Five years hosting, and Airbnb no longer backs its hosts
Five years hosting, and Airbnb no longer backs its hosts I have hosted on Airbnb for over five years. Two experiences in the last month have completely changed how I see this platform. Earlier this summer, a long-term guest destroyed my cabin. Animal urine soaked into the basement carpet. I spent $400 trying to clean it before giving up and replacing the entire floor. Furniture was broken. Other furniture was painted. The place was left in a state I would not have believed if I had not walked into it myself. I documented all of it with photos and filed a claim, confident Airbnb would stand behind me given how heavily they market host protection. After a lengthy investigation, they dismissed the photo evidence and offered me $300. The actual damage ran into the thousands. Support was useless. Every response read like it was either AI-generated or pulled from a script. Apology after apology, and nothing behind it. The guest who caused the damage then left a retaliatory negative review, and Airbnb refused to remove that too. Then a few weeks ago, a different guest reported a hair on the sheets. There were clean sheets sitting right next to the bed. No evidence requested, no questions asked. Airbnb comped an entire night. That is the policy in a nutshell. A guest claims a hair and gets a free night. A host submits photo evidence of thousands in damage and gets $300. VRBO and Booking.com are clunkier to use, but they actually back their hosts. If you are considering hosting on Airbnb, look elsewhere. As someone who built something here early on, it is disheartening to write this.