The popular home rental platform Airbnb is using artificial intelligence (AI) as part of its efforts to prevent party ban violations this Halloween.
Airbnb first introduced a temporary party ban in 2020 that became permanent last year. Though the company began restricting parties before the coronavirus pandemic, the company said the spike in parties at home rentals during COVID-19 lockdowns contributed to its decision to implement a policy change. The shift has resulted in a reported 55 percent year-over-two-year drop in party alerts at Airbnb properties around the world.
Some people who book Airbnb rentals still try to throw parties anyway. These concerns tend to rise during holiday weekends like this one, when people are gathering to celebrate with friends.
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Earlier this week, Airbnb announced it is using an “AI-driven anti-party system” in the U.S. and Canada to flag rental bookings with indicators suggesting Halloween party planning may be afoot. One indicator is one- or two-night bookings. Ahead of Halloween, there are restrictions in place for short-term rentals like these that are “potentially higher-risk for a party incident,” Airbnb said in an October 24 press release.
Airbnb Head of Trust and Safety Naba Banerjee said during a Thursday webinar that the AI system the company is using for this and other holiday weekends looks at “hundreds” of factors that could indicate party planning may be in the mix. These include the length of the booking, the distance between where the person booking the rental lives and where the rental is located, and how far in advance the booking is made.
Airbnb has been using AI tools for a while, Banerjee said. The specific system focused on party prevention was used last Halloween, during New Year’s Eve 2022, and earlier this year for Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. The system has “proven to be an integral tool to help reduce the risk of disruptive parties,” Banerjee said.
In addition to assessing party risk factors, Airbnb also requires people who book rentals to sign an anti-party pledge and face the risk of being suspended or removed from the platform if they break their word.
The AI system helped the company identify thousands of suspected party-related bookings. California, Florida and Texas were among the top U.S. states where the AI system flagged Halloween party risks last year, with about 15,500 people blocked from booking a full home in California, 11,300 people blocked from doing the same in Florida and another 11,000 blocked in Texas. In Canada, about 7,000 people in Ontario were prevented from booking a full home listing due to Halloween 2022 party risks, an Airbnb spokesperson told Newsweek. About 3,000 others were prevented from doing the same in Quebec, and 2,000 more were blocked from rentals in British Columbia, the spokesperson said.
Airbnb isn’t the only home rental company using new technology to weed out concerning bookings. Earlier this year, Vrbo announced shortly before Super Bowl weekend that it also had begun using new technology to identify and block hundreds of bookings that it suspected would have been used for “potentially disruptive parties.” These preventative efforts can be financially beneficial, with Vrbo estimating its efforts saved hosts $2.5 million in damages over the first year the technology was tested.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.