Feature request: Hide listing from guests who reside in the same city

[Adam-and-Carol0]

Hi Airbnb.

Please look into implementing a feature which disallows locals, or guests who reside in the same city as a host's listing(s) from seeing those listings, and make this optional for the host to turn on or off. Myself, and many other hosts would like to prevent locals from booking our places. Allowing it seems to attract unsavoury guests who typically want to stay at a place to have a party, or function they wouldn't dare host in their own homes, or in some cases are rotten local tenants who've been recently evicted from their apartments which increases your risk of getting a squatter, or just an all around bad guest. Sure, not everyone local books a place for nefarious reasons, but I know I personally didn't get into the airbnb business to host people from my own city and my past experiences have all been very negative ones. 

Thanks

Adam & Carol

[Amy38]

I would hate that feature...I have had a number of excellent bookings from locals renting for their older parents.  I dont want to lose those.

[Adam-and-Carol0]

Amy,

That's why I mentioned above that the new feature would be optional, allowing hosts to turn it on and off as they desire. 

Please be very careful allowing guests to book your place on behalf of other people too. Not only are bookings on behalf of a third party against airbnb's terms of service, but allowing this to happen absolves Airbnb from certain responsibilities, and disqualifies you from the host guarantee in the event your home is damaged by the guests not included on the original reservation. The parents in your example need to book with their own account, and would probably be from out of town, which is what myself and other hosts want, especially in large cities.

[Ann10]

Host guarantee. LOL! Airbnb isn't going to pay anything either way. They aren't trustworthy. HA has insurance the guest can buy. I have no idea why Airbnb doesn't do this. I was having my ABB guests get the insurance because I don't trust the ABB mediators, but ABB said I can't do it anymore. If they would have the guests get the $59-$99 insurance, they could make money and get rid of all those incompetent, unethical mediators. I'm sure they are trained to be unethical, but they could save money and make money. These are just my opinions based on every single encounter I have had w ABB mediators. In fact, I had to file a claim w the AAA to get what I deserved.

[Adam-and-Carol0]

Ann,

I can create another topic about handling claims and case managers over at Airbnb and we can continue the discussion there. Just send me a private message if you want. Airbnb does follow through with claims, but it's never easy. One of the best pieces of advice I can give to hosts today is, if your case is being mishandled, delayed, or is declined, call Airbnb and ask/demand a new case manager, and keep doing this until you get someone who is willing to work with you. Almost every time I've done this, I've had positive results.  There are some terrible case managers I've dealt with over there, ones who avoid responding to emails, phone calls, and even support reps trying to get in touch with them, but there are also some really fantastic and supportive ones too. Some of the supervisors there are also really helpful.

[Helga0]

@Adam-and-Carol0, I can understand forbidding a local to book, but how would you want to forbid them to see you? Everyone looks at the competition now and then, if you are aware of cookies etc, you do it on a clean browser, not logged in.

if the programmer  bases this on location, you would lose all travellers already in your town and needing a room for tonight or for an extension of their stay after their current rental.

for the damage claim: yeah, good advice, but it does not always work. I tried whatever I could, calls, new claim, the same supervisor grabbed different claims and denied all of them with absurd justifications. Even if the opposite of her statements was easily verifyable in the data base or reading a few reviews. Seems they can put a flag on you or the guest and pull all files to them. No idea why.

[Ann10]

@Adam & Carol-I'm very tenacious. @Helga0 is right. I did everything I could to get them to do the right thing before I sought outside help. ABB is like a cult where they think they have so much power and if they say case closed, they think it's closed, but the real world doesn't work that way. I'm glad you were about to get help without having to resort to extreme action.

[Don138]

I just had a situation that relates to this topic. I received an email from Airbnb stating that I had a discrimimation complaint based on Country of Origin. When I emailed back asking who the person was, they informed me it was a person that lives in the same city as my Airbnb house. I told them that I had declined the request because I did not feel comfortable with it not because they lived in the same city. I did tell the Airbnb representive that in the furture if someone requests a stay in my house and they are from my city I would definitely request additional information as to the circumstance. If it was for an out of town family member I would definately consider approving the stay. However if it was for themselves I would more then likely decline the request. If I did decline the request I would certainly not want Airbnb to accuse me of discrimination base on Country or Origin as they falsely did in my case! Country or Origin discrimination has nothing to do with declining a request from a person living in the same town or city!  I've requested that Airbnb make this policy change " A stay request that's declined because that person already resides in the same city should not be considered discriminatory"!!