I wrote that I was surprised you were the moderator because you did not moderate the dialog. I put your title in quotation marks to emphasize the moderation role and its meaning as someone mediating between/among others. You did not moderate.
Many of the responses to my question were not on point, did not recite facts or apply reasoning. Instead, responses largely focused on my question’s premise of trying to take advantage, so far as possible, of the liability insurance provided by Airbnb, Even there reasoning was not applied, just dismissive judgmental epithets like ‘naive’ or ‘foolish.’ That was the thrust of many responses, which also went off on the tangent of whether it is ever reasonable for a Host to rely on Airbnb’s liability insurance. Several posts made inaccurate statements about what I wrote, for example that I was in favor of self-insuring (never said).
You, as moderator, did not address any of that. In fact, you added fuel to the fire with your ‘bee in a bonnet’ post, saying, inaccurately, that I was seeking agreement when I was plainly asking for information and input. Please re-read my original post.
Several posts were responsive, saying that they do ask for the names of guests and that their experience was that it was not off putting. That was valuable input that my question asked.
One said that following the Airbnb link on how to add names to a reservation required accounts and was therefore too burdensome. The requirement to create accounts by each guest is not apparent from the Airbnb Help center, but more useful feedback to explore.
Finally, we received a very informative post from @JJD who pointed out that the experience some have had with property claims is not relevant because there is a different administrator for the liability coverage, and it’s a different kind of coverage. He also pointed out the difficulty in accurately responding to my question without seeing the insurance policy itself, which JJD pointed to as the next step in understanding what might reduce liability. Finally, he introduced a new distinction of ‘anticipated trespasser’ – which I don’t know whether is applicable to Massachusetts but it well might. AND he raised the idea that under premises liability law that the Host would be liable for all but explicitly warned trespassers, a very relevant point.
So, no, I don’t think you moderated the discussion at all, simply took sides, and erroneously so because my ‘side’ was to explore whether getting the guests registered might spark a backlash among such guests. It was a question, not a statement. My rationale for asking the question was Airbnb’s statement in the customer service dialog that the liability protection applied only to a claim by a registered guest, a statement I accepted as a given.
And, of course, that was what many posters went after. They could go after that with general statements that Airbnb is unreliable, is only a platform, that it’s your business that you must run, that you must buy your own STR insurance in all cases, and on and on. These were general statements that they could have made regarding anything Airbnb and did not further the dialog. Again, you did nothing to call this out, and yourself mis-stated the dialog being sought.
I got the feeling that perhaps this group might largely be a small club, set in their ways, cynical if not dismissive of both Airbnb and the occasional Host, who are eager to scold Hosts who have not come to the same conclusions as they have about how to run the business, who when faced with a question they don’t have anything substantive to add to fall back on their general negative feelings about Airbnb or opportunity to scold others or hold themselves superior in some way.
Thank you for asking the question.
and the “interesting” part is the lack of access to government protection. I had no idea what the differences were in respect of admitted versus non admitted. In the UK, there is the FSCS, who are the safety net if an insurer fails, or is unable to service claims and here in Spain we have similar protections.
