Airbnb has announced a plan to curtail partying at its rental properties on New Year’s Eve.
The short-term rental company says the anchor of the plan is “a block on certain one-night reservations during New Year’s Eve of entire home listings for guests without a history of positive reviews” in cities across the world.
The company says while the CDC and other health organizations have suggested that staying in short-term rentals, such as Airbnb, may offer safer travel experiences compared to hotels, they “continue to draw a hard line on parties and emphasize safe and responsible travel.”
The company announced a global party ban in 2020, which has emerged as a foundation of their approach to trust and safety, something that has been embraced by the Airbnb host community.
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Last year Airbnb instituted a similar initiative over New Year’s Eve and they say specifically in Detroit, “over 700 were deterred by our various anti-party defenses from booking entire home listings over NYE 2020.”
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Similar policies were put in place over Fourth of July and Halloween weekends and the company says they were successful.
Now, they’re building on that anti-party stance, releasing the following set of criteria for guests attempting to book reservations on New Year’s Eve in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain and the U.K:
-- For one-night reservations -- Guests without a history of positive reviews on Airbnb will be prohibited from making one-night reservations in entire home listings.
-- For two-night reservations -- As NYE approaches, we will deploy more stringent restrictions on two-night reservations that may pose heightened risk for disruptive parties. For example, we will leverage and amplify our technology that restricts certain local and last-minute bookings by guests without a history of positive reviews on Airbnb.
-- Guests who have a history of positive reviews on Airbnb will not be subject to these restrictions.
While the company has hopes that the policies will curtail wild parties and help COVID-19 safety protocols be followed, one metro Detroiter tells WWJ she’s skeptical about the plan.
Debbie Whitefoot lives next to an Airbnb in Ferndale that she says is often rented out to partiers. She says she’s seen a lot over the last three years, from a massive gathering, to intoxicated yelling in the middle of the night and even a drug deal in her driveway.
“There was an incident where there were some workmen who were staying there from out of state and came home completely intoxicated and high and I had my bedroom window open and they started screaming obscenities in my bedroom window and kicking the fence and then proceeded to have a huge fight on my front lawn,” Whitefoot told WWJ’s Sandra McNeill.
Another time, Whitefoot estimates there was a party with 40 adults and 20 kids, complete with a bounce house, a magician and loud speakers.
“A bunch of the girls were hanging out in the street drinking and smoking pot and when cars would drive by, they wouldn’t move,” she said. “Some guy honked his horn and one girl held up her hand in a gun signal.”
She’s seen the owners of the next door rental repairing doors and removing broken furniture, so she knows all about how rowdy Airbnb renters can get, so she’s skeptical their plan will curtail loud parties as we ring in the New Year.
Things have gotten slightly better since the city of Ferndale instituted regulations to control the number of Airbnbs in the city, according to Whitefoot.
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