Airbnb Hosts Are Having a Meltdown After New Rules Means They Can’t Force Guests to Clean Up Everything For Them
Futurism ·
A landlord meltdown like you've never seen before. The post Airbnb Hosts Are Having a Meltdown After New Rules Means They Can’t Force Guests to Clean Up Everything For Them appeared first on Futurism .
The reign of tyrannical Airbnb hosts is over.
On Wednesday, Airbnb unveiled a new policy update that prevents hosts from demanding their guests do a bunch of cleaning before checking out.
Starting on bookings made on or after November 20, hosts won’t be able to make guests do chores that “would typically be performed by a cleaner,” the company said — like stripping beds, washing and putting away dishes, or taking trash off the property.
Guests have been begging for these changes for years. You’ve probably heard — or experienced — the horror stories of hosts that impose extensive check out instructions and slap on arbitrary cleaning fees. It’s had people yearning for the hospitality of an old-fashioned hotel, which Airbnbs were originally supposed to be the cheaper, no-fuss alternative to.
But hosts, not unlike an aristocracy under threat, aren’t taking the changes well. As soon as word got out, Airbnb discussion boards turned into the ground zero of a landlord meltdown like you’ve never seen before.
“Can we not band together and build our own post-airbnb platform?” one Reddit post asked. A similar post in a Facebook group for Airbnb hosts also raised the idea of collective action and called for a strike, as Wired spotted .
Taking a more spiteful route, one threatened to jack up their cleaning fees in response. “I’ll raise the fee to cover the additional cleaner that now needs to wash dishes… and drag out the trash and recyclables,” they wrote.
One likened Airbnb to “an abusive partner,” before another expanded on the dramatic analogy: “they keep hurting you, but you’re not sure you can find anything better, so you stay.”
On the Airbnb community forum, one host fumed that “guests are given complete freedom to be lazy while the hosts bear the risk.”
“Guests can certainly be expected to wash their dishes or put them in the dishwasher and remove their dirty linens,” the host seethed, as quoted by TechCrunch . “In exchange, they enjoy a personal connection and a unique environment that a hotel simply can’t provide.”
Quite a few hosts agreed with the changes, though. One who claimed to be a super host posted a thread with a strong message: “any hosts complaining should leave AirBnB.”
“I cannot imagine asking a guest to strip the bed, take the garbage out, wash the dishes, or start laundry,” agreed another host. “To me, that’s insane.”
More on Airbnb: Airbnb Host Furious After Startup Trashes His Unit to “Test Robots”
The post Airbnb Hosts Are Having a Meltdown After New Rules Means They Can’t Force Guests to Clean Up Everything For Them appeared first on Futurism .