This is how Airbnb rolls out the welcome mat

The idea of ​​staying in a complete stranger’s house, outside of a cute bed and breakfast, was completely foreign to most travelers until Airbnb came on the scene in 2008. Nowadays it’s hard to imagine traveling without it.

But for Tara Bunch, the head of Airbnb’s global operations, one problem remains 15 years after the San Francisco-based company launched: How do you get people excited about the opportunity to invite strangers to crash? “Hosting isn’t mainstream enough, especially hosting at your home,” says Bunch.

Safety concerns by Airbnb hosts and guests are not new. Guests have settled for intrusive cameras, a lack of proper fire escapes, and harassment from their hosts. Meanwhile, hosts (and neighboring homes) have experienced loud parties and even violence from guests.

While Airbnb claims its incident rate is very low, its executives, including co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, talk a lot these days about user trust and safety. This isn’t a new topic either — Airbnb’s other co-founder, Joe Gebbia, famously addressed the issue in a 2016 TED Talk.

Bunch spoke to the Star from the sidelines of the recent Collision technology conference in Toronto:

Airbnb has always been big on user trust, so why focus on that now? What is driving this push?

We’ve always had faith as the core of Airbnb. And we’ve kept repeating in that space. During the pandemic, there was a concentration of people who realized there were no open bars or dance halls, so they turned to Airbnb to party. We had to (create) much stricter party defenses at that time.

Initially it was what I would call ‘hard rails’. You are under 25, we have noticed that you are a little too close to the mansion you are booking for one person, for one night. Those are clear indications. Over time, they get smarter because kids are smart. I have six myself and five of them are teenagers. They are brutally smart. So we had to iterate on those defenses and make them much more AI driven so we can look at a number of things.

Imagine you’re a kid and you’re looking for a place, and we’re blocking you because you’re under 25. Well, maybe you have a 28-year-old sibling, so maybe you use their account and book for two nights instead of one. And so we had to start figuring out all these vectors and building a system. We just announced last year that we would be rolling out that defense. We had tested it in Australia.

What exactly led you to double down on security?

We have a big focus on making hosting mainstream. We had people at Collision do a show of hands. “How many people have stayed in an Airbnb?” Almost everyone hung them up. And then we said, “How many people would be willing to take in a stranger?” And only a few hands went up. If you want to scale this business and make hosting mainstream, you have to convince people that they can trust us to do our job.

Our number of registered security incidents is 0.15 percent. And we will have 300 million people check into Airbnbs worldwide this year. That’s a huge scale. So if you want to maintain that track record and grow the business, you need to get good at pinpointing any type of problem quickly. Travel reopens. Borders are opening again. Everyone wants to go somewhere. We want to scale up our defenses and reassure our community that it’s safe to travel on Airbnb and it’s safe to host on Airbnb.

Many Airbnb guests are concerned about discrimination, especially trans guests. How do you ensure their safety when they have hosts who may not be hospitable?

Every guest and host on our platform must agree to our commitment to community, which explicitly prohibits any form of discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. If they don’t agree, they’re gone. And two and a half million people would disagree, worldwide.

At the same time, we have some background mechanisms that look at messages between guests and hosts for trigger words that suggest something is going on. Any report of discrimination is followed up immediately and then we go back to the guest and host for clarity. If we determine that there was likely discrimination, or if it was very bad, they are eliminated. If maybe it was just a misunderstanding, they need to recommit to our community obligation. If they don’t recommit, they’re out. If it happens any other time, they are permanently disabled.

That commitment does not only include behaviour. A host may not have any objects at all that are clearly related to discriminatory history, such as the Confederate flag. We are very, very strict about that.

Is that new policy?

No, that’s been around for a while. But we enforce it.

How do you feel about the idea of ​​someone returning to Airbnb after a ban? Is there any way they can return to the herd?

We have an appeals process. We’re going to revamp it very shortly, but it’s going to make it a little bit easier for people to find that flow in the product. Let’s say you were caught with marijuana in 1980. You can appeal and we can say, “Yeah, that’s nothing more, you’re back.”

If you threw a party and caused some damage, you can appeal and after a while you can move on. Look, I have kids – in their twenties – doing things they wouldn’t do when they’re 40, or 30, or even 28.

You mentioned using AI to filter out bad behavior. There are many concerns about the discriminatory use of AI. What do you think about that? For example, someone who has come out as transgender, but has not changed their ID so that it does not match their name.

Everyone is asked to verify their ID and link it to a selfie. We have a few other ways to triangulate ID and can confirm if a phone number belongs to a particular person. Once we have verified your identity, you can manage your profile. We don’t force you to have a particular name.

Airbnb removed about 12,000 listings from the platform in April for not meeting standards. How does that compare to previous years? Is that much?

Last year we had about 80,000 removals. We have always had quality scans of guest and host and have always held them both accountable. But the new accountability system that we just announced is built into the product itself. If you’re a host and we see that you’ve been scolded by the previous guests because their Airbnb location is a bit dirty, we can give you a nudge and say, “clean this up.” We can only do that if the system is built into the product at scale.

While we’ve removed 12,000 entries with very acute issues, we can give those willing to get better a little push. Those acute mentions? We find them much faster. What I like about this new system is that you don’t have a host flying under the radar, misbehaving or not meeting their requirements – and the same on the guest side. But if you have a host that might just make a little mistake, and if it keeps happening, at some point it’s going to be a big problem for them.

We have so many new hosts who just make little mistakes. By giving them a helping hand, we can make them great hosts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Brennan Doherty is a former staff reporter for Star Calgary and Star Toronto’s 24-hour radio room. He is now a freelance worker.

PART: