Thank you @Sarah977 for your reply. I have indeed reported the listing to the building management as stated on the notice. And I will report it to the authorities as well. I don’t expect airbnb to have the capacity (nor the will) to follow up on the legality of the millions of listings they host on their platform in literally almost every country on earth.
BUT - and call me crazy - doesn’t airbnb have a moral, ethical and/or legal obligation to act upon legitimate reports of illegal listings ? Or, does the need of securing their service fee trump all that ?
Yes, fine. They don’t run due diligence on every listing. But when one of the community members such as myself provides overwhelming body of evidence that the listing is illegal I would have expected them to step in and act in accordance to their own policies which state , among other things, that safety and well-being of the guests is of top priority for them.
Being able to report a listing you didn’t stay at is currently possible. The button is visible and available to report such listings on any property page, regardless to whether you stayed there or not. So, why is that ? So that when you do report a listings they can turn around and say : sorry you can’t use that button? Then remove it from the property page.
I understand that it is open to potential abuse but is it less severe than the actual abuse that is being committed by the host of this property by putting his/her guests at risk of being fined, arrested and/or jailed ?
Besides, since I have stayed in one of the properties in this building and the illegality of the listing is derived from the notice applicable to ALL apartments in that building, doesn’t this give me the right and the obligation to report other properties in the same building? If the apartment I’ve stayed at is illegal, so are the other apartments in the same building.
Look, I’m extremely disappointed to see how airbnb doesn’t take this more seriously. Instead, they send template responses to say how much they care but they really just prefer to do nothing so that the service fees pour in. So what if guests end up in jail? They will then say it’s the host’s fault. They just provided a platform.
yeah, sure. They provided the platform to commit illegal acts by the host. And they knew about it and did nothing to stop it which by the way is against their own internal policies.
it’s absurd wouldn’t you agree ?