Airbnb blocking "certain" whole house bookings right now, not informing host.

[Christopher187]

A legitimate guest just contacted me on VRBO, saying that they tried to book the exact same house on Airbnb but they were blocked from doing so.  I was absolutely flabergasted that I'd gotten no notification at all from Airbnb that a booking request had been blocked.  The person sent me the message that was shown to them by Airbnb.  I googled and only found one Reddit post from a week ago where a couple other people had run into the same issue.  Has anyone here encountered this?

I couldn't figure out how to embed an image in this post, so I used imgur.  Here is what the guest is seeing:

https://imgur.com/VMo6mGC

[Huma0]

@Susan17 

No, it makes no sense. I host private rooms in my own house, but will readily admit that would be less safe for guests than booking an entire unit. Staying in a hotel would be even more risky for them. Sounds like a ploy by Airbnb to take advantage of the current pandemic by redirecting bookings to their hotel listings, which would obviously bring them more revenue (still don't understand why this only applies to whole listings and not private rooms though). Could Airbnb be immoral enough to employ such a tactic? I think we know the answer to that already...

[Susan17]

@Huma0 

"Could Airbnb be immoral enough to employ such a tactic? I think we know the answer to that already... "

We certainly do! 

(On page 1 of that thread I just linked to above, I posted a bit about the current situation with their hotel partners) 

[Alex645]

The company is rolling out an initiative in the U.S., Canada and Australia that blocks guests from booking homes on short notice in cities where they live in an effort to limit unauthorized house parties, according to a company statement provided by Airbnb spokesman Charlie Urbancic.