It just got even harder to throw an Airbnb party in Toronto
Stretch-SUV rental companies and cheap champagne manufacturers are about to lose a huge segment of their markets, as those rowdy Airbnb parties you love to hate are coming to an end for good.
At least that's the goal of the service's latest anti-party features.
The short-term rental company and scourge of the hospitality industry announced its new anti-party tools in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday, effectively killing the rogue industry of condos-turned-party pads in Toronto complexes (like too many units within the ICE Condos.)
Airbnb claims that the long-anticipated introduction of anti-party tools will "help identify potentially high-risk reservations and prevent those users from taking advantage of our platform."
The move comes on the heels of a June announcement that the short-term rental agency's previous temporary ban on parties would become codified policy, amid pressure from both hosts and municipalities on Airbnb to clamp down on parties thrown without the knowledge or consent of hosts.
The tool works by analyzing factors including past reviews, the length of time a guest has been using Airbnb, length of trip, distance to listing, day of the week, and several other data points to "reduce the ability of bad actors to throw unauthorized parties which negatively impact our hosts, neighbors, and the communities we serve."
If a guest checks too many of the wrong boxes, the anti-party technology is designed to block a reservation from going through. It won't ban a user from making a booking using the service, but guests attempting to book entire homes with the intent of hosting parties will instead be given the option to book a private room or hotel suite through Airbnb.
Similar technology has already been in play in Australia under a pilot project since Oct. 2021, resulting in a 35 per cent drop in incidents of unauthorized parties in areas covered by the pilot.
The upgraded security system is described as a "more robust and sophisticated version of the 'under-25' system that has been in effect in North America since 2020, which focuses primarily on guests under the age of 25 without positive reviews who are booking locally."
It will undoubtedly bring more peace of mind to Airbnb hosts, but the service admits in a press release that "no system is perfect," and that while the system is designed to "deter bad actors," the release suggests Airbnb's nature as an online platform can't necessarily put a stop to unauthorized parties altogether.
Jack Landau
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