The Airbnb logo is seen on a little mini pyramid under the glass Pyramid of the Louvre museum in Paris, France, March 12, 2019.
Charles Platiau | Reuters
Come Spring 2023, Airbnb will require all users booking reservations on its platform to verify their identity to book a reservation, further expanding a program that asks for credentials like a photo of a valid government-issued ID or a legal name and address.
Tara Bunch, global head of operations at Airbnb, said that while 80% of the rental platform’s bookings already feature identity verification as something hosts can request, the company is taking this additional step.
“It’s not so much that people that were booking listings were representing themselves as not being who they are,” Bunch said. “When you take away the anonymity of not being identify verified, I think it opens up the perception that people could behave badly and not be held accountable, and by definition, tends to cause people to behave a little bit better because they know they will be held accountable for bad actions.”
The move puts Airbnb more in line with traditional hotels, where front desk workers request to see some form of identification from a guest prior to check-in. Most other vacation rental platforms, like Expedia Group‘s Vrbo, don’t require identification verification but do allow guests or hosts on the platform to submit their information.
Airbnb has made efforts in the past to curb bad behavior. Amid the Covid-19 outbreak, the company placed a temporary ban on house parties citing health concerns. It made that ban permanent in June, as well as banning party-house-type situations, where people would book large houses for a single night. It also rolled out several enhanced safety features following a shooting that killed five people at one of its bookings in 2019.
Bunch said as the company looked to implement these features, it leaned on machine learning to help identify potential issues. In the case of stopping house parties,…
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