One of the world’s largest short-term accommodation booking services, Airbnb, has decided to make it as difficult as possible to rent houses “for parties” in the New Year 2023.
As reported on the website of the service, this year in 11 countries of the world there will be strengthened rules and technologies aimed at helping to stop unauthorized New Year’s Eve parties.
In particular, according to the new restrictions, on New Year’s Eve, there will be a ban on booking a whole list of houses for one night for guests without a positive account history or previous bookings on the platform. Stricter restrictions will also be introduced for the same categories of guests who try to book accommodation for two and three nights near their permanent residence.
The restrictions will be in effect over the New Year’s weekend in the following countries: the US (including Puerto Rico), Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, the UK, Ireland, Portugal, and the Netherlands (the last three joined the program in 2022).
As Airbnb representatives note, such measures have already operated in eight countries in a test mode and had positive results.
“We estimate that these measures have contributed to an annual global drop in the number of New Year’s party incidents by around 56% since the protection was first launched in 2020. Last year, around 340,000 guests worldwide were blocked when trying to book on Airbnb during the New Year, including more than 120,000 guests in the US, more than 34,500 guests in Great Britain, and almost 13,000 guests in Australia,” the company said.
Ban on booking accommodation for parties through Airbnb
Earlier this year, Airbnb introduced new tools to identify tenants who rent apartments or houses to unauthorized parties.
In particular, from now on, when evaluating potential renters, the system will take into account factors such as the history of positive reviews (or lack of positive reviews), the length of time the guest has stayed on Airbnb, the size of the trip, the distance to the rental property, the day of the week, and much more.
In this way, the service plans to make it impossible to hold unauthorized parties in rented accommodation, organized without the knowledge or consent of the owners of the premises.
In general, booking housing for parties through Airbnb is a long-standing problem for the service, because often people’s companies rent housing for such purposes without obtaining the consent of its owner. The latter, in turn, received complaints from neighbors and damaged property.