The curse may have lifted for anyone living next to an Airbnb party house.
Airbnb guests, normally quiet and respectful, can sometimes rent a neighborhood house for the purpose of throwing an all-night rave. This ends permanently starting this week.
The house-rental giant on Tuesday announced a global ban on parties, following a two-year-old temporary restriction.
This comes as a relief to neighborhoods like Mérida’s Centro Histórico, where houses share walls and empty houses are monetized by owners by the Airbnb platform. Some homes are even built with the express purpose of being an Airbnb property. That turns up the heat on quiet residential neighborhoods, which now face the YOLO crowd checking in and turning up the volume at any hour of the night. Police here do not respond to noise complaints.
The company is permanently banning “disruptive parties and events,” which include open-invite gatherings. It is still up to local lawmakers to ban short-term stays, which are more likely to be party-centered.
Five people were killed in a shooting at one of its bookings in 2019. In 2020, the company instituted a global ban on all parties as the pandemic hit.
“The temporary ban has proved effective, and today we are officially codifying the ban as our policy,” the company said in a blog post.
It’s not foolproof. Guests in remote properties will do as they wish if the owner is not nearby. If no neighbors file a complaint with Airbnb or police, the problem is also likely to persist.
Violators face a suspension or outright ban from the platform. In 2021, more than 6,600 guests were suspended from Airbnb for violating its party ban.
