When the COVID-19 pandemic closed bars and concert halls in the United States in March, a new phenomenon was born: the seasonal rental nightclub.
Professional party promoters have started scanning Airbnb, Vrbo and other short-term rental sites to find luxury mansions and condos for rent. Tickets charge $90 at Eventbrite and TikTok in the evenings with bottle and DJ service.
“People were looking to escape their own homes and came to our small community to have fun all day, every day,” said Kristen Robinson Doe, a resident of a quiet community in suburban Dallas, where a party room is rented for more than $1,000 (USA) per night.
Picture: Reuters
The five-bedroom house, with a community-like swimming pool, jacuzzi, outdoor kitchen and mini golf course, has been booked consecutively during the summer.
Doe watched with disbelief as strangers walked through the gates every weekend and danced until dawn, unmasked, intoxicated, and in flagrant violation of social est breach protocols.
Host Compliance LLC, which collects short-term rental housing information in more than a hundred U. S. cities, recorded a 250% increase in court cases from June through last month, at the same time last year.
Party organizers temporarily learned “that they can hire short-term employees, create nightclubs for one night, and make a lot of money from them,” said Ulrik Binzer, General Manager of Host Compliance, who is helping municipalities navigate house-sharing rules.
Selling home party tickets on Eventbrite and Instagram is “something that has never been noticed before,” said Binzer, who has worked in the industry for five years.
Airbnb Inc. and Vrbo of Expedia Group Inc. attempted to take strong action. Despite strict en implementation measures, corporations are suffering to restrict events. If an ad is prohibited on Airbnb, it can still be had on Vrbo and other sites, and if a host, or a guest, is blacklisted, you can hire other assets under someone else’s call.
Some pro party organizers even tell participants to gather in a public place and send them to private homes so that the situation is never published online. Partly an hour, an empty space on a residential street can be remodeled into a full-stop nightclub. .
The holiday homes existed before COVID-19. They attracted national attention last year after a fatal Halloween shooting on an Airbnb in Orinda, California, left five others dead, which led Airbnb to ban party houses and redouble their efforts to combat abusive habit through hosts and guests.
Airbnb has implemented new security policies and threat detection generation to track destructive ads. He got rid of violators from site regulations and introduced an immediate reaction team “dedicated to parties” and a hotline for neighbors.
Vrbo also has a “non-tolerance” policy and an organization charged with locating visitors who organize unauthorized parties and homeowners who knowingly authorize them.
However, a summer of COVID-19 restrictions in cities proved to be a challenge for implementation.
U. S. police began responding at the start of the season to suburban revelers terrorizing neighborhoods. Complaints included drunken revelers peeing on balconies, setting fire to hills with chimneys, and even spitting on neighbors, claiming they had COVID-19.
The Los Angeles Police Department, Hollywood Division, saw a 60% increase in radio calls connected to party houses this summer to last, Captain Steven Lurie said.
Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, the department assigns 4 officials to the houses of the police parties.
“It’s not just a matter of public unrest; we can’t let them hold mass circulation events,” he said.
In reaction to an increase in complaints, Airbnb intensified its policy in August and limited the occupancy rate to 16.
Airbnb uses an automated formula to inform potentially problematic bookings for manual examination and has been identifying and cancelling nearly 9,000 “high-risk reserves” in the US. But it’s not the first time And Canada.
Moreover, a team of 60 Airbnb agents in particular trained in the dismantling of holiday homes has suspended more than 380 classified listings since August, Airbnb spokesman Ben Breit said.
The Dallas party space is one of them. It had already been blacklisted via Airbnb in January after accumulating court cases on the nearest hotline, Breit said.
Before the end of the suspension, the space became available on the site under the call of a new asset manager: Kristin Gerst.
“What I saw when COVID hit, and all the short-term rental homeowners saw it, a pletty low-class consumer who didn’t stick to house regulations,” said Gerst, who controlled short-term rents in Dallas for 3 years and took over the assets in February.
Before the pandemic, visitors left Gerst “nice thank you notes,” he said.
Now they leave food on the floor, cigarette butts on the tables and piles of garbage. A guest even burned his e-book of space rules, which in particular said there was no party.
When other people lie about their intentions before a booking, hosts have few options for recourse, Gerst said.