Airbnb is cracking down on one- and two-night bookings in North America over Halloween in an effort to reduce the number of disruptive parties thrown at its short-term rental properties.
Last year, the platform blocked thousands of people from booking by implementing party prevention measures over Halloween.
The same AI-driven anti-party system is now in effect, Airbnb said in a press release on Tuesday.
The company claims the restrictions will help to reduce the risk of disruptive and unauthorized parties over the holiday weekend.
“This state-of-the-art system utilizes AI and machine learning to take steps to try to identify potentially higher-risk one-night and two-night booking attempts for entire home listings and prevent those bookings from being made,” the statement said.
The technology examines hundreds of signals relating to the booking attempt that could indicate a high-risk guest, including the length of the trip, the distance to the listing, and whether the booking is last-minute.
Customers looking to make reservations over Halloween should be aware of the following restrictions currently in place in Canada, the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
- Restrictions on one-night and two-night reservations – Our AI anti-party system will block certain one- and two-night entire home bookings that are identified as potentially higher-risk for a party incident.
- Mandatory anti-party attestation – Guests able to make local reservations must attest they understand Airbnb bans parties and that, if they break this rule, they face suspension or removal from the platform.
Last year, approximately 15,500 people in California, 11,300 in Florida and 11,000 in Texas were deterred from booking an entire home listing, according to the statement.
These measures are part of the short-term rental platform’s global party ban campaign, which has correlated with a worldwide 55 per cent year-over-two-year decrease in the rate of parties reported to the company since the program was introduced in Aug. 2020, the press release said.
In 2022, less than one per cent of reservations globally resulted in an allegation of a party.
