Airbnb plans crackdown on New Years Eve house parties in Atlanta

ATLANTA - With New Year’s Eve just days away, Airbnb is issuing a warning to would-be partygoers in metro Atlanta: no house parties allowed. 

The short-term rental platform announced it will use its anti-party technology to identify and block high-risk bookings before they even happen.

"Parties are not behavior that we want to see on our platform," Jackie McGraw, an Airbnb spokesperson, said.

The anti-party technology, which employs machine learning, analyzes several factors to flag potentially problematic reservations, she said.

"It’s scanning hundreds of signals to identify reservations deemed at higher risk," McGraw explained.

The system looks at various criteria, including the type of listing, the duration of the stay, the distance from the guest’s location, and whether the booking was made at the last minute.

Airbnb banned house parties on its platform in 2020, and since then, the company says incidents have significantly decreased. Last New Year’s Eve in Atlanta, similar measures were implemented with notable success.

"Over the New Year’s Eve holiday, this technology helped deter approximately 730 reservations in Atlanta itself," McGraw said. "Across the state of Georgia, it deterred approximately 1,800 reservations."

If a booking is flagged as high-risk, Airbnb will take action to prevent potential parties.

"If it does identify a reservation as potentially higher risk, that reservation will be blocked, or the guests will be referred to an alternative accommodation," McGraw said.

For those who manage to bypass the system and throw a party at an Airbnb property anyway, the consequences are severe.

"It can result in the removal or suspension of both the host and the guest," McGraw noted.

For guests whose bookings are mistakenly flagged, Airbnb offers a solution: they may be required to sign an anti-party attestation, a contract pledging not to host a party.