myself i view the move as a business necessity in a world where human rights and diversity has cultural currency regardless of where you live. put it down to housekeeping. business protocols.
my take on the reasons are:
1. legal - BNB attempting to distance themselves from prosecution by association. as @David0 mentioned this likely is just part of a number of phases both pre and post Nov 1.
2. income protection - 4x the income per stay is generated by a guest. in my short time here, the number of issues people have about IB and guests acting disrespectfully and also deceitfully and maybe other 'd' adjectives indicates stronger BNB protection policies to manage hosts and equally strong protection policies to safeguard potential income. also these figures are being used to 'value' the company in order to raise capital for expansion needs.
discrimination is a problem:
1. its a massive problem in the world. NZ was the first country in the world to change the law to grant universal suffrage. It was the first country in the world to accept the legality of same sex marriage.
2. NZ ratified a number of international treaties in the 70s and 80s including the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, discrimination against women, the rights of the child, the rights of people with disabilities etc
3. we don't have a history like south africa, or the usa, or australia. beautiful though this country is, and its a great place to live, according to the Race Relations Commission Maori are 3x as likely as non-Maori to have experienced unfair treatment on the basis of ethnicity and re the gender pay gap, women earned $300 less per week than men and had lower lifetime incomes compared to men even though between 2000 & 2008 the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Chief Justice, Attorney General and the Governor General posts were all held by women.
the common thread here appears to me to be that people are reacting to the explicit coercion forcing hosts into accepting change by making it clear that resisting change will lead to no longer being able to host. also there is rising suspicion not just due to the BNBs approach but also due to pre-exisiting experience repeated issues many of which are based around just being able to contact them face to face rather than by twitter.
i also add...according to the wall st journal, BNB is valued at 30bil with over 2mil listings. even if the average house/space was valued at USD250000 thats 500 trillion none of which they are paying for but all of which they are using to raise capital with. you'd think they'd take better care of the people who are really making the money for them. on the other hand, the hotel/motel/accommodation and property management and especially apartment blocks, tax departments and governments are fighting back. San Francisco is restricting BNBing to 60 days a year. Berlin, Israel and Quebec have already legislated controls and in Israels case a boycott.
just as a note RE HOST GUARANTEE, NZ is not eligble. so guests can party on...
@Robert0 yeah no robert. attributing personality traits of a few individuals to the entire race which equates to over 1/6th of the worlds population is racist.
@Christian0 really, you're sounding like a BNB zealot. such people can tend to be ripe for radicalisation.
@David0 i agree
@Ken0 very sorry for you, either way you're going to be burned.
@Thu0 thats not good
@Peter0 its the least BNB can do i believe.