(Bloomberg) — Airbnb Inc. has released findings from its anti-discrimination efforts over the past few years, exposing a gap in how customers perceived to be black are approved for short-term bookings on its platform by compared to their white counterparts.
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The research includes data from the company’s Project Lighthouse, an initiative undertaken in 2020 in partnership with Color of Change, the online racial justice organization. Airbnb found that guests perceived as black had an acceptance rate of 91.4% for bookings made in 2021, while those perceived as white had an acceptance rate of 94.1%. Customers perceived as Asian and Latino or Hispanic had success rates of 93.4%. Rates are based on a random sample of 750,000 reservation requests. The study determined guests’ perceived race using a first name and profile picture.
San Francisco-based Airbnb has worked to combat reservation bias for years, making changes in 2018 to allow hosts to see a guest’s profile picture only after accepting a reservation. Since then, Airbnb has rolled out new features to combat bias and make the platform more welcoming, as it expects new hosts to come online as the economy softens.
“This is definitely a continuation of the journey we’ve been on for the past six years,” said Janaye Ingram, director of programs and community partner engagement at Airbnb. “We have a saying -” you can’t fix what you can’t measure. “”
In 2016, Airbnb undertook a civil rights audit of the platform, led by former American Civil Liberties Union attorney Laura Murphy. The resulting 32-page report details changes the company asked members to follow to eradicate racial discrimination, including an “open house” policy that required Airbnb to accommodate any guest who reports discrimination and to extending an option called “Instant Booking”, which makes a guest house available upon booking, without the host having to give consent to the tenant first. The company followed up with a review in 2019 and launched Project Lighthouse a year later. The majority of bookings analyzed by Project Lighthouse were instant bookings, which Airbnb says “facilitates more objective bookings.” Hosts can make Instant Book available to travelers who meet certain conditions, such as having at least one review and previous positive reviews. However, the report found that customers perceived as Black or Latino had lower use of Instant Book, largely because many lack a review history or are first-time users.
Deleting profile photos at the start of the booking “turned out not to be as big of a dent” as expected, Murphy said.
Airbnb is exploring what changes it can make to host and guest profiles to highlight information that could foster a better connection” between the two and close the gap in booking success between perceived races.
To help make the booking process fairer, Airbnb is looking to make more people eligible for instant bookings, including allowing people with verified identities and good track records to qualify, even if they don’t have a booking. previous reviews. The company estimates the changes will make 5 million people qualified for the service. From next year, co-travelers will inherit reviews from the customer who made the booking, which will help build their balance sheet.
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