Airbnb cracks down on New Year's Eve parties with ban on 1-night bookings
Airbnb is tightening its rules for some renters in Canada and 10 other countries who are looking to party into the new year.
The home rental company released a statement on Thursday saying it wants to "stop unauthorized parties" and "protect against neighbourhood disruption" taking place over New Year's Eve, with a ban for some users on one-night bookings.
For Dec. 31, renters who don't have positive reviews on their account history, or have no history at all, will be banned from booking a one-night stay on entire home listings.
Airbnb also says it's "introducing tighter restrictions" for those same renters who try and book two- and three-night reservations, emphasizing attempts to make a local booking.
"Stays take place across the world each night on Airbnb, with the overwhelming majority of guests and hosts being respectful of neighbours and delivering benefits to their local community," Naba Banerjee, Airbnb's director of trust product and operations, says in the statement. "These proactive defences will help to promote responsible travel and help to prevent rare instances of unwelcome behaviour, and enable hosts, guests and communities to enjoy their end of year celebrations with added reassurance."
During New Year's Eve weekend, the stricter rules will be in place across 11 countries: Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and the Netherlands.
Ireland, Portugal and the Netherlands are being added in 2022 after Airbnb says it ran a successful trial of the rules in the eight other countries last year.
"We estimate that the measures have contributed to a year-over-year global drop in rates of party incidents over New Year's Eve of roughly 56 per cent, since the defences were first piloted in 2020," Airbnb penned in its statement.
The platform added that globally in 2020, around 340,000 users were "blocked or redirected" after trying to book a rental on Airbnb over New Year's Eve.
Company data shows around 120,000 of those guests were in the United States, while more than 34,500 guests in the United Kingdom and roughly 13,000 Australian users were also affected.
In 2019, Airbnb started banning "party houses" following a shooting on Halloween that left five people dead during a more than 100-person gathering at a mansion in Orinda, Calif.
Later that year, the company barred all "open-invite" parties, but still allowed invitation-only parties in single family dwellings at the time.
Airbnb also placed a temporary ban on all parties and events in 2020 in accordance to COVID-19 regulations.
However, the company made the rule permanent in June 2022 after saying the temporary ban had "proved effective."
