Vaccination

[Zephyr0]

Is anyone asking their guests if they are vaccinated?

[Lisa723]

@Pete69 please cite your source for "the broad, robust, and enduring immunity that you get from the virus", thanks.

[Dave1074]

We would not do so.  It is really none of our business.  We want them to feel welcomed and see us as purely interested in providing them a great experience. 

Charged topics are verboten.  No politics.  No religion.  We stick to Thank you for staying with us, and is anything we can do to help like recommendations for places to go, things to do, great spots to eat at, etc.  Lots of smiles. 

[Lisa723]

@Dave1074 it's pretty sad when basic public health measures are perceived as politics or religion.

[Diana-And-Lando0]

We are in Hawaii and when the pandemic began, Hawaii started a Safe Travels program where guests had to have a negative Covid test to enter Hawaii or go into a 14 day quarantine.  At that time, there were people that said they were doing the quarantine and left.  You couldn't do your quarantine in a short term vacation rental like Airbnb.  We have to be licensed in Hawaii to run our Airbnb and we did not want to risk losing our license and so I would send the guests prior to arrival all the information about the Safe Travels program and then tell them that we needed the copy of their Safe Travels negative covid test.  Now Safe Travels has changed with everyone being vaccinated and so we don't have to ask anymore for any Covid information.

[Nick]

Hi everyone,

May we please ask you to stay relevant to the OP's question moving forward?

Steering the discussion on how a virus works or how dangerous a variant might be isn't relevant to the question at hand, nor for us to decide.

We've also removed content that wasn't relevant to the original question.

Thank you.

[Laura2592]

@Zephyr0 we do not ask nor insist. 

We typically do not have contact with guests. If we do have to go over to fix something during a stay we wear our masks/use hand sanitizer though we are fully vaxxed. Vaccination status, until the vaccine is federally mandated as a requirement, falls under HIPPA laws.  Though I fully support the vaccine, I prefer not to discuss the individual health decisions people choose to make. 

[Lisa723]

@Laura2592 HIPAA governs whether medical providers can disclose your medical information to other parties without your consent or knowledge. It has nothing to do with businesses etc. requiring proof of vaccination as a condition of service.

And unfortunately vaccination is not really just an individual health decision-- a big part of our current problem is that people are seeing it that way, though.

[Laura2592]

@Lisa723 sorry, gonna have to agree to disagree. 

We were advised by the attorney that oversees our LLCs  specifically not to get involved in asking guests, nor employees or clients in any of our other business concerns, about vaccine status. Should someone chose to disclose, that is their own business. If guests ask us for ours, we share. But that is our own decision.

We NEVER have any desire to engage guests on any topics which could cause controversy, upset, discomfort, or force some kind of alignment of point of view. These people are paying us for a service. We provide the service as pleasantly as we can, end of story. We have had so many guests who surely disagreed with our politics, feelings about abortion, aesthetic decisions, animal rescue stance, environmental outlook, etc etc. Its frankly not part of the equation for us to engage on these sorts of topics. Other hosts can do as they please. But the question was about what we each do, and this is our answer.

[Lisa723]

@Laura2592 that's fine, I was just pointing out that your statement about HIPAA (which I assume is what you meant by "HIPPA") was factually incorrect. Your attorney may have had other reasons for their advice.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/06/08/hipaa-does-not-prevent-employers-businesses-from-as...

I probably should have resisted the additional remark about the problem with viewing vaccination solely as an individual health decision.

[Laura2592]

@Lisa723 right on both counts!

Personally I think its a bad idea to mix commerce with any sort of controversial opinion. If we only rented our space to people who thought just like we did, we would not be in business very long. The elections are always very interesting as we have guests on both sides of the aisle labeling us as one thing or another due to the channel the tv is set at when it turns on, or signs in a neighbor's yard. 

This topic is a hot one and thus we steer clear for a variety of reasons. It has no impact on our ability to welcome guests as we are not on site. I can understand hosts with different set ups having different rules. We aren't "canceling" unvaccinated guests or discounting guests with a vaccine. We prefer not to even know status.

[Gordon0]

I'd be more inclined to ask if somebody is carrying bedbugs. 

[Laura2592]

@Gordon0  truth!!