Airbnb has been providing a nice experience and an alternative way to travel for years, especially with large groups or family.  However, as its operations expand, fraud and other illegal listings inevitably creep up.  They severely damage what could have been a great vacation experience.  Prompt and effective measures against such cases is likely crucial to keep the incident rate down.

1/5 of Airbnb listings in LA were reportedly illegal.  The rate can be higher in similar large cities: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-30/report-on-home-sharing-targets-airbnb

https://www.theinvisibletourist.com/why-you-shouldnt-use-airbnb-issues-you-didnt-know/

Illegal listings cause stranded guests and hurt legitimate hosts in the affected areas.  As a $10 billion operation, illegal listings will bound to happen, and if Airbnb does not deal with this proactively, the experience will suffer significantly.

My family and I were recently denied access (by the guards at the gate) to such an illegal Airbnb listing, a unit in an apartment complex.  Airbnb did not actively seek a solution for us, leaving us stranded middle of the night.  For 2+ hours we waited in our car for Airbnb's actions, but in the end, we still had to book a much more expensive place on our own.  During later investigation, Airbnb even told us that they confirmed with the leasing office that the individual contract allows the listing.  Calling up the leasing office, we very quickly confirmed that it indeed was illegal with written proof -- the contract for that unit.  Apparently, Airbnb has been actively shutting guests down, instead of proactively fighting for the guests against fraud.

This whole interaction and investigation involved about 10 Airbnb customer representatives, about 3 different levels of escalation, several days of our time.  During this process, Airbnb seemed to have done some investigations, but no concrete measures were suggested to stop this from happening again, and no actionable guidance was provided to the guests.  We can definitely see the exact same situation happen again and again, and illegal listings will inevitably grow even larger scale.

Because Airbnb has very strong incentives (increased inventory and revenue) to hide these illegal listings, its inaction in this particular case warrants serious consideration.  (This issue really deserves a class action suit, but a clever no class action clause in Airbnb's terms of use makes the outcome less clear.)

In this petition, we request Airbnb to provide a clear and actionable playbook for guests and customer representatives to handle similar situations.  The users of the platform (hosts and guests) should get transparency about the problem, proper education on how to deal with similar situations, what can be expected from Airbnb, what it takes, and how long it should take to resolve the issue.  There should also be transparency on the statistics around illegal listings, and external oversight to make sure this is handled properly, promptly and proactively, with reasonable effort from Airbnb.  Existing users should also get compensation for everything lost due to Airbnb not properly handling the problem.

The purpose of the petition is to get Airbnb to do what it should've done, and be transparent about it.  Compared to Google and Facebook, which do not benefit directly from their services and still actively fights spam, fraud and misinformation, Airbnb charges about 20% service fee for every transaction.

Here are a few ideas to kick start the process.  How Airbnb acts will probably be different from what's suggested.  We are sure Airbnb hires competent employees, who will come up with innovative ways to deal with this effectively and at scale.

For catching and preventing illegal listings:

1) Airbnb should actively confirm and chase down illegal listings, instead of leaving guests stranded.  (Currently, even when we offered to provide evidence, Airbnb simply ignores it, forcing us to rebook on our own.  It also refuses to admit that their process if faulty.)

2) Airbnb should actively detect fraud and illegal listings by monitoring messages and reviews.  It's very easy to detect fraud from address mismatch, suspicious check in instructions, and past reviews etc..  (This particular listing agent is a repeat offender.)

3) Airbnb should do sampled manual checks on all its listings, to get a reasonable estimate of what percentage of the listings are illegal, and report back the process and the numbers.  This transparency and oversight is necessary because of the huge conflict of interest with illegal listings and Airbnb.

Host side improvements:

4) Airbnb should at the minimum notify the proper authorities (e.g. the city, the police department, rental office or HOA) about such confirmed illegal listings, and maybe find ways to fine illegal listing owners up to say 10x the transaction price and maybe use that to compensate impacted guests and fight against future violations.  Manually confirming illegal listings can be expensive, so this is more of a way to deter illegal listings rather than a way to completely eliminate them from the platform.  There could be better ways to achieve this goal of deterrence, or the ultimate goal of eliminating completely.

5) Airbnb should trace back all earlier earnings from those illegal listings, and estimate impact to all legitimate hosts in the affected areas, and use funding proportional to that to detect and catch future cases as early as possible.

Guest side improvements:

6) Airbnb should educate guests and Airbnb support personnels by clearly laying out the process to handle potentially illegal listings, what evidence is needed, what results can be expected, how long it will take to get it resolved, instead of ignoring the guests and misleading them to rebook on their own.  (Currently multiple agents simply left us there, or said they'll be back in 24 hours, even though a dispute specialist said that there in fact is a proper process to handle rebooking from Airbnb side.  Several Big Disconnects within Airbnb and between Airbnb and guests!)

The process and education should at least cover these scenarios and similar ones:

a) Someone (guard at the gate, neighbor, leasing office, HOA, or the police etc.) tells you it is illegal Airbnb, what should you do (what evidence to collect, who to contact), how long should you expect an answer for this, what if it's late at night and no one can answer you, should you still check in?  What if you cannot check in?

b) Despite the above, the host tells you it is legal.  What to do (what evidence to ask from the host, should you still stay if the host cannot provide the evidence in time), who to contact, what's the expectation.

c) Under what situations would Airbnb step in and cover the costs, what costs, what exact steps to take in order to get Airbnb's coverage and how long it would take to resolve it.

This playbook will never be complete, but at least there should be one, and it should be kept up to date, and cover a vast majority of cases.

7) Airbnb should make a reasonable effort in compensating the impacted guests for lost time and money spent in rebooking and talking to Airbnb support due to illegal listings, and any increased fee incurred due to last minute booking or lack of inventory.

8) When a dispute arises, Airbnb support should do a three way call mediating the discussion and solution between host and guest.  In our case, we contacted Airbnb immediately, but Airbnb support called us, then hang up, and called host, then messaged us asking us to call the host, after we were done with the host, we had to talk to the support again and so on, each step taking about 20 minutes of waiting.  A three way call would've easily solved the problem within the first 20 minutes.