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Hey, I hitchhiked around Mexico for months with my eldest on my hip when she was a year old, washing out and drying every day the 6 cloth diapers I travelled with.
It’s not that I don’t have personal experience at travelling with little ones and keeping them safe, but we are talking about booking strs here, and if they say they aren’t suitable for children, guests need to respect that, regardless of how vigilant or experienced they may be or think they are.
It’s not any different than guests with pets thinking they can book a no pets listing just because they consider themselves responsible pet owners whose dog has never destroyed anything or relieved itself indoors.
I’m not so sure about that. When I am shopping for a Short Term Rental, I put in some parameters - where I want to be, dates, how many people, adults and kids, pets (or no), amount of money I am willing to spend, etc. The computer (directed by Airbnb, I am assuming), gives me some choices from which to choose. They don’t show every single place in Airbnb, from all over the globe. They only send the ones that are in the area I want to be. They only send the ones that can handle the number of people I want. They only send the ones that are in my budget. Is it so hard to include those other requests as well? It shouldn’t be.
You are assuming that all guests are responsibly filtering for exactly what they want and what the host has listed as suitable, just because you do.
Guests don’t necessarily do that. They might just peruse the listings in an area and pick one they like, while ignoring the stated max guest count, the “not suitable for children” or “no pets”, then send a request without having read the rules, or having read them, say, “Oh, by the way, we do have small dog, but she’s really well-behaved and quiet and won’t be any problem” or “We see the max guest count is 3, but a friend will be coming with us, so we’ll be four. No worries, we’ll just bring an air mattress for our teenager.”
In other words, guests can ask for whatever they want, whether it’s suitable or not. It’s up to the host to say no.
Over on the Airbnb Reddit forum there was recently a question from a perspective guest about just his issue. They faithfully filled out their search for accommodations for two adults and two children and included their ages. The place they chose claimed to have amenities such a child proofing gates. And yet, when they read the house rules it said “not suitable for children.”
They wondered if the host didn’t read their profile when approving their request, or if the “not suitable for children” was accidentally checked. Or in other words, wondered if hosts just don’t read.
I would blame Airbnb, for allowing a “not suitable for children” listing to include child care amenities and for including in their search results adult only listings when they said their party included children.
If you worked in Airbnb’s legal department you would feel differently. Familial status (i.e. kids) is a protected class, not always in every Airbnb situation, but in enough of the situations that Airbnb is not going to participate in that discrimination any more than they have to. They do allow the “not appropriate” check box. But it is far more likely that the check box will disappear than it is for Airbnb to further facilitate the filtering.
That’s fine that it wouldn’t matter to some parents whether something is baby proofed or not… but it usually matters to the host for liability reasons. I’m a parent of two and wrangle those kiddos, but if a spot is marked as not being kid friendly- I respect the host and move on to the right listing without trying to convince them to change their clearly stated rules.
