Hosting in Tirana ( protecting the community )

[A-t0]

Dear Hosts, 

As we all know tourism in Tirana and Albania in general is booming and is expected to raise in the upcoming years. While this is a very good thing for all of us, until now there are no "security wise" rules about guests vetting (know the guest) offered from the government that i'm aware of.  While there is always the Airbnb profile verification, that is not enough as local laws doesn't recognize those rules. There is a security issue for us and our neigbhoors. We need to act and protect ourselves, our guests and our community.

Two main issues i'm thinking of,

1-  Guests verification.  Do you require a passport to be provided upon check-in? If so, do you provide this information to the local police (so they know who are you hosting?

2- Illegal activities (sex tourism/drug use).  This is becoming a very big issue in Tirana and Albania in general.  How do we protect ourselves, our neigbhoors and each-other?  Its supposed that we are opening our home doors to normal people who wants to explore Tirana and Albania in general.  However, there are those "bad guests" who we (I for sure) don't want inside my home or near my neigborhood in general.  How do we protect ourselves? Should we inform each-other ? Mayble flag the guests and let Airbnb know? 

Yes, there are privacy issues here and guest rights etc which i strongly agree to, however what about the protection of our Homes? our Neigbhoors? 

What if we created a closed Airbnb Hosts group and exchange that information with each-other?  I mean, if somebody of us run in a very bad experience (like accidentally hosting somebody who is using drugs or illegal activities we inform each other so we can shut him down from being able to be hosted again in any of our apartments. 

Lets discuss it... 

Help or guide from what other communities in other cities of the world are doing  are welcoming!  How are you dealing with this issues? 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@A-t0

1) yes we do, in Croatia it is mandatory and we register our guests to the police using the online form.

During the check in my guests have to show me their photo ID (passport or ID) and I have to write down following info:  Name and surname,  is it passport or ID card, document number, nationality, country and date of birth, country and town of residency and is it male or female.

On the top of this form, it is written my VAT number, my name and surname, Address of my ABB unit,

On the bottom of this form I write how many keys I gave to my guest and the person who booked has to sign it.

If there are more people in the group then sometimes I just take a photo of their ID-s to speed up the process.

It has to be disclosed in your listing that your guests will have to show you their photo ID

2) to avoid sex-guests the best would be to decline guests from your city.

Put in your house rules that visitors and unregistered guests are forbidden.

You can install a security camera in front of your entrance but it has to be disclosed in your listing as well.

Give your number to a good neighbor and tell him to call you if he notices something weird is going on.

For the beginning don't use instant booking but vet your guests up front, ask them what is the purpose of their trip etc.... and trust your gut.

Check in your guests in person.

Good luck 🙂

[A-t0]

Hi @Branka-and-Silvia0

Thank You for your reply.  The problem is not what I as a host could do to potentially "protect" myself.  The issue is what we as a community can do to protect each-other. (and that's my question..)

I have done it all (put it in my House Rules), installed security cameras. However i have had guests with bad behaviours and what i want is the ability to protect my other fellow hosts, so they can't just change apartment or host.  The same for the others to let me know etc...  

We just need to be able to flag (in a private secure way) specific categories of guests so they are out of our community. 

Thanks for all 😉  My love to Croatia 🙂 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

aaaa... OK 🙂

I believe all of us would like an online list in alphabetical order with full names, pictures and passport numbers of all bad guests hehe ... but unfortunately, it seems it is forbidden by law :)))

For comfort, we have a small flag we can click on and report them to Airbnb (I have no idea if ABB uses this and what for) and we have review and rating system.... but then they just close their account and open a new one or come within a group so... yes, it's the Russian roulette we are playin'

[Mariglen0]

@A-t0  I strongly believe that and i am searching what is procedure  to create the community. In the meanmean we have to do something ourselves.

Btw I opened a page in fb "airbnb Albania" to promote the albanian listings. But why not using it as a place to share information, ideas, experiences between hosts?