Wanted to update everyone. Apparently my neighbor works for Air, was unaware until I met her at the pool yesterday, and we were chatting about Infant-gate. She is actually on the team that rolled this feature out. She was miffed as to why hosts were up in arms, as it was part of a bigger feature that would have been ‘Great’ for hosts. I explained my personal story and that of others, where there was a major glitch that allowed Non-child friendly places to be booked with kids, the kids didn’t count in the total number of occupants, and guests were abusing the ‘infants stay free’. I didn’t want to get into the other issue about AIR trying to tell hosts how to price per person, etc. She was floored, as she did not realize this was causing so many glaring issues, and didn’t know about the glitches. Clearly, CX doesn’t actually report anything to Air HQ. Long story, longer, the entire ‘New Feature’ she couldn’t tell me more, has been cancelled or put on hold for a very long time. Which means the Infant/Children problem should be phased out sooner than later.
Great info Azreala, thanks for posting. I can’t believe that anyone on their team would be floored, that kind of makes me think they are hiring dummies! How could any rational person not consider all the variables in this initiative before rolling it out? How about actually phoning some hosts that have “family friendly” ticked and asking for some feedback on the initiative?
In any case it sounds like they are finally seeing the light, so that’s excellent news. I’ll go back to being a family friendly host now that I know I won’t get eight surprise toddlers showing up.
That’s incredible! Thanks for sharing!
I just got an email from air saying they have listened and are giving us more control over our listings. I can’t read the email …did anyone else get this email?
Ugh. The entitlement of people – especially of young parents who believe we all must bow down to them for perpetuating the species – just boggles my mind. The crux of what air is selling is matchmaking among guests and hosts who are compatible. Forcing us to accommodate guests who violate our terms runs counter to that. Glad they finally seemed to get the message.
After my convo with my Air BNB employee neighbor. I honestly do not believe Air was trying to screw us over or take away control of our listings. LIke many, many Tech companies here in the Valley, they move VERY fast and don’t necessarily consider all the ramifications before launching a new product. Anyone remember Qwikster?!? My guess is Air is piloting a Family Friendly program that would let hosts opt in to allowing Infants to stay for free, and the new ‘family friendly’ check box was part of that. They put the cart before the host by implementing new free Infant policy without contacting all the hosts it would affect, and promptly pissed the lot of us off. Another host in SF was actually part of the focus group testing this feature, and thus got an email announcing the change. I really believe Air was not forcing us to do anything against our house policies, they just moved to quickly and one group didn’t talk to the other group before flipping the proverbial switch. I’m not making excuses for AIR, just saying I am happy with the explanation I recieved and do not think this was done in maliciously .
Things happen, even with the best of intentions. Absurdities sometimes will happen, how quickly they get corrected is then most important.
I have one for you- The simply fact is-- its rude to take young children into somebody’s private home full stop.
I have not gotten such an email.
Here’s what I got from airbnb cs in response to my inquiry about this issue.
I am sorry for causing confusion
I am going to send where it basically explains how this is working
https://www.airbnb.ie/help/article/433/can-children-travel-on-airbnb
As it stands there is no infants free program. As outline in he help center it is up to the host to either charge them as an additional person or not
If you do not want to charge them…click “family friendly” and mention it on in your listing description. What Airbnb does is to encourage guests to bring up this topic before a reservation is accepted
Maybe this is what happened in the case you have mentioned. A guest assumed that infants are free and he brought them to the listing.
By no means there is a button to click in order to take out the charges for kids and infants
Besides that, the policy stands that additional guests has to be announced unless it is arranged otherwise 
So I assure you that you can go ahead and click “family friendly” and IB without being at risk
I hope I could explain it this time and I apologize again for the confusion caused
Oh, that makes it all very clear 
dcmooney:
That was very helpful and thank you. I just changed my approach and description about my kids/infants policy to make my listing that much clearer on the subject.
I would err on the side of caution and that the CS rep does not know 100% what he is speaking about. Since you are not on IB, its not a huge deal, but I would leave ‘Family Friendly’ unchecked until everything is officially sorted out. That what we have done.
It clear by the CS persons response they don’t know the specifics of the ‘glitch’:
'Maybe this is what happened in the case you have mentioned. A guest assumed that infants are free and he brought them to the listing.
By no means there is a button to click in order to take out the charges for kids and infants’
Because form personal experience, yes there was a check box that said ‘Infant’ and underneath said no charge.
Thanks, @azreala. I guess I was adding this to what you’d been told, and a second cs rep who emailed me a similar thing. But yes, the cs reps I did speak to about it had no idea it was happening.
I’m not sure it was ‘active’ in my area anyway. Still, when this all came down I had just had two darling little guests. Loved them, sure, but they were a lot of work. (They share my home)
@dcmooney Yes, it was only active in certain markets, per Air. So, it may be a non-issue for most people!
I’m in the same situation, and before any children come I make their parents confirm that they can swim, in writing.
I don’t have Instant Book so I can check beforehand how many people are coming and how many children, but this week I got a request to book from someone who’d already told me they were two adults, one 16 year-old and one 7 year-old (who can swim) - the request was for three people. I pointed out that this was incorrect, they need to book for four, and they replied that they had been told by airbnb to do this, because “one of them is under 11”.
If this is so, I am just gobsmacked.
We had a new airbnb member request a booking for her family of four including two infants. That’s fine by us and she seemed reasonable, so we accepted. However, we failed to notice that the booking request was for two persons! Apparently she had thought infants were free…
Ended up having to submit a Change Request to four persons, which she reluctantly accepted - ended up costing her 500 dollars more for the duration of her stay.
Not a happy start for either party. So beware of mistakes in number of people.
Hello all,
I am dealing with this exact situation now. Ok everyone, we need to get Airbnb to change their platform rules for infants.
Here’s my proposal:
- The cutoff for infants should be 12 months.
The end. After 12 months, kids are mobile and create messes, and should be counted towards the guest totals.
Whoever came up with the 2 year old cutoff must not have had kids, because there is no way a strapping 23 month old, who is running and walking, and scribbling all over the walls with sharpies, is an 'infant".
I notice some of the posts are over a year old. We are in Tasmania and have just seen this on our booking site for the first time.
Some of the older posts indicate Airbnb be was going to modify or drop this. Still hasn’t happened. Could anyone say if they are aware that this practice has been stopped?
This practice hasn’t been stopped. We have a maximum of two people. We recently had a family Instant Book for three people, two adults and one infant. I called Airbnb and spoke with a customer service representative about the fact that guests are able to Instant Book for more than the maximum number of guests the listing can accommodate. I asked her if there is a maximum number of guests than can be booked. She said that for our listing the maximum would be two adults and three infants. I told her that I don’t have any place to put three infants. She said that if we received such a booking we could have it cancelled without penalty.