But I think one thing that would be useful in this context would be to help 'out' the bad players. Children will be children, but we need to be able to work with the system to identify and neutralize people who are abusive. That saves further grief down the line.
I can't cancel his booking without being severely penalized by Airbnb. (Later, I found out I could have contacted Airbnb's host support and they would have cancelled it without a penalty since he broke the guidelines, but at the time I did not know that.)
His daughter turned out to be someone who (I am really trying to be polite here since this is a public forum) should not be living on her own. She was not...OK. After one really crazy incident, the next morning, I called her dad on the phone and explained the situation. They agreed to cut the booking short, and I ended up having to refund them their "unused" nights.
I straight up asked him, as politely as I could, "I don't mean to pry...but what's going on with your daughter?" His reply: "Well, she's never been diagnosed with anything..."
If I wouldn't have already had other people booked on the Airbnb for later dates, I would have taken down the listing after that experience. It was a nightmare. My roommate had to clean up the room, and that was a nightmare too. We were all pretty over it at that point.
It's just like any community online, really. Airbnb started out as a tight-knit, mostly Bay-Area-techie demographic. As a host in Austin, where many techies visit, do job interviews, or hang out for a few weeks, I enjoyed meeting interesting people who were in the same (or similar) community as I was--startups/entrepreneurs. I met people who had shared connections with me on Facebook and people who became good friends.
Fortunately for Airbnb's valuation, but unfortunately for hosts, the demographic has dramatically changed over the past few months to a year. With Airbnb becoming a "household name" of sorts, with a multi-billion-dollar valuation, people have started booking on Airbnb who are not of the caliber (to put it nicely) of the original close-knit community that made the site so neat.
I get it. Communities, as they grow and become mainstream, tend to attract more not-so-great people. It's inevitable. It's just, as a host, it stinks. Airbnb is going to have to get even better with quality control. (One step, as I've made clear in emails to their support team, is to get really firm on their guideline of not letting people book for other people. It is a trust and safety issue--the person booking the Airbnb should be the person staying in the house, PERIOD.)
I wrote more about my personal experience a few weeks ago on Facebook [1]. I didn't mention some of the particular bad experiences we've had with guests in the post, because I don't want to embarrass anyone publicly, but let's just say...we have had some really negative, uncomfortable experiences with multiple guests in the past couple months. That's after having over 100 positive experiences, but the percentage of positive vs. negative experiences has taken a dramatic negative turn lately.
My experiences are not as horrific as the above article--probably in part because we are here when we rent out our master bedroom. However, this definitely is a trend/issue that Airbnb is going to continue to struggle with. I hope their customer service team takes these incidents seriously and continues to make it safer for hosts and guests of the service.
[1]: https://www.facebook.com/ericabiz/posts/10152926663453305