TEXAS – Airbnb today announced a crackdown on party houses throughout Texas. As a part of this effort, over 80 listings across the state that have received complaints or otherwise violated our policies on parties and events have been suspended or removed from the Airbnb platform.
This follows Airbnb’s policy change to ban parties at Airbnb listings globally until further notice.
The vast majority of hosts in Texas contribute positively to their neighborhoods and economy, and they also take important steps to prevent unauthorized parties – like establishing clear house rules, quiet hours, and communicating in advance with their guests. Our actions today address the small minority of hosts who have previously received warnings about hosting responsibly or have otherwise violated our policies.
The actions were communicated to the hosts over the past week, and the suspensions were spread throughout the following cities across the state:
- Austin
- Baytown
- College Station
- Corpus Christi
- Cypress
- Dallas
- Edgewood
- El Paso
- Fort Worth
- Fredericksburg
- Houston
- Lubbock
- Pearland
- Richmond
- San Antonio
- Uvalde
- Wimberly
Airbnb announced a global ban on ‘party houses’ in 2019, alongside a 24/7 Neighborhood Support Hotline, where neighbors can call us anytime and reach a real person at Airbnb. The hotline is staffed with trained agents so that neighbors can reach us directly with their concerns. Issues raised by Texans through this hotline led directly to many of the listing suspensions announced today, and we hope to bring greater awareness to our neighbor support line to help bolster the enforcement of our party ban.
In addition to the global party ban, Airbnb recently shared out restrictions on some bookings of local entire home listings by U.S. guests under the age of 25. As a practical example, if we identify a 20-year old guest who is located in Texarkana, our systems are set up to restrict that user from booking a house, apartment or other entire home listing in Texarkana for a 1-night reservation the following weekend unless they have a history of positive reviews on Airbnb. However, if that same 20 year-old is booking a stay to visit family in Houston, the restriction would not apply.
Airbnb also announced last year the expansion of manual screening of high-risk reservations flagged by our automated systems. This helps identify reservations that help stop unauthorized parties before they start.