Summer travel is heating up, with more than half of Americans planning to take at least one trip this season, a 46% increase from last year.
Many of those travelers will be forgoing pricey hotel stays and renting private homes through services like Airbnb. While the company, like the entire travel industry, suffered during the pandemic, they more than bounced back by the end of 2022, with revenue up 24% to $1.9 billion.
Tara Bunch relied on Airbnb stays during the pandemic as she embarked on a road trip with her six children from Los Angeles to Texas. She recalled that all hotels and restaurants were shut down, and she could barely find a restroom to use. “It was like taking a family trip on the moon,” she says. “So we started booking Airbnbs along the way.”
She loved her experience so much that she ended up taking a role as the company’s global head of operations in May 2020.
“I remember telling Brian (Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb) that this was going to fundamentally change the way people think of travel,” she says. “People came out of the pandemic looking for a deep desire to connect, to experience the world, to be with people, and there’s no going back.”
Bunch manages the company’s customer and community support teams as well as the privacy team. Addressing concerns about safety and trust is something the company, under Bunch’s leadership, has been laser focused on.
“Everyone plays a role in privacy and safety,” Bunch says. “0.15% of stays result in safety issues – a tiny fraction of a fraction, and many are not even significant. A slip and fall or a lock that isn’t working correctly. But when it does happen, it creates a confidence issue for guests and hosts.”
When it comes to safety, some of the biggest concerns come from solo travelers. Airbnb has seen a 33% growth in solo travel since 2022, which is why they created a product that not only offers tips for solo travelers to stay safe, it allows travelers to share their itineraries with a friend. According to the company, 25% of all bookings come from solo travelers.
When asked about advice for guests to remain safe during their travels, Bunch encourages advanced planning, like asking hosts about locks on doors, about who else will be there during their stay and more. “The best thing you can do is to not make any assumptions and ask candid questions up front,” she says. “The prompts on the solo traveler feature encourages travelers to think ahead, to consider what privacy features are important to them, and to spark a dialogue between traveler and hosts so travelers can get the answers they need before comfortably checking in to their rental.”
Working alongside Bunch is Naba Banerjee, the company’s global head of product, operations and strategy. She’s also a mother of five, which motivates her to be extra thoughtful about the products her team is building.
“The trust and safety role really means a lot to me,” Banerjee says, “Because with five teenagers, I put on that lens as a mother and as a leader of trust and safety for our community. I want families like mine to be comfortable with their children going out into the world and enjoying their solo travel journeys. They can rely on a platform like Airbnb where they can immerse themselves in the local culture and have a lot of fun.”
With so many moms at the helm, the litmus test for trust and safety is simple. They ask, “Would we let our kids use this platform?”
That’s one of the reasons why the company created the Trust and Safety Advisory Coalition, a group of 22 external organizations that advise on Airbnb’s community safety policies. The coalition inputs on platform, products, community support resources, employee training and policy development.
The platform has additional tools to help foster trust, such as 100% identity verification for all hosts and guests, encouraging people to read reviews so they know what to expect, and making sure people know about the global 24/7 safety line.
“We don’t want Airbnb to be a brand that people associate with unsafe situations,” Banerjee says. “Everyone needs to feel confident that they know who this person is – be it the person hosting you or the person staying in your home. We run background checks and fraud checks to make sure you’re a good member of our community.”
And what about last minute cancellations or bad behavior from hosts? Airbnb says they are fully committed to covering any damages incurred during a stay, and if a trip is disrupted, either because the host has to cancel, because of a guest’s unsafe feeling upon arrival or because a listing is materially different than what was represented, the company will rebook, refund and help get guests situated.
“AirCover is another essential ingredient of building trust,” Bunch points out. “It says to any host listing their property, that in the rare event that something goes wrong, we’re going to cover those damages and take care of you. And for a guest it means if your trip is disrupted, we will rebook immediately. We have their back.”
This is something Airbnb’s competitor, Vrbo, has been criticized for. A representative from Vrbo stated, “When hosts cancel due to reasons under their control, those cancellations do negatively impact the host’s listing performance and visibility to other travelers on the site. Canceling too frequently could result in removal from our platform.”
When pressed on details about how exactly the hosts are negatively impacted, Vrbo was hesitant to share more. “We can’t share additional details on our internal processes. However, we do continually evolve our policies and procedures to make sure we’re protecting guests.”
Airbnb was much more transparent in regards to the way users are penalized for bad behavior. The company is constantly scoring hosts and guests in the background of their system. Each host and guest has a rating, which is based on reviews, CS tickets, cancellation rates, reckless behavior incidents and party issues.
At first, a user will get a warning. For example, if a guest has difficulty checking in, that host will receive a warning. But once a host or guest accumulates a certain score, they are prohibited from hosting on the platform.
“A few little points here and there, we nudge,” Bunch says. “We want to motivate guests and hosts to behave on the platform. And when that doesn’t happen, we have a dedicated team who will help you rebook if that’s what you want to do, including putting you in a hotel for a night or two before we can find you the right place. You’ll be refunded for any of the associated costs.”
Bunch and her colleagues prefer this approach to other platforms where, as they note, hosts have little to no repercussions for canceling on guests last minute.
“We’re not just there to connect the guests and hosts and then walk away,” Bunch says. “We want the stay to go extremely well.”
Lauren Frazer is an Airbnb “super host” who runs two rental properties in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Frazer and her husband prefer Airbnb to other platforms, mostly because of the process for weeding out bots.
“On VRBO, more than half of our inquiries are clearly spam,” she says, “Which can be frustrating to sift through. On Airbnb we make the choice to have ‘instant book’ turned off so guests have to send us a quick message about their use for the property when they request to book. We like this feature as it allows us to briefly interact with guests and hype them up for their stay. We have always felt supported by the platform in the rare cases when issues arise with guests.”
Airbnb has never been the type of company to put their head in the sand when issues arise, often addressing them head on. After a 2016 study revealed that Black travelers faced significant discrimination when booking rental properties through companies like Airbnb, the company acknowledged it, addressed it and took action to prevent further issues.
Following that report, Airbnb created the Community Commitment, which requires every user to sign a commitment agreeing that they will treat each other with respect, and that they will act in a way that is free of judgment or bias. If anyone refuses to sign it, they’re not allowed to use Airbnb. According to the company, over 2.5 million people have been barred from the platform because they weren’t willing to sign it.
“We have a no tolerance policy on discrimination,” says Juniper Downs, the global head of community policy and partnerships, who started her career as a civil rights lawyer at the ACLU. “It’s important that people show respect for each other. We’ve created a community of people who trust one another, and who find Airbnb a magical place to connect and have amazing experiences.”
Another stance the company has recently taken is on its party prevention policies. Based on a traveler’s booking history, location history, when their birthday is, and holiday calendars, Airbnb uses AI to predict the likelihood of a party. Once that technology detects whether or not a booking poses a party risk, it sends the traveler to a message thread that prompts them to explain the reason for their stay. Then, if the platform decides this person is a high risk for partying, they redirect that guest to a shared listing or private room.
“Not only do we want our guests and our posts to be safe on Airbnb,” Downs says, “But we also want Airbnb to be a positive contributor to the communities where listings are located.”
Over the past two years, Airbnb has seen a 55% decline in the occurrence of unauthorized parties.
“We always ask, ‘What’s not working?’” says Downs. “We listen to feedback from guests and hosts. What do we do from a customer service perspective? What do we do from a trust defense perspective, to try to ensure the right experience at each of the stages of booking? What are the issues guests and hosts are having when they are booking, or during the checkout process, and what are the right solutions to those problems?”
“There is no silver bullet to trust and safety,” Banerjee says. “There is no one solution. Just when you think you’ve solved the problem, our community grows, and their needs evolve. There is no finish line. Every day we are thinking of new ways to listen to feedback from our community, address that feedback through a combination of policies and products, learn and improve.”
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