Fighting discrimination and making travel more open to all
Project Light House
Launched in 2020, Project Lighthouse is a tool we use in the United States that helps uncover and address potential disparities in how users of different perceived races may experience Airbnb. We developed Project Lighthouse with guidance from a number of leading civil rights and privacy organisations
Using real data
We examine how guests and hosts use our platform. Statistical analyses help us find opportunities to make Airbnb more open to everyone.
Protecting privacy
We analyse trends in aggregate and don’t associate perceived race information with specific people or accounts
Our ongoing work
Making Instant Book accessible to more people
Instant Book – a feature that allows guests to book a listing without requiring hosts to approve a reservation request – is an important tool that can help reduce potential discrimination in the booking process by supporting more objective bookings. Recent changes that allow for a more holistic definition of a positive track record on Airbnb have helped increase the number of guests successfully making reservations via Instant Book.
Helping hosts respond to booking requests
New steps that help hosts respond to booking requests in a timely manner also increased the booking success rate. These changes include making pending reservation requests more prominent for hosts. This decreased the number of reservation requests that previously went unanswered, effectively increasing the number of guests who successfully book a place to stay.
Supporting hosts and guests throughout their stay
We introduced a new feature allowing hosts and guests to display their preferred names on their profiles, after confirming their legal name. We’re also improving the process for hosts or guests who report being identified by the incorrect pronoun in a review. If a host or guest expresses this concern, the pronoun is replaced with the user’s preferred name.
Our commitment to fighting discrimination
This work follows a history of working to fight discrimination including one of the first Civil Rights Audits in 2016, an additional update in 2019, the announcement of Project Lighthouse in 2020 and our 2022 initial release of Project Lighthouse data. These updates covered a range of evolving initiatives and efforts to support everyone being successful on Airbnb.
The Airbnb Community Commitment
Since 2016, we’ve asked everyone who uses Airbnb to commit to treating others with respect and without judgement or bias by agreeing to the Airbnb Community Commitment. Anyone who doesn’t agree is denied access to or removed from our platform.