In a major win for travellers, we revealed last week that Airbnb had changed its rules, banning hosts from asking guests to complete chores like stripping the bed linens or washing up dishes before check out.
The response from guests has been overwhelmingly positive, with many social media users sharing photos of long check-out task lists from previous stays.
The response from hosts has been… not quite so positive. At all.
Some Airbnb hosts are even calling for a boycott of the platform timed for when the ban on check-out chores comes into effect on 20 November.
Check out some of the reactions below:
On the flip side, a number of Airbnb hosts are in favour of the changes, saying it punishes “bad hosts” who give the entire platform a bad name.
One of the top posts on the Airbnb Hosts subreddit notes the new rules mean “nothing” to the average host, because most of them “don’t require or ask significant effort from our guests”.
Here are some of the more reasonable reactions from those affected:
What are the new rules?
In case you missed it, Airbnb has said that guests can no longer be asked to do things that require “significant effort or time, or would typically be performed by a cleaner”.
As an example, guests can’t be asked to wash up dishes, but they can be asked to leave them in the sink.
In a statement shared with Euronews Travel, Airbnb said: “House rules help guests understand what hosts expect, but we’ve heard from our community that they can be confusing, onerous and hard to manage.
“So we’ve redesigned them to make them easier to discover and clearer to set, alongside a new policy that keeps requests reasonable, with no surprises.”
We think the debate is best summed up by Patrick Vlaskovits: