Airbnb, the online marketplace for sharing homes and other accommodations, has responded to this past weekend’s wild party in Wellesley at one of its rentals by suspending the host and listing while it investigates and banning the guest who threw the rager.
After we broke the news this week (See: “Party off: Wellesley neighbors outraged by Airbnb ‘dance club'”), other media outlets including the Boston Globe and TV news followed up on the story. One TV station got ahold of the woman who owns the Shaw Road house in question, and she told the reporter that she was stunned on Sunday to find out what happened on Saturday night after an angry neighbor approached her.
Neighbors spoke up at the Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday, pleading with town officials to take action. They weren’t necessarily asking for curbs on people using Airbnb to make extra cash by renting out rooms or homes temporarily, but wanted to make sure that temporary tenants wouldn’t disrupt neighborhoods. Wellesley officials previously have said they’ve had few problems with house sharing.
Airbnb, defending its name, issued a statement regarding the Wellesley incident:
This host and listing have been suspended while we investigate this incident and the guest who booked this reservation has been permanently banned from our platform. Hosting is a serious responsibility and those who fail to meet our community standards will be removed from the Airbnb community. We apologize to the residents of Wellesley for this disturbance.
The overwhelming majority of Airbnb hosts and guests are good neighbors and respectful travelers, but when issues happen, we work to make things right. We want to do everything we can to help our hosts be good neighbors in the places they call home. To achieve that, we have a resource for neighbors of Airbnb hosts. Anyone can go to airbnb.com/neighbors to share specific concerns they might have about a listing in their community.
Those $100/night rate currently on Airbnb are for single rooms in an otherwise occupied home (one is for a small studio). The $75/night rate for that house is astoundingly low and as a regular Airbnb user it would scream either that it is a scam, a dump or intended as a party place. Perhaps this owner was naive but I find it odd that she would put such a low number on her home without considering the going rate for a full-sized house.