Airbnb cracks down on partying ahead of Memorial Day weekend in SWFL

With Memorial Day just days away, a lot of people are planning to travel to Southwest Florida. But Airbnb may not be an option for many, as the company is cracking down with new regulations to prevent parties.

People with no history of positive reviews will not be able to book a short one- or two-night stay, and that includes first-time bookers. This is the first time the rule will apply to Memorial Day weekend. It went into effect in time for the Fourth of July in 2021 and was so successful the company decided to extend it; around 1,000 customers were refused service.

“We’re not saying that all 1,000 of those people were party animals who are going to throw a big rager, right?” said Ben Breit, director of trust and safety communications at Airbnb. “We hope that we stopped a lot of parties in the process. It was a quiet weekend. That’s what we wanted. That’s what we want again.”

Airbnb tells WINK News the vast majority of Floridian hosts already prohibit parties by their own house rules because they respect their neighbors and don’t want the risk of property damage. Still, every year complaints are heard from neighbors about party houses, so they are still happening.

“We do acknowledge that this impacts people who do not have malicious intent,” Breit said. “And right now that’s the trade-off we’re making; we always want to make these systems as precise as possible, so that the people who do not have those intentions are not impacted or impacted on a smaller scale. But, you know, we’re optimizing for trust and safety and for supporting hosts and for supporting neighbors, too.”

There are no restrictions if you are booking a longer stay. Airbnb says it doesn’t usually see unauthorized parties during longer-term reservations.