy hosts, but I do believe there are quite a few hosts out there that are slow in responding, obtuse in their reasoning, etc.. in other words, they should first go to host school! So you ran into one of them... I doubt it was discrimination as much as perhaps a lack of professionalism.

Also, as pointed out by @David126 , you probably didn't have a confirmed booking, you had a booking request going, and unfortunately the other party took 20 hours to respond. Know that a host has 24 hours to respond, but I personally consider anything over a few hours a lack of professionalism. Only if you book through Instant booking is the confirmation immediate, and yes, then we would talk about a cancellation. A lot to know and navigate when you are new. In any case, it also sounds like the owner has a management company take care of his bookings/request for his "unit", makes me think it is a condo, and the owner isn't even there? That is a far cry from the original Airbnb philosophy, but lots of properties are going into that direction these days. Airbnb is too big at this point to individually screen and truly be selective of their offerings, pretty much anybody can sign up in no time.

 Good luck next time - don't give up!

[John-and-Heather0]

@Joseph123

A couple of things that are different about AirBNB from the hosts perspective. Unlike some ancient vacation rental sites (VRBO, Homeaway) AirBNB does not charge a real, cash, damage deposit that is controlled by the host. This is the most difficult aspect of hosting on AirBNB. So if a group turns out the be secret party animals, smokes in the home, etc. the AirBNB system does not have the hosts' back. They become nasty to hosts, make up reasons not to pay, demand "proof" (like, here's the picture of the smoke smell?  I have the dry clean only item full of pee do you want to smell it?) and become very hostile to hosts.  Some units that may be attractive to guests looking to party have imposed the "good review" restriction, because of AirBNB's failing--not because of the potential guest personally.

I think most hosts would employ instant book without restriction if damage deposits were real, paid in cash to the host, and the host alone decided when to charge. FWIW, on sites that we use that do have the cash deposit, we get better quality guests . . .  so rarely need to deduct from it (maybe once a year, and usually the guest tells us about the damage and consents to the dedution).

I just mention this because we have zero restrictions on sites where every guest pays the deposit (in cash, to the host, then we refund it when they leave and there is no damage).