SARASOTA – If you are planning on ringing in the New Year in an Airbnb rental, you might want to rethink that… As Airbnb will be cracking down on New Years Eve parties in an effort to protect hosts and minimize neighborhood disruptions.
Airbnb is cracking down on guests looking to party for New Year’s Eve.
“This is an issue that has come up throughout Florida, where we get reports of a property where there are parties every weekend and kind of repeatedly annoying neighbors, and that’s not something we want on our platform, and we take action to ban them, we prohibit party houses on our platform,” said Head of Trust & Safety Communication with Airbnb, Ben Breit.
Breit says it is rare, as many guests treat the rentals as if it were their own home
“It’s about finding those needles in a haystack and they do tend to be unauthorized parties, so parties that are being thrown without the knowledge or consent of the host,” said Breit.
To prevent any parties, Airbnb announced the site will be blocking certain reservations during the New Year’s holiday weekend.
“People that have positive reviews are not subject to these types of restrictions, people who have negative reviews, or no reviews at all, are going to be prohibited from making one night reservations, through Airbnb over New Year’s Eve weekend,” said Breit.
There will also be elevated restrictions for two and three night reservation attempts.
“Again, focused on folks who have negative or no reviews at all, but really honing in on those types of reservations that may be local and last minute reservations, things along those lines,” said Breit.
And with COVID cases spiking up again across the state, Airbnb will amp up cleaning protocols for their hosts.
“Cleaning has always been really critical to success for an AIRBNB host, and now it’s even more important in the midst of the pandemic,” said Breit.
Airbnb will work alongside local law enforcement to help flag and crack down on unauthorized parties.
Airbnb first piloted these restrictions last year ahead of New Years Eve, leading 243,000 guests to encounter these defenses during booking attempts ahead of NYE 2020.