Expect any house parties you’ll be planning on an Airbnb rental to be disallowed for the meantime.
The global community of hosts and travelers Airbnb announced on Thursday (August 20) that it will be implementing a global ban on all parties and events on its Airbnb listings.
An occupancy cap of 16 people, primarily relevant in larger homes and properties, will also be implemented in all of the listings of the San Francisco-based company.
The global party ban applies to all future bookings on Airbnb and will remain in effect indefinitely under further notice, the tech startup said.
According to Airbnb, every guest making a booking will be informed about party rules and informed that they may be legally pursued and banned from the community by Airbnb if they violate the policy.
The vacation and travel tech startup which currently has 150 million users worldwide with over 2 million people staying in their property listings overnight is now valued at over $35 billion based on recent stock sales.
Covid-19 pandemic pushed Airbnb to update policies
According to Airbnb’s statement, when the pandemic was declared, and social distancing became an important element in promoting public health and responsible travel, they had to update their policies.
Despite already reporting only $335 million in revenues or a steep 67% decrease in profits for the quarter ending June 30, the company said it is in the best interest of public health that they impose the new party ban policy.
“We started by removing both the “event-friendly” search filter from our platform as well as “parties and events allowed” House Rules from any event-friendly listings,” the tech startup said.
The company also introduced a new policy requiring all users to adhere to local COVID-19 public health mandates.
Even before Covid-19, unauthorized parties have always been prohibited in Airbnb listings, with 73 percent of the company’s 7 million listings already banning the conduct of events such as parties in their house rules.
Last year, the company also rolled out stricter limits by removing so-called “party houses” or listings that are often reported as persistent neighborhood nuisance. They also introduced new initiatives to ban unauthorized parties by conducting a manual review of high-risk reservations as well as restrictions on allowing guests under 25 years old without a history of positive reviews to book home listings.
Bookings start to recover, stock market debut still planned
While the company reported huge losses in the first half of 2020 due to the pandemic, it has already reported that for the first time since March, guest bookings have already reached 1 million in a day last July 8.
Early signs of recovery last July 8 were guests bookings in over 175 different countries with nights booked skewed toward domestic travel.
According to Airbnb, most guests have not been traveling far with half of these nights booked for travel to destinations within 300 miles. Over two-thirds of bookings were also for travel to destinations within 500 miles which are all manageable for travel by car.
In rural areas in the US, the company reported that hosts earned over $200 million in June, an increase of more than 25 percent over what hosts in these areas earned in June 2019.
The hugely anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO) of the short-term rental startup was initially scheduled on March 31 by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky but had to be placed on hold after the pandemic.
In April, the company raised over $2 billion from investors only valuing the company at $18 billion. This was well below the initial $26 billion valuations Airbnb cited as an internal valuation in early March reflecting the huge impact of the pandemic on the business.
The company also reported a 25% staff reduction in May due to a worldwide dip in recorded travels.
But it seems that the company’s stock market entry is back on the table. The BBC reported it has filed confidential registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission potentially drawing one of the biggest share sales of 2020.
Most of the analysts, however, expect the IPO to be rescheduled in the fourth quarter of 2020 in a report by Bloomberg as a boost in global domestic travel has helped the firm recover its revenues lost during the pandemic.
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