Unauthorized Parties

[Nikki4]

Is anyone else dealing with guests lying about the reason for their bookings, and throwing unauthorized parties?

Airbnb's response so far has been to blame the host for the party, shut down the listing, and let the guest go with zero consequences.   This is a terrible miscarriage of justice, and Airbnb needs to do better.  

If a guest threw an unauthorized party in your listing, I would love to hear your story.  

[Anonymous]

@Nikki4 The community forum has a search feature. Try putting in the word "party," or clicking the relevant tag above, and you can choose from hundreds of recent post on this exact thing.

It sucks that it's come to this, but hosts have to have measures in place to keep control of their own properties and intervene when excess guests begin entering, before the situation can escalate to a disruptive party. 

[Julia--Ann-and-Michael0]

We had a VRBO guest reserve for 11 family members for a weekend funeral for a family member. In the obitturary in the paper they published the address of the property and had a food truck parked out front (before guests started to arrive). We called VRBO customer service when we noticed the food truck and they elevated it to a supervisor immediately and they called to guest. They explained to the guest that they were only authorized for 11 and they they would terminate the reservation if they went beyond that number of guests and that any guests above that number would be trespassing. We worked with the guest and allowed a total of 20 for three hours. No neighborhood complaints, no police called.

[Julia--Ann-and-Michael0]

We have a Mansion that has 11 bedrooms/sleeping areas and is located in an area of Minneapolis that has The Basilica of Saint Mary and other wedding venues. We are a Superhost and have hosted over 250 families on Airbnb and VRBO in the past 5 years. All of our reviews are 5 star and we have never had a complaint form our neighbors. Three days ago the "Trust" department deactivated our listing for a number of reasons that we have now corrected. We have been unable to get Airbnb to activate our listing. The problem with Airbnb's party reputation is not the hosts, it's the guests reserving a 2 bedroom and showing up with 35 unauthorized guests. When this occurrs Airbnb's protocol and support of the host is unacceptable. VRBO on the other hand will get you to a representative here in the states immediately and will take action with the guest. 

[Helen3]

I would say the problem is both the hosts in some cases, always the guests and sometimes Airbnb.

The hosts because sometimes they don’t have measures such as CCTV or they don ‘t bother to vet their guests. Or even where they do, they don’t monitor/take action when they see more people are at the listing than have booked.

Airbnb for not working with hosts when it is clear a 🎉 is taking place to cancel the booking so a host can evict the guest.

Airbnb for refunding guests who party and whose booking is cancelled- a hosts cancellation policy should be adhered to. 

[Nikki4]

Thank you @Catherine-Powell  for listening to hosts!!  Thank you for allowing us to cancel potential/probable parties BEFORE they begin!  We hosts have suffered through so much injustice over this unauthorized party issue.  

Since June of this year, Ive personally dealt with 4 different guests, at 4 different listings who've lied to me, had unauthorized parties and had NO CONSEQUENCES from Airbnb.  They didn't even have to pay the extra guest fees for all of the partiers they brought into the listing!

Outrageous! 

Thanks for starting to take some significant steps to put more control back in the hands of hosts who risk so much to list their homes.