Why sex workers like me use Airbnb f lats all over the country to meet our clients
PROSTITUTES are increasingly using Airbnb properties as ‘pop-up brothels’ because they are more discreet and secure than working out of hotels and brothels.
Sex worker Charlotte Rose told The Mail on Sunday that she and other prostitutes use the website because traditional brothels are being closed down by police.
She said: ‘I have stayed in Airbnbs all over the country for work. It’s perfect because I can check out the place before I book it. I prefer blocks of flats with a gated entrance with a video camera intercom.
‘It’s about my safety because I am vulnerable on my own. When I go to a new town that I’ve never been to before I always use Airbnb.’
Ms Rose, 36, who charges £160 an hour and won ‘Sex Worker of the Year’ at t he Sexual Freedom Awards in 2013, said she turned to Airbnb around three years ago.
She said: ‘It’s ideal because you don’t have to pay a deposit or a month’s rent up front, you can just spend a few days somewhere and move on.
‘ I don’t like the term pop- up brothel because that implies there is more than one girl working there, which is illegal.
‘I don’t see what I do as being any different from couples who book Airbnbs for a weekend of sex with swinging couples.
‘I think as long as the sex workers clean up and do not bother other people, they should be allowed to get on with it.’
Westminister council says it has received reports of sex workers using flats in one of its mansion blocks at Park West, near Hyde Park in Central London.
Airbnb says it has a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards prostitution. But its website is full of complaints from customers and hosts who say flats and rooms have been abused by sex workers. One Canadian tourist visiting London told of a hellish ordeal staying in an Airbnb house with two sex workers who were visited by ‘ approximately 10- 15 guys per night’.
He wrote: ‘Men kept coming to them and the female was wearing a shower gown all night. So we couldn’t really have a proper sleep by these women and several male’s sexual talk and the smell of cigarettes.’
A woman from Gloucestershire, who had booked a ‘cosy flat in the heart of Soho’ through Airbnb, received an unwelcome 7.30am knock at the door from a man asking if it was a brothel. She said: ‘This worried us very much as we were just a bunch of young girls in London to watch the new Harry Potter play.’
One landlord from Bridgend in South Wales wrote on an Airbnb internet forum he had ‘already had a few escort bookings’ but had only