New Study Shows Airbnb Hosts Have A Disturbing Bias
Rental company Airbnb is tackling racism and discrimination head-on. A recent project uncovered a difference between the booking successes of users from a range of different racial backgrounds.
All the users within the study, once they had booked their reservation, had said reservation confirmed. But the difference came from the overall booking success rate. Holidaymakers that are from a white background had a booking success rate of 94.1%. In comparison, customers from a black racial background have a lesser booking success rate of 91.4%. People from Hispanic, Latino, or Asian backgrounds had statistics that sat in the middle.
Due to these unfair statistics, Airbnb is actively searching for the cause of systematic racism in their company. They stated that there is a difference between each race, which is unacceptable and does not sit right with them.
This investigation is from a project called Project lighthouse. It was set up to investigate the core reasons Airbnb still has racial discrepancies within its service. The company has been repeatedly called out on its lack of protection for its customers of different races. Project Lighthouse was launched in partnership with a number of racial justice organizations such as Color of Change, NAACP, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
In 2016, they were involved in a lawsuit based on discriminatory action within its housing practices. This lawsuit was later dismissed. Also, in 2019, they were involved in a subsequent lawsuit from several black women claiming they had received discrimination based on their race.
Airbnb stated that their new initiative would be used to collect information to minimize racism or racial discrimination during their booking process or at any of their Airbnb host businesses.
While several changes have been taken in the last number of years to remove any chance of racial discrimination on their platform. These changes include eliminating guests’ profile pictures and adding the instant book feature; it seems it is not enough to dispel it completely. They also audit booking rejections to ensure it was a valid reason for the refusal.
While gathering information in Project Lighthouse, they uncovered another possible issue that hopefully will be quickly resolved. Within the app, guests using Airbnb can be reviewed after their stay by Airbnb hosts. Guests with a high number of reviews would be classed as trustworthy customers and receive higher numbers of booking successes. While on the outside, this doesn’t seem like any racism exists. When looking deeper, it seems like guests with white or Asian racial backgrounds have the most reviews than guests from any other race.
To eliminate this issue, Airbnb has reduced its reviewing system in the hope that it will make all Airbnb hosts more liable to complete a reduced, quicker review. This update will hopefully make an impact on the number of reviews left for guests with black or Hispanic backgrounds.
Systematic racial discrimination or abuse is something that needs to be thought about and challenged by every aspect of our communities. Someone from a black, Hispanic, or multi-racial background should not be denied a holiday or weekend away because of their heritage. Period.
