Airbnb says it will verify all 7 million of its listings after California 'party-house' shooting

Airbnb CEO.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

11-year-old Airbnb is finally growing up.

During a conference on Wednesday, CEO Brian Chesky announced the company's plans to verify all 7 million of its listings to give customers "peace of mind," The New York Times reports.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In a company-wide email, Chesky said "trust is the real energy that drives Airbnb" and pledged to "do everything possible," including launching a new 24/7 Neighbor Hotline, and manually screening suspicious "high-risk reservations." And according to Reuters, the company banned unauthorized "party-houses" altogether earlier this week.

On the other hand, the Airbnb CEO also tweeted the short-term rental giant's new plans to ensure that all its listings are advertised accurately, and fully refund customers if listings were inaccurate, after a recent Vice News investigation uncovered a "nationwide web of deception."

Despite the sweeping safety measures, Chesky did still mention that "two million people a night stay in Airbnbs," and so "it's hard to prevent every bad thing happening," the Times notes.

Ramisa Rob is a web intern at The Week. She is also an investigative reporting fellow at Brian Ross Investigates, and has previously worked for the The Daily Star. A recent graduate of the University of Michigan, she is currently pursuing her Masters at NYU Tisch.