The mansion “The Godfather” goes on Airbnb
The Staten Island home that was featured in The Godfather is on Airbnb for August.
Airbnb is testing a new tool to weed out ‘bad actors’ who rent out homes to organize large unauthorized parties: an anti-party algorithm to identify and prevent “high-risk reservations”.
The San FranciscoThe New York-based vacation rental company announced the new technology this week, two months after making permanent a policy banning parties in rentals.
Airbnb started cracking down on parties in 2019 after a fatal shooting at a party in a house in California. At that time, it banned holiday advertising in Airbnb locations on social media. The company temporarily banned parties in 2020 during the pandemic as people moved gatherings from bars and clubs to rented homes.
When Airbnb made the party ban permanent in June, he said parties at listed properties were down 44% from a year ago. More than 6,600 guests were suspended last year for related violations, Airbnb said.
The “anti-party technology” tested in the WE and Canada examines factors such as positive review history, length of stay of guest on Airbnb, length of trip, distance to listing, and weekend vs. weekday, among others.
In this photo illustration the Airbnb app displayed on a smartphone screen with the Airbnb website displayed on a laptop computer in the background. (Photo Illustration by Thiago Prudencio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“The primary goal is to attempt to reduce the ability of bad actors to host unauthorized parties that negatively impact our guests, neighbors and the communities we serve,” the company said in a press release. “While we are optimistic that this technology will have a positive impact on the safety of our community and our goal of reducing unauthorized parties, we want to be clear that no system is perfect.”
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Airbnb users who are denied a reservation due to the system will be offered a private room, “where the host is more likely to be physically on site,” or a hotel room through Airbnb. The updated policy also removes the 16-person occupancy cap in response to feedback from hosts who say they can comfortably accommodate more than 16 people.
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Airbnb piloted a similar system in Australia in October 2021. Since then, they have seen a 35% decrease in unauthorized parties, the company said.
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