Airbnb imposed booking restrictions on hosts

[Angela2720]

On Saturday I had a potential guest telling me there were restrictions on booking whole houses over certain dates in Christmas and New year.  They were trying to booking my cottage for Hogmanay - I called Airbnbn and was told they had put new guidelines in to prevent 'parties' over certain periods.  I have never been notified of this and as such my guest was unable to book and having been closed for 18 months I am now losing more money.  There is no Government Guidelines to prevent people renting whole houses - my potential guests were never having a party - my cottage sleeps 4 people and is at the bottom of my garden.  I cannot get a satisfactory explanation as to where this is coming from and what gives Airbnbn the right to dictate to hosts when they can and cannot rent out their property.

[Helen3]

Airbnb introduced these restrictions a few years back to protect hosts from those looking to party.

i think the restrictions only apply to new younger guests who live locally and want a short stay.

All hosts in countries where the policy applied were notified as part of the host updates Airbnb sends out.

Airbnb is just one booking platform - so you could promote your listings on others that don't have this restriction. 

[Angela2720]

Thanks for your response but I have always had guests at Christmas and new year and never came across this.  I had guests booked in on the same date who subsequently moved their dates but booked without issue. The potential new hosts are not new or local. Mother daughter and baby granddaughter. Not much of a rave I would say. It doesn’t make sense.  Nobody from Airbnb can explain and nobody has courtesy to call back. I only used this platform otherwise I would of course have used the other. 
thanks anyway

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Angela2720 To get around the issue you can change your listing to 'private room' get the guest to book and then change it back again. There is a risk however that Airbnb may know something about this guest that you don't.

[Sarah977]

@Angela2720  It is an algorithm that Airbnb has actually had in place for a couple of years. It was instituted after some incidents in the US and Canada where there was violence at parties where people got shot and killed. Airbnb was getting really bad press over this.

The algorithm is supposed to take into consideration a number of factors- booking guest is under 25 years of age, trying to book an entire home, booking only for one or  two nights, holidays,  booking quite close to check-in date, and a few other things.

But according to many posts I've read, their algorithm is faulty and perfectly innocent, no risk bookings that don't necessarily fall into those categories can get blocked.