Finally, Airbnb hosts can no longer force guests to do all their chores. Starting November 20, a new, long-needed policy bans property owners from demanding guests complete labor “typically performed by a cleaner,” like stripping beds, scrubbing dishes, or hauling trash offsite.
Finally, Airbnbs are being forced to learn a lesson hotels learned long ago: people don’t want to work on vacation, and that includes cleaning up after themselves. If you ostensibly want to run a small hotel, you had better play by the societal rules of how hotels function. The short-term rental company is ending hefty cleaning fees while also telling vacationers they can’t leave without first picking up a mop and bucket.
Several Airbnb property owners are melting down at the thought of losing out on free labor, sounding off on social media sites across the internet; one likens the company to an “abusive partner,” according to one person on the r/Airbnb_hosts subreddit. Far be it for me to pass complete judgment on someone based on a six-word sentence about a fairly silly news story, but if you’re demanding that paying vacationing guests do a series of chores before they leave, you are the abusive partner, not the middleman.
I cannot believe this story is forcing me to defend Airbnb, a company that is one of the reasons average Americans can’t buy a home anymore.
Airbnb Hosts Can No Longer Make Guests Do Their Cleaning, and Some Are Furious
As Wired discovered, someone on Facebook started a Change.org petition (because those are always so helpful) demanding the right to tell guests that when they stay at one of their Airbnb properties, they will be held to a set of “common-sense expectations.” I’m not going to post a link to this Facebook group. I want to dox anyone.
But it is a gold mine of the exact kind of personalities you would expect an Airbnb host to possess. For example, one host suggests the OP write an angry letter to Airbnb, which isn’t difficult because you can just use AI to write an email. Color me surprised that an Airbnb host, no more than a tech-savvy landlord, is putting in as little effort as possible.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky previously noted that people go on vacation to escape their chores, pointing out that nobody paying for a getaway should have to throw linens in the wash before checking out.
Guests aren’t completely off the hook for doing some chores. Under the new rules, hosts can still make small, reasonable requests, like leaving dirty dishes in the sink or taking shorter showers during a local drought. But they can’t pull out a chore wheel and assign guests tasks hotel housekeepers usually handle, via notes littered throughout the house that turn the guest into a video game character finding diary entries around levels.
Airbnb’s system will automatically block hosts from adding prohibited chores to the lists, and violators risk warnings or outright bans from the platform.
The post Airbnb Is Finally Banning Hosts From Making Guests Do Their Chores appeared first on VICE.
