Airbnb offering cleaning protocol
Recommends 24 hours between rental dates
Airbnb is about to go on a cleaning binge.
The home-sharing service, under pressure from the coronavirus crisis, said Monday that it is establishing a new recommended “cleaning protocol” with the goal of reassuring both rental property hosts and their guests.
Airbnb said in a statement that the optional protocol will offer guidance on the best and safest practices for cleansing a residence’s various rooms. It will include a manual more than 40 pages long establishing the standards, as well as specifying particular chemicals and other products to do the job.
The protocol, for those hosts who choose to opt in, will also require a minimum 24 hours between rentals to reduce the chance a guest might encounter any residual viruses. Potential guests will be able to see whether hosts have opted in.
A top company official said Airbnb knows from surveys that cleanliness is a high priority with guests.
“It was clear they wanted to know what you were doing to make sure the place itself would be clean,” said Chris Lehane, a senior vice president, in an interview.
For hosts, the guidelines will offer recommendations for personal protective equipment, like masks and gloves, while cleaning.
The travel industry has started to take notice of the need to offer reassurances about cleaning. Last week, Marriott International said it will adopt its own enhanced standards, including spraying hotel rooms with disinfectant after every guest stay.
Airbnb’s new global protocols being issued early next month come at a difficult time. Travel has dropped sharply worldwide. While the privately held Airbnb hasn’t disclosed the impact on its business, U.S. hotels had only 23.4% of their rooms occupied between April 14 and April 20, a decline of 64.4% compared to the same week a year ago, data analytical firm STR reported last week. To help it through the downturn, Airbnb announced loans and investments totaling $2 billion earlier this month.
In the face of the pandemic, Airbnb has already encountered flak from both hosts and customers as it has tried to navigate the new era. In March, Airbnb was criticized by guests who felt they were being left out on a limb by unclear cancellation policies. Then, when Airbnb established policies, it apologized to hosts who felt it was unfair that they would have to foot refunds because of cancellations. Airbnb ended up establishing a $250 million fund to cover hosts’ refund costs.
The new cleaning protocols are only a first step, Lehane said, in what could be a longer process. The standards are intended as an enhancement of a system in which guests simply ranked cleanliness of accommodations on a 1 to 5 scale. The expectation, he added, was that most travelers would steer clear of places with lower rankings.
For hosts, the guidelines will offer recommendations for personal protective equipment, like masks and gloves, while cleaning. In addition to rentals spaced out by a minimum of 24 hours for hosts that have opted in to the cleaning protocols, Lehane said hosts will have the option of an online feature that automatically prevents bookings less than 72 hours apart for an extra measure of safety.
San Francisco-based Airbnb, in a statement, said the protocols were compiled based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and in consultation with Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. surgeon general from 2014 to 2017.