Vetting your Airbnb guests

One woman, one booking, zero reviews. This is all it took for Airbnb superhost Vicky Borman to feel suspicious of the guest who had just booked her 1 bedroom cottage in a small village in England last summer. So Vicky took to social media to see what she could find out, and she found out her instincts were correct.

Investigating on social media

Borman has a wealth of experience when it comes to hosting, handling guests, and property management, so feeling uneasy about the fact that the new booking was from a guest with 0 reviews, she wanted to do some further investigation into who this person was. According to the article on cnbc.com, it didn’t take Vicky long to have her fears confirmed. A quick search for the guest on Facebook showed an advert on her profile page for a party at the heritage listed cottage that night! Vicky declined the booking immediately, but there was more to come.

Within 30 minutes of the first booking being made and declined, Vicky received another booking for the same cottage on the same night, this time by an older lady who was enquiring on behalf of her son. Seems innocent enough at first glance, but Vicky wasn’t taking any chances and she went back to Facebook to continue her investigations. Surprise surprise, the son was friends on Facebook with the first woman who was advertising the party and had tried to book already.

Airbnb guest review

Airbnb has a reciprocal review system on their online booking platform, according to their Help Centre this is because  “Reviews are critical to help build trust on Airbnb – they’re an important way for Hosts and guests to give each other feedback, help our community make informed decisions and understand what to expect.”

In the same way that a guest wants to see good reviews and social proof that a property and its host can offer them a great experience, the host also wants reassurance that guests will be respectful of the property, the neighbours and the rules.

“If someone has good reviews, I don’t feel I need to do anything other than make sure they have a pleasant stay,” said superhost Vicky Borman.

Nuisance guests around the world

The problem is not isolated to the UK of course, neither specifically to Airbnb, in fact home safety company Minût carried out a survey and shared their results in their recent May 2024 white paper. From a survey of 247 professional property managers in focus markets UK, USA, Canada, France and Germany, an alarming 43% of property managers had dealt with noise complaints from neighbours about their guests. Over 25% had even had police involvement due to noise levels and in line with Vicky Borman, 8% also routinely check social media as part of their guest vetting process when they have suspicions.

Source: Minût Research White Paper May 2024 (in cnbc.com article)

Credit card fraud

The short-term rental industry isn´t all happy holidays and five star reviews – any host or guest with a nightmare Airbnb experience will tell you that, and when it comes to credit card fraud and other scams, it certainly is not immune.

In our recent article  we covered the case of a host who is being charged thousands of euros for long distance calls made by his guest, but there are plenty of scams out there that guests all over the world are getting more savvy to.

Sebastien Long, CEO of Lodgeur which manages short-term rentals in Houston, Texas said that the biggest problem they encounter as professional property managers is the use of stolen credit cards to make bookings on the online travel agencies (OTAs). Long gave an insight into the numbers and whilst they seem small, he’s blocked about 2% of his 2,100 bookings, every declined booking counts.

Long does actually check social media as part of his vetting process but he says that “There are a lot of people who will stay a few days, then leave before the actual cardholder has a chance to dispute the credit card transaction,” he said. “One of the big things we’re looking for is whether the person who is booking is using their own credit card.”

In the past 5 years, Lodgeur´s procedures and clamp down on credit card fraud has resulted in 10 arrests in around 9000 guests. “There’s a trend of ‘digital shoplifting’ where someone will just have a weekend away on someone else’s credit card, basically petty criminals living it large,” Sebastien said.

All or nothing

Some hosts are so fed-up with troublesome guests booking their accommodation on Airbnb and other OTAs that they´ve gone a step further than social media vetting. Crystal Shell who runs short-term rental company “Bailey-Trace” in Alabama, USA doesn´t check out potential guests’ social media pages, she simply refuses to accept bookings from guests with less than a 5 star review.

For Crystal, 4 and 4.5 stars isn’t enough, it’s all or nothing for her and her business. For the average well behaved guest this might seem quite harsh but Shell says that often the guests who are scored highly but aren’t at the 5 star level are often the ones who don’t adhere to check-out rules and this is troublesome in itself.

So whilst Vicky Borman, Sebastien Long and Crystal Shell all have their own ways to try to manage and block unwanted guests getting into their properties, it is fair to say that as a property manager you should be aware of who the guest is and if they even are who they say they are. It may take a few extra minutes of your day, but it will be so worth it. As Crystal Shell says, “The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour”.