Airbnb closes account of host who declines transgender guest

TRANS

A host who would tell a prospective guest that their presence would put her "adolescent son in discomfort" would have to be spectacularly tone-deaf in the language of hospitality. No matter what the gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or religion of the guest was, the wording was inappropriate and would have caused even a thick-skinned person some emotional distress. I know what it's like to be told I'm not welcome in someone's home because children are there - it's a horrible thing to tell someone. I don't want to be part of a club that would have a douchebag like Patricia for a member.



Airbnb lives or dies by its brand, and it's completely justified in terminating the accounts of hosts who represent it poorly. Such an action does not cause the host to "lose her hosting career" - the host is fully in charge of her own career - it just denies her the ability to harness the Airbnb brand to her business. We as hosts are only reviewed by the guests who actually stay with us, but from Airbnb's perspective the experiences of all the other guests who view our listings or contact us should also matter. And that's another area where I think they need greater clarity.



Currently, Airbnb offers no guidance about how to decline guests. Is it OK to lie and say the property is "not available" and still keep the dates open and offer them to other guests? Is it OK to tell a guest you're "uncomfortable" with them? Is it OK to decline without a response? All of these are presented as options, and any of them could leave a guest justifiably feeling they have been discriminated against. Even as someone highly experienced in customer service, I sometimes find it difficult to write a Decline message that comes across as reasonable and respectful, and there are bound to be thousands of hosts with no experience in these delicate communication strategies at all. The discrimination complaints are not going to go away, so Airbnb needs to get better at clarifying what reasons for declines and cancellations it finds acceptable and which are out of bounds.



Also, it may well be that hosts who are only willing to accept certain types of people are better off listing on a more specialized platform or advertise independently of a listing-management service.

Last Edit: Jun 7, 2016 at 4:12am by andrew

All that said, it would behoove Airbnb to contact hosts when guests have complained about them, rather than ignoring the matter and frantically going into damage-control mode a year later when a tweet goes viral. When it does deem it appropriate to terminate an account, they should have a resolution process that keeps the host and their booked guests reasonably informed about what's going on, and gives sufficient notice to make other arrangements. Sweeping controversial listings into the Memory Hole is not a sustainable strategy, even if their Terms do technically allow for it.

Because a year ago, there was not a huge dialogue on Twitter about discrimination on Airbnb, nor was there such a significant dialogue about anti-transgender discrimination. Didn't you read the content of the tweet? She was clearly joining an existing conversation, not initiating a controversy.




I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean in this sentence.


Please refer to my second post above; you'll see, I agree with you on that point. Airbnb should have contacted the host and the guest when the incident was reported, but unfortunately they don't have any kind of process for dealing with those issues. That may well be the easiest way to go about it, but it has consequences. One common piece of advice given in the forums has been to post on Twitter or Facebook whenever you have problems, since Customer Service doesn't act on them quickly enough, since they seem to care more about image control than the quality of their service. And reports like these only enhance that impression; now, many people are skipping CX altogether and going straight to social media for basic help when a button on the website doesn't work.

To quote the Guardian article:





Airbnb responded quite differently in 2015, when Petosky first shared her experience with them privately. “They asked me who she was but didn’t take her off the platform then. She became a super host,” Petosky said. “But now that there’s this larger conversation around Airbnb and race, so I just posted to add the trans perspective.”

I see no fault in what she did here. I don't know is she was aware that Particia's account would be removed, but so what if she did? What did Patricia do to earn this guest's silence? Patricia fell on her own sword here; she has no one to blame but herself, and rather than take some responsibility she predictably sees herself as the discrimination victim. Even has a fellow host - who would really hate to have my account deleted over a single mistake - I strongly object to the notion that Petosky was in any way wrong to speak out about her experience.



For Airbnb's part, their biggest mistake was not dealing with it last year. At least then, they might have been able to intervene in a way that satisfied both parties. But once the press comes calling, there are no good options left. If they leave the account active, it implies that they endorse the actions of the host (which made her prejudices too obvious to be defensible). Then, all the money they've spent advertising as an LGBT-inclusive company is straight down the toilet. And on top of that, Patricia's listing would be a lightning rod for negative attention - ultimately she'd have to delete it herself anyway.



A lot of ships go down over stupid mistakes. If losing a web listing is the worst consequence you have to face, you're pretty lucky. I agree, though, just as with its mass de-listings, it should communicate its policies and standards clearly so that it doesn't have to just shut down listings whenever it gets bad press.

Last Edit: Jun 7, 2016 at 7:52am by andrew

Well, then again, Airbnb has an oversupply of listings in quite a lot of locations now; they can afford to lose quite a lot of them, so there's no real incentive to keep on board the ones that generate an uproar.



Is it Airbnb's place to tell the host how to raise her child? Absolutely not. But at no point did they do so, nor did anyone ask them to. If Airbnb somehow forced a host to admit an unwanted guest to their home, that would certainly be an overreach. But they can reasonably determine that the guest's parenting style, or the way they communicate their prejudices, is incompatible with the experience they want to provide their guests in order to be part of the brand. It's not as though having an Airbnb account is a civil right or an entitlement; frankly I'd be happy if they set the bar a lot higher.



Unfortunately Airbnb has not articulated what a host should do when an inquiry makes them uncomfortable. This makes it harder for us to do the right thing.



I'm not aware of a specific law in any country that would punish accommodation providers for not declining LGBT people. Considering how hostile some countries are, I wouldn't be surprised if it's out there. But in these situations, I'd still argue that renting a room to strangers on a mainstream global platform is a bad idea. Anywhere that the host bears such significant risk and legal responsibility for their guests that they're "forced" to practice this form of discrimination is one where the business is better left to hotels that can offer some anonymity. Ultimately I don't think any company is obliged to respect values of bigotry and intolerance just to do business in certain countries, but generally they tend to do so when it is profitable.

Shadi Petosky shared on her FaceBook page that she didn't want to see the Airbnb host's account closed, that she wasn't interested in having her lose her income source.