NASHVILLE – Airbnb today announced a crackdown on party houses throughout Nashville. As a part of this effort, more than 100 listings across the city that have received complaints or otherwise violated our policies on parties and events are currently suspended or have been removed from the Airbnb platform.
This follows Airbnb’s policy change to ban parties at Airbnb listings globally until further notice.
The vast majority of hosts in Nashville contribute positively to their neighborhoods and economy, and they also take important steps to help prevent unauthorized parties – like establishing clear house rules, quiet hours, and communicating in advance with their guests. “Our actions today address the small minority of hosts who have previously received warnings about hosting responsibly or have otherwise violated our policies,” Airbnb officials said.
The actions were communicated to the hosts last week.
Airbnb announced a global ban on ‘party houses’ in 2019, alongside a 24/7 Neighborhood Support Hotline, where neighbors can call us anytime and reach a trained agent to share their concerns. Issues raised by Tennesseeans through this hotline led directly to many of the listing suspensions announced today.
“As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the state, it’s more important than ever that we all do our part to reduce the number of large gatherings and parties amid the pandemic, and contribute to help putting a stop to this irresponsible behavior,” said Viviana Jordan, Tennessee public policy manager for Airbnb. “By bringing greater awareness to our 24/7 neighbor support line, we hope to strengthen the enforcement of our ban on parties in Nashville and throughout the state.”
In addition to the global party ban, Airbnb recently shared out restrictions on some bookings of local entire home listings by U.S. guests under the age of 25. As a practical example, if we identify a 20-year old guest who is located in Nashville, our systems are set up to restrict that user from booking a house, apartment or other entire home listing in Nashville for a 1-night reservation the following weekend unless they have a history of positive reviews on Airbnb. However, if that same 20 year-old is booking a stay to visit family in Chattanooga, the restriction would not apply.
Previously ahead of Halloween last month, Airbnb prohibited one-night reservations over the holiday weekend in entire home listings throughout the US & Canada. Airbnb also announced last year the expansion of manual screening of high-risk reservations flagged by our automated systems. This process is designed to help us try to stop reservations that may lead to unauthorized parties before they start, and has blocked more than 80 reservations throughout Nashville since its launch.