AirBnB bans all house parties worldwide


Airbnb / Covid-19 imageCopyright
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Airbnb has banned house parties as part of its attempt to push boundaries at meetings in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Occupancy will be limited to 16 people, with a few exceptions for some locations.

Security parties hosted on Airbnb properties called on the UK’s Bed and Breakfast Association to warn that it was endangering communities.

The company says legal action will follow if guests or hosts break the rules.

“Establishing a global ban on parties and events is in the best interests of public health,” Airbnb said in a statement.

It added that 73% of their ads explicitly banned parties, but some hosts allowed small parties such as baby shower or birthday parties.

Despite this, Airbnb acknowledged that some of its guests have chosen to “take bar and club behavior to homes that are sometimes rented through our platforms”.

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“We think that such behavior is irresponsible – we do not want that kind of business, and anyone who engages in or allows this behavior does not belong on our platform,” it said.

Airbnb had already begun imposing stricter boundaries, with a ban on holiday homes causing ongoing neighborhood congestion.

To comply with social distancing rules, it had also removed the “event friendly” and “parties and events allowed” search filters.

And earlier this month, it appeared that some under-25s in the UK were reserving entire homes, following successful pilots in Canada and the US.

Like other travel companies, Airbnb has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic – though it said in July that customers had booked more than one million nights in one day for the first time since March.

The San Francisco-based company also announced this week that it was planning to list on the stock market. In April, it raised $ 2 billion (£ 1.5 billion) from investors, who value it at $ 18 billion.