Jun 16, 2021 17:00:00

How does Airbnb respond to rape and murders that occur in vacation rentals?

Airbnb , a private lodging service, has grown rapidly by providing a platform that mediates between host locals and guest travelers, creating a new form of accommodation in which strangers rent and rent rooms. However, it is said that incidents such as voyeurism, rape, and murder have occurred in private lodging services different from existing hotels and inns, Bloomberg journalist Olivia Carville said, 'Airbnb will deal with the incident that occurred in private lodging. How to do it 'is reported.

Inside Airbnb's'Black Box' Safety Team: Company Spends Millions on Payouts --Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-15/airbnb-spends-millions-making-nightmares-at-live-anywhere-rentals-go-away

Go read this harrowing story about the team cleaning up Airbnb's biggest disasters --The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/15/22534869/airbnb-crisis-safety-team-bloomberg-report

On December 31, 2015, an Australian woman and her friends stayed in a room in an apartment on West 37th Street , a few blocks south of Times Square. Short-term rentals of less than 30 days are banned in New York City, but the apartment has been promoted on Airbnb and is gaining popularity, and the key was to receive it at a local grocery store without identification. is.

The women celebrated the New Year's Eve at the bar, but the Australian woman left her friends at the bar and returned to her room alone. However, in addition to the woman, a strange man was hidden in the room, and he threatened the woman who came home with a kitchen knife and raped him. The man escaped by robbing the woman's cell phone, but was soon arrested after being contacted by the police via a friend who was contacted on the iPad. Carville said he found a knife that threatened the woman, earrings that he stole, and the key to the apartment in the man's backpack.

The incident was reported to Nick Shapiro, who was responsible for crisis management at Airbnb at the time, and Airbnb's 'safety team' responded. The safety team moved the victim to a hotel, and the woman's mother came from Australia to New York, and the two paid travel expenses to return to their home in Australia. He also offered to provide counseling fees after that.

In this case, the route by which the man obtained the apartment key should have been a problem, but the trial did not mention Airbnb, and the media at the time did not report the case. Two years after the incident, Airbnb paid a $ 7 million check to the victim and signed a settlement document agreeing not to talk about Airbnb or the host's responsibilities. Carville reconstructed the details of the case from police and court records, testimony of stakeholders, etc., but the victim did not respond to comments.

'We don't have the power to keep Airbnb's name out of the media, and victims can tell where they are responsible, regardless of the settlement document,' said Ben Breit, an Airbnb spokeswoman. Comment on Carville. He added that Airbnb's response after the incident was aimed at helping victims and had nothing to do with local political issues.

Carville points out that in Airbnb's business, where strangers trust each other to rent and rent rooms, breaking the relationship of trust between hosts and guests can lead to fewer users and more lawsuits. In fact, Airbnb's early-launch venture capitalist Chris Sacca didn't invest because he thought Airbnb's business would lead to rape and murder. As a result, Airbnb has grown tremendously, but Carville believes that the role of the safety team in solving the problem was important.

On the other hand, the detailed role of the safety team is kept secret, and former employees of the safety team and employees close to the safety team that Mr. Carville contacted gave details for fear of violating the confidentiality agreement. did not. Still, a former safety team member who testified on condition of anonymity testified that it was a mentally painful task, as the interests of guests, hosts, and Airbnb often conflicted. 'Sometimes I had to hang up and cry,' said the witness.

The safety team is paying the victims who are in trouble for travel expenses, hotel accommodation expenses for upgraded hotels, medical expenses, counseling expenses, etc. Former Airbnb employees describe this approach as shooting a 'money cannon.' However, according to internal documents obtained by Bloomberg, Airbnb spends an average of $ 50 million annually on payments to hosts and guests, but most of the payments are related to guaranteeing property damage. It seems that payments in units of tens of millions of yen are extremely rare.

Tara Bunch, Airbnb's Global Head of Operations, said minpaku services deal with real homes and real people, so they're more credible and secure than tech companies like Apple and Facebook. Claims to be difficult. 'People are unpredictable, so sometimes really bad things happen.' 'We can't stop everything, but we know how to respond is important. When something happens, it's right. We have to do things and we are always trying to do the right thing, 'Bunch said.

In addition to the incident in New York, Airbnb has been busy responding to various incidents involving hosts and guests. Guest that had been ransacked a house in the incident and, that the guest was to drink the wine to the host has been taken raped by photos and video incident other, a hidden camera in the room that we stayed had been planted in the Airbnb The report is often talked about.

A couple using Airbnb finds a hidden camera in the room that even shows the bedroom --GIGAZINE

Furthermore, in 2018, an incident occurred in which an Airbnb user was killed by a security guard at the facility where he was staying, and in 2019, a shooting occurred in a house rented as a `` party venue'' through Airbnb. , An incident occurred that killed 5 people. In response to this issue, Airbnb has strengthened measures to prevent the act of renting a house for party purposes, and has taken measures such as building a 24-hour hotline and prohibiting reservations by high-risk users.

However, Cynthia Taylor, the bereaved family of the victims of the shooting at the party, criticized Airbnb for not contacting him for a week after the incident, until lawyer Jesse Danoff issued a statement. 'Airbnb needs to be held accountable for what happened,' Taylor said, and Danoff said he didn't care about Airbnb's weathering. 'As the news cycle goes on, Airbnb doesn't care anymore. The only motivation for Airbnb is the potential threat of bad public relations and the nightmares of the press,' said Danoff.

In addition, the rape case that occurred in New York caused controversy about the delivery of keys in private lodging, and Mr. Shapiro, who was in charge of crisis management at that time, discussed measures such as improving the key exchange process and banning the system to put keys in stores. That thing. However, even when Mr. Shapiro left Airbnb to write an article, there are no clear rules regarding key delivery.