Christopher Nulty, an Airbnb spokesman, said the company is combating the party houses with “robust new policies, products and technologies to stop large gatherings, which far exceeds measures taken by others.” He said Airbnb has made changes even though the moves “knowingly impacted growth and nights booked.”
Airbnb began rolling out new rules against party houses around the same time that it was preparing to file to go public. In July, it said guests under the age of 25 with less than three positive reviews on the site could not book entire homes near where they live. In August, the same month it filed for a public listing, it placed a 16-person cap on reservations, banned parties and sued guests who were responsible for the events.
Last month, it started testing technology to block suspicious last-minute bookings and suspended some party houses from its listings. And ahead of Halloween — the one-year anniversary of the shooting at the Airbnb in Orinda, Calif. — it banned one-night rentals on Halloween.
Some said the measures were too little, too late.
“The damage has really been done to the neighborhoods during that time,” said Austin Mao, an Airbnb host in Las Vegas. He said the costs of repairing damages from parties at his properties, which host as many as 2,000 guests a month, have been tremendous. Neighbors complained so much about parties over the summer that he converted a third of the listings to long-term rentals.
In 2016, Christopher Thorpe, an entrepreneur in Lincoln, Mass., said he faced $28,000 in damages after an Airbnb guest threw an 80-person rave, complete with ticket sales, at his home. Mr. Thorpe later learned that other hosts had reported that guest for parties, but Airbnb had not removed the renter from the platform.