People are celebrating on a rooftop in Kips Bay as the city continues Phase 4 from reopening due to restrictions imposed to slow down the spread of coronavirus on August 1, 2020 in New York City.
Noam Galai | Getty Images
Airbnb announced Thursday a worldwide ban on all parties and events on its ads for health reasons.
The home-sharing platform, which made the announcement in a blog post, said it would also introduce a cap for occupancy of 16 people.
“Establishing a global ban on parties and events is in the best interests of public health,” the company said in the post.
The ban applies to all future bookings on Airbnb and will remain in effect until further notice.
Airbnb said 73% of ads had already banned parties in their house rules.
Last year, the company introduced a worldwide ban on “holiday homes.” These were essentially advertisements that several times caused a nuisance in the local neighborhood.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Airbnb removed the “event-friendly” search filter from its platform and told users to follow local government guidelines.
“However, many major jurisdictions have changed public health mandates at meetings – and in some places have fluctuated back and forth in response to changing rates of COVID cases – as have regulations on bars, clubs and pubs,” the company said.
“Some have chosen to take behavior from barns and clubs to homes, sometimes rented through our platform. We think such behavior is irresponsible – we do not want that kind of business, and anyone who engages in or allows that behavior does not belongs to our platform. “
Because of the way it works, the company can not always stop parties from taking place. Guests can sometimes even indulge in properties remotely and have as many people left over as they feel comfortable, regardless of what the house rules say.
There were multiple instances of Airbnb guests breaking house rules and having parties, with some resulting in major damage to the property.
The announcement comes a day after Airbnb said it had submitted a draft registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.
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