Airbnb intends to verify every single listing on its platform by the end of next year, a major policy shift meant to increase trust and safety following a shooting at a rental that killed five and a report about scammers taking advantage of renters.
Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s CEO, said the company is making plans to be “100 percent verified” by the end of 2020. All hosts and listings will be reviewed as part of the process, with the goal of making sure that hosts are who they say they are, photos and information are accurate, and the locations meet safety standards.
“We’re going to make sure that we can stand behind every single listing, every single host,” Chesky said. He called the plans the “most significant” change to Airbnb to date. The announcements were made at The New York Times DealBook Conference during an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Verification doesn’t mean that Airbnb will be sending inspectors to every single home and apartment listed on the site, however. Instead, verification will be done through a mixture of company and community monitoring. As part of that, Airbnb will start asking guests to answer more questions about the places they’ve stayed, so that the company can get updates on whether listing details are correct. “We’ll try to triangulate information,” Chesky said.
Airbnb will also begin noting which listings have been verified and which are still under review. While that doesn’t totally jibe with Airbnb’s “100 percent verified” goal, Chesky says the company eventually wants to get to a point where the company can verify new listings immediately.
In addition to verification, Airbnb is also announcing a few other new policies to boost guest safety. The company will now offer a guarantee for guests — if a listing is not as described, Airbnb will attempt to find them a new place that’s of equal or greater value, or else fully refund them. This change comes following a Vice report about scammers who would abuse Airbnb’s cancellation policies to get money from renters before pulling the listing on them.
Airbnb also intends to open a 24/7 rapid response phone line with live operators trained to deal with problems guests encounter. The company additionally plans to begin doing manual reviews of all “high-risk” reservations, such as a person booking a large house in a city they already live in, suggesting it could be for a party.
Airbnb’s model has always been based around putting trust in hosts and renters to be honest with one another. The company has also taken its own steps to monitor users — putting reservations through a “risk” analysis and running background checks on hosts and guests. But the model has still leaned heavily on the community and left open uncertainties that you’d never have when booking at a hotel.
Now that it’s more than a decade old, operating in nearly every country around the world, and serving 2 million renters every night, according to Airbnb’s own stats, the company has reached a scale where it’s increasingly likely to run into problems. While these changes only come after a week of extremely bad incidents for Airbnb, they start to address a major liability and make the service much more trustworthy for guests.
Asked about the cost to Airbnb to implement all of these changes, Chesky said it would be pricey but necessary. “Ultimately, we’re in the business of trust so we have to make these investments to protect our users,” Chesky said.
Was it a poor host or bad listing that caused the shooting?
While I definitely think they should do this, I don’t really think it’s any kind of response to what just happened.
If anything it was how easy it is to rent someones home on Airbnb that was the problem. What about more renter verifications?
did you even crack open the vice article? More of their efforts seem aimed at combating that massive fraud scheme
I am fortunate enough to have only one negative out of dozens of Airbnb experiences. I wished there was a way I can upload pictures that is separate from the host’s pictures (similar to TripAdvisor) on the listing so future guests can get can tell if the pics are old or not.
Yea that would be helpful
i’ve used it 3 times, and all 3 its been super lousy, similar price to hotels, and inferior experience overall. Sure you got more space, but the hosts always seemed to have ludicrous rules, like one place, if you use the hot tub for more than 18 minutes you will be charged 35$ extra. Oh, and that hot tub took more than 3 hours to heat up since it wasnt even running, so we didnt get to use it even though it was in the ad.
Or at another one, if we didnt put all the dishes in the dish washer, and run it there would be a 50$ cleaning fee.
The dishwasher one doesn’t seem that crazy to me, they were probably just sick of people not cleaning up after themselves
Between stories like yours and horror stories I’ve heard, I’m good with staying at a hotel if/when I need to travel. Staying in a stranger’s house is creepy in of itself, tbh.
I’ve seen cleaning fees in the $300+ range. Some are crazy, especially if you’re only there the weekend. I stay away from those.
Otherwise, we’ve had good luck. All the places we’ve stayed in have been as described.
I had one guy give ME a crappy review as we used his internet monthly allocation in a weekend (he had something paltry like 5 gig a month basic plan). No warnings on the paperwork, and login information was given.
He complained to us and I apologized, and that was it. I did my review and didn’t mention it, and gave him a glowing review. He then did his review (which is their process) and gave me a crappy rating.
I’ve only used them a couple times, and all were good experiences. But honestly I prefer just using another service to rent traditional B&Bs. Price has been about the same too, in my limited experience.
I don’t see why it should take them until the end of 2020. They should be able to do this within in a week if they were using pure AI and machine learning alone.
Historically, if you turn up to a rental that is totally different to described but tired, and in a strange city, most people would stay that night and then fight it. If you do that, the chances of a full refund are VERY slim.
Two years ago I experienced a similar scam on AirBnb in Chicago. It was ridiculously cheap, like $15/night, and they had only one review in their history. The initial address didn’t exist, I had to find a motel with staff open late at night in deadly cold weather. The next day the host profusely apologized and gave me the replacement address, then two days after I left, the host falsely claimed I destroyed the room’s $4,000 bed frame that she had just purchased (no photos of any real damage) and tried charging me $4,000. Airbnb sided with the host, but lowered the charge to $100. I check the host’s page a couple months later, two other people reviewed the host with very similar stories, and the listing was deleted. I never got my money back.
AirBNB should hook up with Instacart and Uber Eats. Give owners a discount for them to do a verification at the same time as a food or shopping delivery. That saves two trips.