- Airbnb recently removed several listings known to include former slave homes.
- The move comes about four months after the company received backlash for listing an 1830s slave cabin in Mississippi.
- Some travelers and experts say the company still has work to do to reduce instances of bias and discrimination.
Airbnb has removed about 30 listings from its platform that included places where slaves once lived or worked in the United States. This decision came after the backlash the company received during a early 19th century slave hut at the Belmont Plantation in Greenville, Mississippi, spotted on his site over the summer. But some say there are other bias issues on Airbnb’s platform that still need to be addressed.
Deletions coincide with Airbnb’s exit six-year update audit of the company’s progress in combating bias on its platform. According to the audit, Airbnb has denied more than 2.5 million people access to its platform for not agreeing to its anti-discrimination policy since 2016, but black and Latino travelers still have “success” rates. booking” lower than their white counterparts.
Airbnb defined its booking success rates as a measure of how often people of different perceived racial backgrounds can successfully book an Airbnb listing where the host must confirm the booking. The audit sampled 750,000 random booking requests and found that black travelers had a booking success rate of 91.4%, compared to 93.4% for Latinos and 94.1% for whites.
Airbnb says it has tried to address the disparity in its booking success rate by increasing its internal audits of booking rejections and allowing more travelers to use Instant Book, a feature that allows people to book a property without need host approval, according to the audit.
Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky said in a announcement that the company would “continue to innovate and design new products and initiatives that increase acceptance and combat bias” after the report was released. Chesky also noted that Airbnb “can’t do this job alone” and relies on feedback from its listing partners.
Asked what Airbnb’s update audit reveals about the company, Makarand Mody, an associate professor of hotel marketing at Boston University who studies Airbnb, told Insider it revealed an inherent problem. Airbnb’s peer-to-peer referral model.
For example, Mody said hotel chains like Marriott can completely control the price of their rooms and who can book them because they usually own the properties. Conversely, Airbnb relies on hosts to list their property on their platform, which is how a host’s own biases can seep into the user experience, Mody added.
“Airbnb’s product is their host’s home, and while they require hosts to accept their anti-discrimination policies and use algorithms to find people who consistently reject certain guests,” Mody explained. “Technology cannot remove implicit biases from a host.”
Tecsia Evans, a psychologist from Oakland, Calif., who is black, is a recent Airbnb guest who said she experienced discrimination in an ad.
Evans told the New York Times in December that an Airbnb host asked him to leave his New Orleans property in July 2021 for hosting a 10-person dinner party for his mother’s 75th birthday. The property Evans stayed at had a large framed map of nearby plantations, which she said was an indication of the host’s state of mind.
Laura Murphy, the former ACLU of Washington director who advises Airbnb on its anti-discrimination work, said in a statement that Airbnb has been “direct about both its progress and its challenges.”
“By sharing the key insights it learned from Project Lighthouse and how the company is putting it into practice, Airbnb is once again demonstrating its true commitment to fighting discrimination,” Murphy said.
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