Brian Chesky says he is prepared to share information on violent listings with rival short-term rental providers in order to help protect users from the dangers of having to deal with dangerous listings.
In an interview on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday, Chesky said Airbnb had already liaised with other platforms about party house listings, but that the companies could easily go further to include properties they deemed dangerous.
If implemented, such cooperation would see Airbnb, Expedia Group Inc.'s Vrbo and other rental companies disclose information on properties they have banned after violent crimes have occurred there, to prevent the listing from popping up on another website.
Chesky said anything we can do to be able to help people feel like Airbnb is a safe community, is something the company wants to prioritize, in the interview.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported a series of stories about bizarre crimes inside Airbnb properties, including the violent death of Lauren Kassirer. The 35 - year-old high school teacher was found naked, bruised and unconscious inside an Airbnb property on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico in 2018. After Kassirer's death, Airbnb permanently banned the villa she had rented and its host from listing in Airbnb. However, Airbnb didn t inform other short-term rental providers about the listing and it was only after the story had been published that Expedia became aware of what happened and removed the listing from its platform.
Safety is most important to, and therefore if that means broadening the scope of information we share with others, we will look into those opportunities, an Expedia spokesman said.
After COVID-19 closed in June, the two rivals agreed to share information on repeated party house offenders after offering bars and nightclubs. Promoters booked homes on the platforms to host events with live DJs and bottles service. The parties francoised neighbors, caused the virus and in some cases resulted in fatal shootings. The companies launched a Community Integrity Program to prevent repeat offenders who are delisted on one platform from just shifting to another. One platform alone can not solve this problem, the companies said at the time. It requires industry-wide effort. Chesky also spoke about the future of travel in the interview and said the flexibility of remote work that employees enjoy now is changing how trips will look in the next few years.
This is the worst technology that we have ever seen in our lifetime — it will only continue to improve, he said. If the two-day rental period ends on Friday, then Chesky expects that residential stays will become common and rentals will get longer. About half of the bookings of Airbnb are for more than a week, one-fifth for a month or longer, he said. Despite topping Wall Street analysts estimates for second-quarter bookings, the company said in August that third quarter booking will fall short of 2019 levels as the Delta variant weighs on wary travelers.
Even with virus concerns, Chesky sees travel, living and working merging together, ultimately giving employees more autonomy.
Why travel won t go back to the way it was is because the world isn't going back to the way it was, he said. How would some people live in one place, work in another and travel to a third place. All those places are now one place, and that place can be where we want.