Airbnb Makes Its Party Ban Permanent and Plans to Lift the 16-Person Cap

On 28 June 2022, Airbnb said the worldwide ban on parties and events that it had introduced as a temporary measure in August 2020 was now its official policy. The company announced the decision in a post on its newsroom.

“The temporary ban has proved effective, and today we are officially codifying the ban as our policy,” Airbnb wrote.

Two things changed for hosts. A pandemic rule that had been in effect until further notice became a permanent one, which is how the Associated Press, CNBC and CNN all described it that day. And Airbnb said it would remove the 16-person occupancy cap that had come with the 2020 ban, a limit that had kept the largest homes on the site from being booked at full occupancy.

What the policy said

The codified policy kept the core of the 2020 rule. Open-invite gatherings and other disruptive parties and events stayed off limits, and Airbnb said its strict prohibition on party house properties would stay too.

The cap was the part that moved. Airbnb said the 16-person limit had been prompted mainly by COVID-19 concerns about large gatherings before vaccines were introduced. It said it would remove the cap after feedback from a number of hosts whose listings can comfortably house more than 16 people, and it pointed to the kinds of large homes shown in the Categories of its Summer Release: castles in Europe, vineyards in the US and large beachfront villas in the Caribbean. The change was not immediate. Airbnb said it would take effect in the coming months.

The company also said that a possible exception process for specialty and traditional hospitality venues, which it had first raised in 2020, was still under consideration.

How a pandemic rule became permanent

For most of its history Airbnb left parties to the host. The company said that in the past it had let hosts decide for themselves and approve a party when it suited their home and neighborhood. Its August 2020 post gave baby showers and birthday parties as examples of the small gatherings hosts had been allowed to approve.

That began to change in late 2019, when Airbnb prohibited open-invite parties, meaning those advertised on social media, and chronic party houses that had become neighborhood nuisances. The Associated Press reported that the crackdown followed a fatal shooting at a party held in a California house. CNBC reported that Airbnb's 2019 ban on party houses came after a shooting at one of its bookings in which five people were killed.

The pandemic turned a narrow ban into a total one. Airbnb said that with many bars and clubs shut or limited in how many people they could admit, some people moved their partying into rented homes, including homes booked through its platform. On 20 August 2020 it announced a global ban on all parties and events, in effect until further notice, along with the cap of 16. It said then that 73 percent of its listings worldwide already banned parties in their house rules. It had also already removed the event-friendly search filter and the house rule that marked a listing as allowing parties and events.

By June 2022 the company's case for the ban had moved from public health to neighbors.

“Over time, the party ban became much more than a public health measure. It developed into a bedrock community policy to support our Hosts and their neighbors,” Airbnb wrote.

The numbers Airbnb gave

Airbnb offered one main figure for the ban's effect. It said it believed the policy it put in place in August 2020 was directly tied to a 44% year-over-year drop in the rate of party reports. Short Term Rentalz reported that Airbnb put the fall in party-related complaints in the UK at 63 percent since the temporary ban was introduced.

The second figure was about enforcement. Airbnb said that in 2021 over 6,600 guests were suspended from the platform for attempting to violate the party ban. Penalties for guests ranged from account suspension to full removal. In those cases, the company said, it also worked to support hosts with property damage protection through AirCover for Hosts.

Airbnb said its hosts had welcomed the ban and that community leaders and elected officials had responded favorably. The decision came in a strong period for the business: CNN reported that Airbnb had posted revenue of $1.5 billion in the first three months of 2022, a 70% jump from the year before.

What the ban could and could not stop

Airbnb listed the tools it used to enforce the rule: anti-party reservation prevention, special measures around holidays, a 24-hour safety line, a Neighborhood Support Line that gave neighbors a direct line to the company, and an information-sharing partnership with Vrbo covering repeat party house offenders in the US. CNN reported that earlier steps included restricting users under 25 who had no history of positive reviews from booking entire homes in their own area.

Reports published the same day pointed to the limits. CNBC noted that platforms like Airbnb cannot always stop a party, because guests can sometimes check themselves in to a remote property while the owner is away and then invite as many people as they want. CNN noted that the permanent policy followed a party at an Airbnb-rented property in Pittsburgh earlier in 2022 at which two teens were killed and several people were injured, at a time when the temporary ban was in force. According to CNN, Airbnb said then that it had banned the person who made the booking and that the host had neither known of the event nor agreed to it.

Airbnb had said as much about the limits of a rule two years earlier. In its 2020 post the company wrote: “We also understand that 16 is not a magic number, and issues can occur with groups of any size.”

What it meant for hosts

For most hosts nothing had to be filed or changed on 28 June 2022. The rule applied to every listing, and the settings that once marked a home as open to events had been gone since 2020. What ended was any expectation that the old discretion would return when the pandemic eased.

• Hosts could not authorize a party or event for an Airbnb booking. Airbnb's 2020 post said it would act on listings as well as guests when neighbors reported parties, and that hosts or guests who tried to get around the rules faced bans and even legal action.
• Hosts of homes that hold more than 16 people could plan to offer their full capacity again, but only once Airbnb removed the cap, which it said would happen in the coming months.
• Where Airbnb ran its Neighborhood Support Line, neighbors could take a complaint straight to the company.
• A guest's suspension did not repair a house. Airbnb pointed hosts to AirCover for Hosts for property damage, and CNBC's point about self check-in at remote homes meant a host's own screening and monitoring still mattered. On 14 June 2022, Short Term Rentalz reported that NoiseAware had launched CrowdControl, a feature for single-family vacation rentals that detects unusual increases in occupancy.

Operators of specialty and traditional hospitality venues were left waiting. The exception process Airbnb first mentioned in 2020 was, by its own account, still under consideration.

Sources

1. Airbnb Newsroom, Airbnb officially codifies party ban (28 June 2022).
2. Associated Press (via NBC Bay Area), Airbnb Permanently Bans Parties at All Its Rental Locations (28 June 2022).
3. CNBC, Airbnb makes its party ban permanent (28 June 2022).
4. CNN Business, Airbnb makes its ban on parties permanent (28 June 2022).
5. Short Term Rentalz, Parties are over on Airbnb as company enforces permanent ban (28 June 2022).
6. Short Term Rentalz, NoiseAware introduces CrowdControl for elevated-occupancy detection (14 June 2022).
7. Airbnb Newsroom, Airbnb Announces Global Party Ban (20 August 2020).