I could not agree more with his comments. He is correct.
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As I said in another thread: I don’t know if they “can” or not but they need to try something unless they want to see more anti-Airbnb referendums passed. Of course the hosts want one set of changes which doesn’t include owner occupation which is what the public seems to support. They outspent the hotel lobby 4 to 1 and still lost in Jersey City.
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They have far more sophisticated tools than you or I do.
They cancelled a ton of bookings in Charlottesville based on internet buzz before that shit-show went down.
It wouldn’t be that hard, from a data perspective, to comb Facebook for events matching Airbnb addresses (at least for guests with a linked FB account). Air address with max occupancy of 12, attached to an event with 35 “going”? Time to intervene.
From an ethical and privacy perspective, though…
Also, the Orinda house was booked by a local claiming to live in another state. The host has to go on the guest’s word, but Airbnb had the actual ID (or at least, billing zip for the CC). So Airbnb needs to better flag “lies” in the system, or let hosts see basic info on the ID with their own eyes. (If they know my home address, why can’t I know theirs?)
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No. But in my experience party fliers usually say “DM for address” type things, they don’t post the address.
I’d say 30% of my guests aren’t currently living in the city that is listed on their Airbnb profile. And once they submit it there’s no requirement to keep it updated. The woman I canceled on due to bad reviews had a hometown of “Newton, MA.” By the time she booked with me she had been in El Paso 2 months. She stayed another month or two and then moved on to CA. Last I checked her profile still says MA.
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I agree with all your suggested moves for Air. I have only had one bad issue with a party, I felt that Air handled very poorly while it was going on, but after the fact they took care of the damages. My issue was that within 3-4 hours of this crook renting my place AirBnB knew he was a bad operator and had suspended his account. BUT, they didn’t notify me so that I could watch out for my million dollar property! It was my alarm system that tipped me off to the unusual activity at 3 AM that got me to investigate and finally get the police there to evict!
Their announced 4 steps don’t include a single thing from Zafar Mawani’s post.
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If, as you say, it wouldn’t be that hard to manipulate data to expose lies, why didn’t they?
A. Because canceling reservations is going to put a major dent in revenue, and
B. Explaining to guests why their reservation is canceled would be a major shit show, and
C. It it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Five people are dead. Nobody saw this coming. It’s a fundamental flaw in the way Airbnb operates. Millions of people use Airbnb for global travel. Air is, in effect, their temporary home.
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Oh, I think people saw it. I expected it to be a house fire with an even higher death toll though.
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Thinking out loud, there was, and is, an astonishing lack of empathy for the families of the passed. This was a massacre.
Remember the Tylenol poisonings? The CEO took immediate action, even though the firm was clearly not at fault.
Now you have a CEO ready to pawn off accountability on a VP, and to audit hosts (not guests) without even offering condolences.
If you ask me, lack of integrity on Mr. Chesky’s fault will kill his IPO.
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ERRATUM: The audit of 7M hosts is as a result of the article in Vice that exposed syndicates operating as hosts, and not the weekend massacre. My apologies.
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Oh, duh, that makes sense.
Just want to give a warning to all hosts that may not know this already…Airbnb will delete you at any moment.
We had someone throw a party. 4 people booked, 14 people showed up the second night after a wedding. We first attempted to call the guest (bc abnb suggests this), no answer, no answer, sent 3 messages reminding of house rules and manual clearly stating no parties and they would forfeit their deposit and be charged $500. Called Airbnb and guest finally calls back to say the extra guests would leave in 40 mins. One and a half hours later, they are all still there, more alcohol arrives, pizza delivered, in and out the house and loud discussions on the side walk and porch. Guest turned his phone off. Airbnb told us to go break it up. We did, got called racial and homophobic slurs, physically assaulted, car door kicked, guests screaming in the street at 2AM. Cops called but of course they finally left before Cops got there. Fast forward a couple days and we see the tragedy in Orinda. Two days later, Chesky says banning “party houses”. Result…we, yes you read that, WE, THE HOSTS are deactivated as a party house, but I can only assume this because Airbnb won’t discuss anything once you have been deactivated. And now, they don’t even have to honor the resolution that someone called about 2 days earlier and said would be approved and deposited. This company will not last long and certainly not when they go public unless some [appropriate] drastic measures are taken. Hosts are what make the platform what it is and there is ZERO support, regardless of how much money you’ve made them. I’ve been a host for more than 5 years and superhost for who knows how long. Are there bad/negligent hosts? Of course, but horrible, abusive guests are pushing good hosts out (they now offer over USD $500 to refer a new host). I’m getting the nest video footage online and will share the link of how unruly guests who violate house rules truly are. Good luck and keep fighting for our homes and safety! I’ll be on VRBO waiting.
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Oh, people saw this coming. There have been more than 30 shootings at abnbs since May 2019. A quick search will shed a lot of light on other shootings and how they handled [didn’t handle] them.
Sorry this happened to you. As you probably know people have been saying for 5 years that Airbnb wouldn’t last long so I don’t know about that. They do seem to have a burn and churn approach to any issues with hosts. They are fine with deleting hosts and replacing them. And they don’t think of it as they need the hosts, they think of it as they need the guests. And already too many hosts are depending on Airbnb income so they just keep putting up with it.
Please don’t post it here in the public part of the forum. There are other forums or groups where that will be welcome. If nothing else this forum doesn’t want to be part of a story on Vice. And you don’t want to be sued by anyone in the video. If people want to see it they can message you and you can share it privately or make a thread with a group of people who want to see it.
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No need to be rude, KCC. Even the uneducated rabble have a right to an opinion.
You stuck up nitwit.
Is this some inside joke I don’t get? If not, WOW that is incredibly rude. I don’t see any problems with @KKC’s response.
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Not that I know of, but maybe. Lots of people are hard to understand on the internet, I don’t take it too personally. It was posted in the middle of the night, maybe Mandi is sleep-posting. Tell me how you really feel @justMandi.
In the FWIW category…Margaret Richardson (who is leading the sprint) wants to hear from hosts about addressing guests behavior. If interested, please go here, page 19, post #3 from Laura, who works for Air. The link is an Airbnb hosted site.
A snipet “We know that improved guest standards and guest behavior are incredibly important for ensuring the safety of our entire community, and helping to prevent tragedies like the one that happened last week. As many of you noted, this is not a new problem. There is a lot of work that has been underway here at Airbnb to address these issues … but we have to move faster. The “sprint” that Brian announced in his tweets is designed to accelerate that work. The media headlines this week focused on the “party house” bans … but that doesn’t capture the whole story. Guest behavior is central to community safety, and we can and will do more to make sure we are holding guests to a higher standard when they use the Airbnb platform”
A couple more interesting links
Thanks for you share! I also very much prefer VRBO to Airbnb. But Airbnb makes bad publicity look good w/ their - blame the host policy. The real answer is BOOK DIRECT people and look for local regional sites that work like the OLD vrbo – now that is the way. One time advertising fee- charging guest or host. ONE time FEE - for you to put your site on (advertising). There is a https://www.newyorkrentalbyowner.com I highly recommend for the state. Flat fee and you can use the system for year. I got a booking in 24hours. They do get traffic. Guest pay less (and in the long term so do you-- how many booking fees have you given them in a year? One time fee almost always better if you rent seriously. Sorry Airbnb but you might turn me off unfairly – you are but ONE just ONE site to find short term or vacation rentals on. And the people who ONLY book on Airbnb are naively foolish-- until it happens to them.
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