AirBnB spends millions of dollars hiding thefts, rapes and even traces of murders in the apartments it rents

How safe is Airbnb? Although the company’s advertising strives to enhance security for both hosts and guests, a recent study published by Bloomberg points out that it’s really not so much.

In the reporter’s report Olivia carville, we tell how the company has a whole division specializing in crisis management, something that is not strange in the business world, but which has the particularity of being treated in the greatest secrecy . A “black box” or a “secret service”, as described by more than 45 sources who, under the promise of anonymity, spoke with the journalist.

“This team is made up of around 100 agents in Dublin, Montreal, Singapore and other cities. Some have military training or emergency services. Team members have the autonomy to spend whatever is necessary to make the victim feel supported, including paying for flights, accommodation, food, counseling, health costs and screening for illnesses sexually transmitted for rape victims ”, you will you in the article.

Among the “incidents” which occur more frequently than one might imagine, there is theft, physical violence, rape, child abuse, use of rented properties for illegal activities and even cases where guests have reported the discovery of dismembered human limbs on the properties.

To all of this the company responds with the “money cannon” approach, as a former Airbnb “secret service” agent put it. That is to say, paying victims large sums of money to sign confidentiality agreements that prevent them from suing the business, talking about what happened to the press or authorities, or making subsequent demands for money.

There has been little money fired by this “cannon”, according to Carville research in recent years Airbnb spent an average of $ 50 million on payments to hosts and guests, including legal settlements and damage to homes. And although the company says most of these payments relate to property damage, what the quoted testimony indicates is that agreements involving other types of incidents, where there is violence or abuse of all kinds, are quite common.

To avoid media scandals, the crisis unit relocated customers to hotel rooms for 10 times the price of their reservation, he has paid vacations around the world and even wrote checks for dog counseling sessions.

One of the most frightening incidents described in the investigation occurred on New Years Eve 2015 in New York City, when a young woman was raped in one of the apartments she was renting with her group of friends.

The apartment was on the first floor on West 37th Street, a few blocks south of Times Square, and was so popular with tourists that their keys were left on the counter of a nearby warehouse for Airbnb tenants to retrieve.

From there they were taken by the 29-year-old Australian and her group of friends, when they came to Manhattan for the end of the year.

After midnight, the woman left her friends at the bar where they had been partying and returned to the apartment on her own. She didn’t notice anything strange, but there was a man crouching in the shadows as she made her way to the bathroom. When she noticed it, she already had a knife blade pointed at her. The stranger grabbed her, pushed her onto a bed, and raped her.

The perpetrator fled with his phone, but managed to communicate with his friends using an iPad, and they ran down the street to find a police officer. The police were already in the apartment an hour later when the man returned and looked out the door.. They grabbed him and emptied his backpack, taking out three offending objects: a knife, one of the woman’s earrings and a set of spoke keys.

The key ring was a real problem for AirBnB because there is no clear policy that states the security of an apartment with keys left in a neighboring unit, a fairly common practice within the rig.

Another problem was the fact that the victim had not directly rented the apartment, which implied that he had not accepted the terms and conditions signed by those who register for the platform, a long collection of more than 10,000 words among which the legal claims for injuries or stress resulting from a stays are prohibited and requires confidential arbitration in the event of a dispute.

The case of the raped young woman in New York City was settled with a financial settlement of $ 7 million, one of the largest payments the company has made. It also included a confidentiality agreement that prevents the victim from speaking out about what happened.

According to former security officers named in the survey, the company handles thousands of sexual assault complaints a year, many of which relate to rape. However, there has only been one case against Airbnb that has gone to court in the United States. The vast majority are resolved with financial arrangements and confidentiality agreements.

Based on Airbnb’s responses to Bloomberg, less than 0.1% of their rental units had security issues, a figure that stands out is extremely low. However, it is questionable whether this is really a low number given that every year, more than 200 million reservations are made through the platform.

“We all know you can’t stop it all, but it’s about how you react, and when it happens you have to fix it, and that’s what we try to do every time.”said Tara Bunch, director of global operations at Airbnb.

“People are naturally unpredictable, and as we can, very bad things happen from time to time.“, He added.

The pandemic was another event that put AirBnB in difficulty, not only because in the first few months and because of the strong containments imposed across the world, as well as the restriction of air traffic and travel in general, the company has been hit hard by the suspension of more than 80% of hotel reservations worldwide.

But because the restrictions were relaxed, the security “secret service” began to have a new job: the increase in the number of rentals of houses to celebrate underground festivals.

Founded in 2008 by design students Chesky and Joe Gebbia, along with engineer Nate Blecharczyk, AirBnB has grown from an alternative for backpack travelers looking for a sofa for the night, to one of the most major hotel companies in the world, with 5.6 million listings, more than the number of rooms in the seven major hotel chains combined. Its market value is $ 90 billion.

Their multi-million dollar investments to keep your image as a safe option For millions of travelers around the world, despite the terrifying cases that have arisen among users of the platform, it has a lot to do with this success.

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