Recently I had to deal with a party held in my listing. I'd like to share my experience with the claim process.
A guest from LA booked my listing, which is a three bedroom house. He booked with six guests. It was not a local booking. To avoid party from locals, I set a minimum booking of three nights for the listing.
On the first night, two groups of people arrived at the property. The first group had 5 while the second group had 6. These were all recorded in the front door video doorbell. On the second day, there were more people coming. But those people were all left around 2-3 am on the second night. Definitely there was a party going. All 11 people who stayed for two night left on the third day and did not stay for the third night.
On the second day, when they had the party, we were out of town. Therefore, we could not go there to stop the party. I called Airbnb support and ask them to contact the guests and told them to stop the party. Eventually nobody from Airbnb support called the guests to stop the party.
The house was left fine with no damage. But the oven bottom was covered with a thick layer of grease and burned food residual. It took the cleaner two hours to clean the oven. On kitchen floor, there were many food and juice stains, residues, which were hard to be removed.
We do have a no party rule with a $300 fine stated in the house rule for the no party violation. After I submitted the claim to Airbnb, it took two weeks with no success to get the claimed amount for party fine, extra guests, and extra cleaning fee claimed.
In the resolution center, only pictures could be attached. There were indeed pictures showing many people, dirty oven and floor, and some empty big olive oil bottles, and alcohol bottles. I stated those in my message to Airbnb resolution center. But Airbnb support just ignored those and wrote in their response that only recorded video could be used as evidence. After Airbnb contacted me with email, they asked me to send them the video. I sent them the video through email attachment. But they claimed that they could not open the video files, which were normal MP4 file. Therefore, they tried to deny the party by saying that I could not provide evidence of party. They indicated that they would not resolve the case and compensate me without the video and wanted to close the case in 24 hour after a case manager was assigned two weeks later.
I then contacted Airbnb twitter for help. After a couple of hours, I got response from Airbnb twitter help and they would arrange somebody to contact me for a resolution. On the same day, I received a call and a senior case manager explained to me that party fine could not claimed because there is there is no articles in Terms of Service agreement defined with such penalties of violation. He did compensate my claim for five extra guests stayed for two nights, and the extra cleaning fee, which I sent the invoice from the cleaner.
In summary, it is a hard and painful process to file a claim in resolution center for party damages. Indeed, Airbnb could only allow you to claim the actual costs encountered. In my case, the extra people who stayed (note that they will not allow you to claim for the people who attended the party) for two nights, and the extra cleaning fee. Please note that you will not be compensated if you do the cleaning by yourself since they require an invoice. Not only you need to provide necessary invoices/receipts for damages, but also you need to have pictures/videos to prove/support your claim.