Tips for hosting new airbnb users as guests? And still preventing prostitutes?

Tips for hosting new airbnb users as guests? And still preventing prostitutes?

Hello! I seem to be in several catch 22 situations - can anyone help? 

 

1. I really value helping new used with their first airbnb stay - but it is costing me so much in manpower that I simply cannot afford to do it anymore?

 

2. Am I allowed to decline new users if they don’t have reviews yet? I am out of manpower for the month for my airbnb to stay in the black ...

 

3. Prostitution situations occurring...please help! I have followed everything airbnb support and Level10 community people have suggested and it just happened again.  It cost me $900 in manpower to get my guests to safety this summer when there was prostitution occurring at my property. Now, it happened again this weekend and it cost me 5 hours, plus a safety team that I had to pay $20/hour to go to my property with me ... plus I had to shut down the booking for the night and move the other guest so we lost $150 in revenues, plus my personal home airbnb room I had to give for free which cost me $150 out of my own pocket. The Airbnb support solutions that the phone reps have given me have simply not worked ... Please help!

 

...detailed situations below on each topic.

 

1. yesterday it cost me $100 in man hours (5 hours at twenty dollars per hour) to get a new user set up and checked in for a $75 booking. 

 

 

2.Today I declined a new user that wants to check-in late because I can’t support after hours check-in or another new user to be able to make enough this week to cover my mortgage and utilities for the month of August. But now I have to call in to get the declines wiped from my record - so it doesn’t cost me my superhost status, right? And in my experience that costs me 1-4 hours to get am airbnb support rep who will allow me to decline the reservation.

 

The reason that we can’t cover our mortgage and utilities is because of extra hours we have had to spend dealing with prostitutes, traffickers, Johns, and pumps that have booked.

 

Last week we had a prostitute book and thank God I already new it was a prostitute from a listing that I manage at my Private home. She was trying to ring her John or Pimp and airbnb support at first refused to call her to cancel the reservation.

 

It took 5 hours consistently calling airbnb to get it elevated to the right level. They finally cancelled it but it was too late because they had the address so it was not safe for my other guest to stay at the house. I had to move the other guest to m personal home.  

 

I reported this person in March 2019 as a fake ID and prostitution activity on my property. 4 other hosts in my town have reported her. Airbnb did nothing. She changed her profile name three times and booked another listing that I Manage this weekend.  It autobooked even though she had bad reviews from other hosts. Which I have mine set to block. 

 

This summer - I had to pay for our property to be staked out our property for one solid week. 24/7 which. Cost me $900.  Because a prostitute successfully booked and a trafficker tried to book as well. She tried to bring a John in and I refused him entrance because he was not on the reservation.   But she had booked for two nights and airbnb refused to call her and cancel the reservation. They told me to call the pollice. The police said they could not come to the property unless airbnb cancelled the reservation first😥

 

airbnb support refused to do anything to help me rectify the situation this summer.

 

 Then when it happened again this weekend. And the solutions that the Trust and Safety team gave me do not help. I tried their suggestion to cancel the reservation first and the system does not allow it. Once a guest checks in, the customer service has to cancel the reservation - a host cannot.

 

Who can I talk to to get help with this situation?

12 Replies 12
Linda108
Level 10
La Quinta, CA

You have 10 listings, @Cross-Cultural0 so I am not sure which one is problematic for you.  I am not sure what Air BNB can be expected to do for you, but perhaps there are some guest vetting steps you can take.  First of all, if using Instant Book, make positive reviews a requirement.   Then, decline all local requests.  Many hosts have posted about troublesome bookings by local guests.  Hope this helps

@Linda108  I've never understood how hosts can identify locals. Couldn't these undesirables just say they're from somewhere they're not? Just like they can keep deleting profiles and setting up new ones? 

Absolutely agree, @Sarah977 .  Not 100% given that the profiles are not 100% fool proof, but it is all we have, I think.  

This is exactly the situation we have had in our small town. We have a very active sex-trafficking ring.  One of the pimps and his prostitute booked my personal home guest bedroom in March. I reported them immediately to airbnb - they said they would kick them out of the system. 

 

They just booked again now - last weekend - 6 months later.  And I reported them and it took me 5 hours to get to a supervisor in the support system. The pimp and prostitute changed their name 4 times in the system and changed the IDs that they uploaded - but had kept their email the same so : blackand whitehooker@gmail.com

Were there positive reviews on all the changed profiles?  Just curious if changing your IB setting would help or not.

Good idea Linda - I have mine set not to allow IB unless they have positive reviews.

 

However what happened is that the hosts gave them 4star public reviews, but wrote in the wording that they recommend other hosts do not book them

So it still instabooked them.

 

I know for me - I did not give them a bad review in the system, but I called airbnb and they said they would have them kicked out of the system.

 

Because they had been to my property and had my address - so I felt unsafe leaving them a bad review - in case they came to my home and did something out of retaliation.  They were both high as kites on something more than marijuana.

Hi Linda - thanks for the ideas.  How do you decline all local requests without getting superhost status revoked?  We have a ton of local requests because of college students in our town and the town nearby

Petra327
Level 10
Phoenix, AZ

@Cross-Cultural0  I'm going to assume the prostitution situation is happening in the properties that are $17, $20, $45 or $50 a night.  I didn't check on your listing but do you have a one or two night minimum as well with these rates?  I would think these kind of price points would be like rolling the dice on who you will get and having a "safety team" would come with the territory.  If it gets much worse with frequency you may want to consider your business model.

 

One of the threads on this forum was from a host that had a nightmare experience with a pimp and his girls.  It made me immediately raise my prices and I have a 3 night minimum.  It scares the living daylights out of me to think about that happening.

@Petra327 I agree that it's essential to raise your rates and your minimum nights in an effort to prevent this kind of thing.

One of the problems is that the airbnb app recommends too low of rates for our city.  So the other hosts follow it - so in order to get booked on a week night by someone traveling through town in between longer bookings... you have to compete with the lowest price

At least in your first year of operations