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Just an FYI to those hosts who have house rules about the age of guests (“over 25 only”) and children (“no kids under 10”), etc. The Nondiscrimination Policy has changed and no longer allows restrictions based on age or family status/kids. I’ve been seeing discussion about it on other forums then confirmed the change on the Airbnb TOS (link provided below).
For many years the policy had a clause in it that allowed hosts to deny guests based on age and familial status (kids) because it said the discrimination wasn’t allowed “where prohibited by law” so most hosts could deny based on age and familial status because it is not prohibited by law in most places or in most short-term rental situations.
However, it has been changed to effectively the opposite scenario. Now, if a host wants to require guests to be of a certain age to rent their place or wants to deny guests with children they may only do so if there is a law or regulation that requires they do so.
As an example, a host cannot require guests to be 25 unless there is a local law or regulation that requires all guests to be at least 25. And a host cannot deny a guest traveling with children unless there is a local law or regulation that prohibits renting the property to people with children (like within a legally-designated senior living community).
Why do you think the Airbnb policy doesn’t apply to hosts who host guests in their home? Do you have a source for this? Airbnb states that it applies to all hosts.
Seems like they violate their own rules. They say hosts can’t “[charge] more fees for a guest of a certain age” but then AirBnB won’t count children under 2 as a guest. That can be seen as charging more for people over 2 years old than for infants…
@JJD - Is there any clarification on the other forums from AirBnB on whether groups with infants can now Instant Book a property that’s marked as unsuitable for young children?
If they have to RTB, it gives me a chance to discuss with them the safety issues for young children at our place before their credit card gets charged or my calendar gets blocked.
I didn’t come across any discussion addressing that. However, as an experiment, I just now tried booking an instant book place that has “not suitable for infants” on it and:
if I add an infant to the guest list it takes me to a Request to Book page but
if take the infant off the guest list it takes me to a payment page to reserve it as an instant booking
So it doesn’t appear that the new nondiscrimination rules affect the instant book settings. However, if a host declined the request and was dumb enough to state that they were declining it because of the infant it could be reported as discrimination whereas declining without giving any reason or an unrelated reason wouldn’t garner extra attention
The discussions I came across were regarding guests who are over 18 but under the age that a host required for booking (25 IIRC) in their house rules - they were told to cancel by the host but Airbnb said they didn’t have to since it was a discriminatory house rule. Then, there was a host reporting they’d had their listings reported for discrimination and temporarily suspended because their house rules stated that guests had to be of a certain age (30 IIRC).
It’s early yet for the new policy but it seems to me that hosts who prefer not to host children or infants will likely still be able to work around it by having “not suitable for children” in their safety settings as long as they are careful about what they say when they decline a reservation. However, I have no idea how hosts who prefer guests to be older than the required age of 18 are going to manage now since they can’t put it in their house rules and definitely can’t enforce it anyway.
Thank you for trying that out. Hopefully, it stays that way.
Yeah, a lot of the conversations I hear around this, too, are about large groups of young people (spring break, prom etc.). I think some of the hosts that would attract the party-crowd of young people are just going to block their prom, homecoming, spring break, etc., dates on AirBnB and leave them open on other platforms. Some of the owners that only get a few bookings from AirBnB are probably going to stop listing on AirBnB, too.
We’re lucky - we don’t attract lots of young people, other than the occasional honeymoon couple in their early 20’s. We get some groups with young children, but I exxagerate the aspects of being an open-air house to push them away (“Do you really want little baby Johnny to crawl across a dirty floor and eat the ants and bird droppings that he’ll find in the house?” ).
I haven’t seen anyone reference it, but there are Uniform Building Codes that spell out the minimum space (sq ft) required for bedrooms. Commonly the rule will be something like a minimum of 70 sq ft (with no wall shorter than 7’) for two people, and an additional 50 sq ft for each person after that.
I have done this before over Semana Santa, even though I only have a private room listing for one guest. Thousands of young folks who come to my town for the sole purpose of partying, descending here for that holiday week. When I didn’t already have a booking for those dates, I started getting clueless inquiries from guests who didn’t look old enough to travel without their parents (that was back when we could still see guest photos before confirmation). Stuff like “So is it really only for one guest?” or “How far is your place from the place where the rave is?”
After fielding a few of these, I just blocked the dates.
How do you know this to be true? I have a suite in my house that I Airbnb but it’s on the second floor of my house but they have to enter a common door to get there.
I do have an insurance policy that only allows two people to stay in the suite so I wonder if that would cover me. (Going to add it to my rules.)
??? A limit of two guests wouldn’t make it not possible to have a child stay (parent travelling alone with their child) nor prevent 18 year olds from booking.
But the nature of your listing precludes a bunch of 18 year olds throwing a party, and if a single adult was travelling with their child, it’s not that hard to child-proof the place for as often as that might happen, which is probably seldom, so I don’t see why you’d be that concerned about this new policy.
However, it’s never a bad idea to make it clear in your listing, or in your first message what your max guest count is, and that that includes children.
That may be true, but AirBnB can set their own terms for use of their platform. They have decided you may not decide who stays. Go ahead and deny guests based on their age, but you risk being kicked off the platform.
This has really put many owners, especially of large properties that attract young guests for parties, between “a rock and a hard place”. I suspect many of them will take some kind of action, such as blocking dates on AirBnB only, raising their rates on AirBnB or pulling their listings from AirBnB and only renting through other platforms.
And it really hurts the in-home hosts, who don’t have lots of other platforms to use to rent out just rooms.
Yes, only 2 people and it’s only available because I live in the house. Most Airbnb’s in Massachusetts have to buy the Proper insurance that is about $1500 more a year. It helps when someone tries to sneak in a third person because I can explain to Airbnb that it’s against my insurance policy.
But, I really don’t want kids in my home. The staircase while in code, is steep, and because I live below, I have a hard enough time when people are up late in the den and wake me up. (I run a sound machine, run a fan and a 2nd sound machine) but I still hear the floorboards squeak. I have extra thick carpet with the best padding you can buy and while I don’t hear people or the tv, it’s the floorboards under the carpet.
A child would be a nightmare. There’s also the possibility that there is some lead on the windowsills. (I live in a house about 100 years old). Moving the cleaning chemicals wouldn’t be hard but I would also have to bolt the Fridge and tv’s to the walls (they are on stands now).
There is just too much liability for me to have kids. When I started 9 years ago I did allow it and there is so much more mess and destruction with kids too.
So, I guess I need to change our Tiny Tiki verbage. Any hints? Although we are mainly popular for couples romance, I have dissuaded parents of those under 10 from booking, with success.
I would think the most effective wording to discourage those with children from booking would be along the lines of “Because of multiple safety concerns outside our control for children at our location (these are outlined in our listing information), booking with children under the age of 12 is not advisable, as it doesn’t seem like it would be a very relaxing experience for parents to have to be constantly vigilent about their children’s whereabouts at every moment and it would also be of concern to us as hosts.”
I actually knew a woman whose 8 year old son was killed by a cougar while he was playing in their yard. And another woman whose 3 year old child drowned in pond on their property in the 5 minutes when the mom thought her daughter was with her friend and the friend thought the girl was with her mom.
That so many parents these days have their eyes glued to a cell phone just adds to the risks.
No, it doesn’t, unless you’ve recently moved states. Your state’s law prohibits age discrimination in public accommodations and considers your short-term rental a public accommodation. But you know that because we’ve had this discussion more than once through the years.
But I digress. The point here is that if you want to advertise on Airbnb then you must abide by the Airbnb TOS. And the Airbnb TOS now says that you can no longer discriminate based on age.
I can understand why off-site hosts renting out whole houses would be concerned about younger guests throwing parties and such but you say you live onsite there and that you only rent out rooms so what do you perceive as the risk for you with a younger guest? I live upstairs from my listings and my guests are aware of that so I’ve never had any issues. If I did, I could just walk downstairs and take care of it. Easy peasy.
FWIW under-25s have been by far my best guests and the very best tenants. Older folks often seem resistant to house rules because they’re used to doing things their own way but the younger ones tend to be more ready-to-please and eager to meet expectations.
Kind of, but it’s better to state your reasoning about it, list out safety concerns, etc similar to how Muddy suggested to actively discourage them. Otherwise, it just sounds like you don’t want kids there and it’s easier all-around if you make the guest feel like it’s their idea for their kid not to come as opposed to it being your idea.
And if you have the “not ideal for babies and children” (or whatever they’re calling it this week) checked off then anyone who tries to book with a baby or child won’t be allowed to IB but will instead come through as a RTB. At that point, you can discuss it further if you want to or simply decline the RTB. You shouldn’t state in writing that you’re declining because of their infant or child though. Either find another reason or don’t give one. (Same goes for your concerns about kids @Lynick4442 ).
When my friend said to her 20 year old son, after he and his buddies had stayed at an Airbnb, “I hope you guys cleaned up after yourselves”, he said,“Of course we did- I want those 5 star reviews”.
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