Airbnb to begin sweeping verification process of all 7 million listings after Orinda shooting
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky sent an email to employees on Thursday detailing steps the company is taking in the wake of a shooting at an Airbnb rental in Orinda, California.
The platform will begin assessing all seven million listings on Airbnb with the goal that each home and host will be verified by the vacation rental company by Dec. 15, 2020, Chesky wrote in an email that is now public. This also comes after Vice reported in a bombshell piece last week how hosts can assume fake identities and scam consumers on the platform. The FBI is looking into the article's claims.
Airbnb will start making headway toward its goals sooner than that, however: Starting Dec. 15, 2019, if a listing doesn't meet accuracy standards, Airbnb will rebook guests in a new listing "of equal or greater value" or they will receive a full refund.
After five people were killed and several wounded in the shooting, the home-sharing service's CEO vowed to crack down on "party houses" — though social media users were skeptical, and the definition of such "party houses" remains uncertain.
Still, starting Dec. 15, Airbnb is expanding its manual screening procedures of "high-risk reservations" to North America and all over the globe in 2020. The company examines factors like how long guests are staying, the size of the listing and many other factors. "Risk scoring helps us focus our attention and find the needle in the haystack," Chesky wrote in the letter.
"While in the case of Orinda, while the reservation was booked for 12 people, which might set off Airbnb's risk-assessment technology, how can the system predict that a listing may be used for a party if someone only lists 2 guests under the reservation?" Makarand Mody, an assistant professor of hospitality marketing at Boston University, told USA TODAY earlier this week.
Airbnb will also launch a 24/7 hotline where anyone can talk to a "real person" from Airbnb.
"We will staff this hotline with a rapid response team so that neighbors can reach us directly with their concerns, and our phone number will be placed prominently on our homepage, in our app, and easily searchable on Google," Chesky wrote in the email. "We are developing a training program and protocols for our rapid response team, and we have asked Charles Ramsey, former Chief of both the Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Police Departments, and Ronald Davis, the former Chief of East Palo Alto Police Department and President Obama’s Executive Director of Community Oriented Policing Services, to advise us."
This program will begin in the U.S. on Dec. 31 and appear across the globe next year.
Contributing: Grace Hauck
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Orinda shooting: Airbnb to begin verification of 7 million listings
