Airbnb Continues to Allow to Parties / Not Help Hosts Enforce Occupancy

Jason391
Level 2
Austin, TX

Airbnb Continues to Allow to Parties / Not Help Hosts Enforce Occupancy

As a Super Host, I'm extremely frustrated.

 

 

We have House Rules clearly prohibiting parties, pets, and grills. They also clearly state a maximum occupancy of 13 and every person on the property is to be included in Guest occupancy or any other words they are a chargeable Guest. All of these important rules are reiterated in communication to the Guest before the Stay. In addition, we advertise and communicate a fee per person per night after 6.

 

A story about a recent Guest. She booked for 6 Guests. She lied about her intentions about her Stay at our Property. She brought 34 Guests and had a party until 3am.  She also, brought 3 prohibited pets, a prohibited BBQ grill, lost our parking pass and broke a $500 piece of pool equipment. As you can imagine, she violated our and our city’s noise ordinance.

We reached out to her several times by phone, text and Airbnb message. No answer. I personally had to go to the property and break up the party. Shoulder to shoulder people during COVID. No masks. I finally found Amanda. She was very drunk and kept claiming that "no one was spending the night" so they weren’t included in her 6 Guest occupancy that were staying the night.

She intentionally violated not only our rules, but AirBnb's policy as well. She had had tons of good reviews and 1 review that mentioned she had too many Guests on property. She was a Airbnb regular and knew exactly how to manipulate the system. At one point before her stay, she mentioned having more than 6 people on Property (not "34") and she agreed to pay the occupancy charges. All this communication was through Airbnb messaging. We sent her alteration and money requests but she claimed she couldn't because "the app wasn't allowing her."

 

Before the next Guest Check-in the next day we reached out to Airbnb. We provided / offered camera footage for evidence proving all this actually happened. We asked to recover over occupancy charges), pet fees and recoup the parking pass replacement and pool Polaris. Here is the break down of our request:

 

28 additional guests: $50 per guest - $1400 - as advertised

3 undisclosed & prohibited dogs: $75 per dog - $225 - less than fee advertised.

1 missing parking pass- $100 - replacement cost

1 broken Polaris - $500 - replacement cost

 

Total: $2,225.00

 

We also have very steep fines for unauthorized grills (dangerous fire hazard, can easily start a fire on property), over occupancy and noise. Every instance of over occupancy and / or noise violation is a risk of losing our short term rental license. If that happened, we could no longer operate whatsoever. A financially devastating event.

 

Airbnb sent us a courtesy $200.00. Claiming the Guest refused to pay this and our Security Deposit did not cover it. Funny, our Security Deposit is $800.00?!?! Airbnb claimed we should have collected the over person fees during the reservation and did not give any credence to the fact that the Guest agreed to pay these fees on Airbnb message.


Given the recent video by Catherine Powell, I would assume that Airbnb would have provided us with better support (some support) us in the situation. 

https://www.airbnb.com/resources/hosting-homes/a/party-policy-updates-superhost-status-extensions-mo...

 

Simply put Airbnb continues to not provide support and weasel out of taking action on Guests that threaten Host community. Occupancy enforcement is easy first step towards the solution. @Airbnb, get your act together.

0 Replies 0