@Catherine-Powell
Thank you Catherine for your response to this thread of mine and another by @Lisa723 that deals in an incidental way with Covid-19 and the ECP. It is gratifying for us to know you are keeping abreast of discussions here. I could have come to you in the form of a ‘DM’ but what is being talked about here effects every host in the community and the entire community needs to know where they stand, and I felt publicly is the best way to do that.
Thanks also for your clarification of the company’s ECP definitions, however, the thrust of both these threads of Lisa’s and mine was not the current interpretation of the ECP!
The issues we have are as follows.
1/........Last year you introduced a set of guidelines, (no they weren’t guidelines, they were definitions) regarding hosting cleaning regimes, and hosts were required to agree to those definitions in order to continue to accept Airbnb reservations. You stated those hosts who did not comply would have their booking calendars blocked. One of those definitions was that the entire contents of a listed property were to be cleaned and ‘sanitized’, (I will come to more about that later) between each guest stay. The interpretation was not just what guests had actually used but, anything which they had actual access to, to in your words, ‘prevent cross contamination’!
Many professional hosts felt this was unachievable, they either did not have the required equipment or personnel to fulfill that ECP definition requirement. ON THAT BASIS they chose not to agree to the terms and conditions as stated. Now, as you have reinforced here in your response to the CC, that requirement to clean and sanitize the entire contents of the property to prevent ‘cross contamination’ is no longer a definition of the ECP….and current viewing of the ECP document backs that up. The definition is now amended to, as you say, ‘anything a guest has used during their stay’! Can you appreciate the substantial difference between to two requirements?
Catherine these are Airbnb’s finest and most ethical hosts, the ones who have made Airbnb great. They could have simply chosen to agree to whatever was thrust in front of them and kept on doing what they were doing….after all Airbnb are not policing the ECP by any verification via the guest review process! They are just taking everyone’s word for it that compliance is happening. Many of these fine, ethical, professional hosts would have been pleased to agree to the current ECP definitions…..but they were not aware of the change or just when that change came in.
No action was taken at the time hosts were required to agree or ignore, but now months down the track with a vaccine rollout in full swing and better methods of Covid control in most countries, the company have chosen to block these core hosts properties from booking. Catherine, this is wrong, this is unjust!
What the company should have done to all those hosts who did not agree, rather than just blocking them 'out of the blue', send them a notification that said ….”As of *******date the definitions of the Covid ECP have been amended to reflect current best health advice with regard to infection control. Read your ECP, you have 14 days to either accept the current definitions or reject them. If you still chose to reject them Airbnb will reluctantly block your booking calendar from reservations without further notice”! That would have been fair Catherine, if you are going to make changes to company policy you must alert users to those changes, not penalize them months down the track because they are simply unaware!
I understand all these hosts need to do to unblock their calendars is to simply accept the current ECP terms but, they haven't because they were not aware of the change in policy. But that's not the point. The point is, this just reinforces the lack of proper and timely information between the company and it's hosts. You have turned a lot of fine hosts businesses upside down here, many of them either have left or will leave because of the way the company has handled this.
2/......Sanitizing is a buzz word at the moment, it conjours up thoughts of being seen to be properly clean. But sanitizing is only certified to be effective against bacteria, not viruses. The American government through the EPA does not certify Sanitizers for virus control. The correct term is Disinfecting. I bring this up Catherine because most of us are of the opinion that Airbnb’s primary motivation for bringing this ECP to the table is to protect itself from possible legal process if a case of Covid transmission could be linked back to an Airbnb listing. Other travel platforms have not seen the need to introduce similar measures and instead rely on local authorities for compliance, which is the more sensible approach because the threat posed by Covid-19 differs greatly between countries and jurisdictions, and the one size fits all approach is not the most prudent!
However if this is the path the company is going to enforce they should at least get the terminology correct. As things stand at the moment, if an infection is traced back to an Airbnb listing where the ECP has been agreed to, the host would have a strong legal case by simply saying….”I am doing as Airbnb instructed me to do, I am following their guidelines, they required me to Sanitize”
I would ask you to put to the development team that the use of the word Sanitizing should be replaced with the word disinfecting when stating company policy. This would then comply with the policy of the EPA.
Once again, thanks for your time and getting back to us Catherine.
Cheers..........Rob