Tips For Making Your Airbnb Stay Safer
Booking an Airbnb can be a great alternative to a hotel room. Depending on your travel style, you might use it to find a better bargain, rent out an entire cabin with your friends, or arrange a stay with a local host who can tell you exactly where to try the best food in town. However, there are also safety concerns to consider regarding Airbnb.
Airbnb listings are less regulated and may have fewer security and safety features than your average hotel. While the people renting out their homes all have to have background checks run on them, that doesn't mean that there aren't scams. If you don't take precautions, there's a risk that you might show up ready for a fantastic stay and find that the place you're checking into looks very different than you expected — or even isn't there!
Fortunately, there are ways to ensure that the home you've chosen is as advertised and steps you can take if you find something wrong. Airbnb protects renters through Aircover, which guarantees that if you've been misled, it will find you a new place to stay or partially refund you. It also offers a 24/7 safety line that can connect you to local emergency services if you have an emergency during your stay. But how can you prevent a crisis before it happens?
Pay attention to reviews and ratings
One of the aspects that makes booking an Airbnb feel risky is that you only have a few photos and reviews to go by when deciding which rental is comfortable, worth the money, and, most importantly, safe. However, even a short listing can reveal much about the rental if you know what to look for. What is the best tool in your toolbox? Reviews.
While many details about an Airbnb listing can be fraudulent, reviews are pretty reliable. As explained by one Airbnb host on Reddit, it is theoretically possible for a host to book their rental with a friend's account and leave themselves a glowing review, but the fake account would still have to pay for the listing, including Airbnb's cut. While a brand new listing with a single 5-star review could potentially be fake, repeatedly booking your own Airbnb would be costly and probably not worth it. Airbnb also screens for this, so if a listing has been up for a while and has consistently positive reviews, it's very likely safe to book.
While it might limit your ability to search for budget options, the absolute safest choice is to filter your search to just "guest favorites," which shows that the rental is among the most popular on the platform. When you click on a particular listing's "guest favorite" badge, you can see how people rated it on a scale of 1-5 in various categories, including how accurate the listing is.
Vet listings for common scams
You're scrolling through Airbnb, and you spot the perfect place for your vacation: beautiful photos, close to the beach, great price, and you can even bring your dog. But is it too good to be true? Maybe! In some scams, the listing misrepresents the actual property, which may be far less comfortable and missing vital safety features that it was supposed to have. In others, renters arrive to discover that their host has rented their stay to somebody else for a higher price. In extreme cases, the rental property doesn't exist or is owned by someone other than the Airbnb host.
One way to screen for these scams is to check if the same or similar photos appear in different listings nearby. Often, this means that the host is double-booking their rental, promising it to more than one guest in an attempt to get the highest possible price. You can also spot fake photos on an Airbnb listing by downloading one or two and reverse image searching them through Google to ensure the host didn't just steal pictures from an interior designer's Instagram and claim they were their own. Finally, if you have already booked the location, don't forget to look the address up. The last thing you want is to show up to your beach house and find a warehouse instead.
Only pay through Airbnb
A popular TikTok hack advises contacting Airbnb hosts you've stayed with before off the platform and offering a lower rate for their rental. This can be mutually beneficial since it saves money and allows the host to avoid Airbnb fees. However, you should never risk going off the platform to book an Airbnb with a host you don't know personally. Unfortunately, as soon as you leave the app, there's no guarantee that Airbnb's reimbursement policies will protect you or that it can help you find another place to stay if something goes wrong.
This is one of the most common ways in which guests get scammed on Airbnb. In early March 2024, a woman reported losing thousands of dollars to a sophisticated scam after agreeing to communicate with the Airbnb host via WhatsApp instead of via Airbnb. You should also be suspicious of links sent to you by an Airbnb host, redirecting you to a website to pay — even if that website appears to be Airbnb. Sometimes, like in the case of the woman scammed on WhatsApp, fraudsters create fake websites that look like actual booking pages to steal your credit card information. Rather than clicking a link, go to the Airbnb app (or https://www.airbnb.com) and book from there.
Check the safety features right away
As tempting as it may be to check in, toss your bags on the floor, and then rush out to the first stop on your itinerary, it's worth walking around the house and looking in all the rooms as soon as you check-in. Ensure that your rental has the safety features you expect to see, like a carbon monoxide detector, a smoke detector, a fire extinguisher, and a first aid kit. Make sure that the doors and windows can be locked. Speak up if anything about the place strikes you as not clean or safe.
Take photos of any issues with your phone so you can show the host and Airbnb support what's going on and, just in case, have proof that the problems were already there when you arrived. This is also good to do before checking out of your Airbnb. As long as you feel safe doing so, you can start by contacting your host about the issues you're seeing. It may be as simple as having them change the batteries in the smoke detector or bringing you a key for the back door. If they can't fix the problem, don't be afraid to reach out to Airbnb immediately so it can find you a better place to stay as soon as possible.
Make sure there aren't any bugs (of the insect or recording variety)
When thinking about hazards in an Airbnb, two horrible possibilities tend to make potential guests anxious: finding hidden cameras and bed bugs; if you're worried about the latter, it's a good idea not to put your luggage on the floor. Carry it to the bathtub instead. Then, pull the sheets off the bed and check the mattress seams and pillows for suspicious stains. If you don't see any, you're probably safe — but don't ignore any little bites you wake up with! If you find any, contact your host and Airbnb support.
Recording devices can be harder to spot. There have been cases of guests finding hidden cameras secretly recording them in private areas of their short-term rentals. While Airbnb allows hosts to have security cameras outside, they have to tell you they're there. They certainly aren't allowed to have cameras inside the house spying on you without your permission.
If you want to ensure there aren't any hidden cameras, try turning off the lights and shining a flashlight around the room. If there's a camera lens, it should reflect back at you. You can also use a WiFi scanner app to see if there are any suspicious devices connected to the network. If you find one, take photos of it, call the local police, and contact Airbnb support right away.