ST. GEORGE — With New Year’s Eve coming this Saturday night, the word party comes to mind for many.
But with at least one company that specializes in short-term rentals, holding a party may not be as easy this year.
Airbnb has announced it is putting restrictions on some guests booking one-night stays to host a New Year’s Eve party, including in Southern Utah. That also includes a hotline for neighbors wanting to report issues involving a listing next door holding a New Year’s party.
“Parties are banned, full-stop,” Lisa Cohen, a communications consultant who works with Airbnb, told St. George News in an e-mail. “We encourage Utah neighbors to reach out with any issues so that our specialized safety team may investigate and support.”
One of the main measures Airbnb says it is using is banning one-night bookings during New Year’s Eve for entire home listings in Utah and elsewhere in the country for people either with no previous bookings or mostly negative reviews from hosts.
Testing this, St. George News was able to see 64 entire-home listings in Southern Utah for New Year’s Eve using an established account with mostly positive reviews but saw no entire-home listings for the same night with a new account.
Airbnb says it also has mechanisms in place to detect reservations with a high risk of renting a listing for the purpose of holding a party. People wanting to alert Airbnb to improper activity or a party by an Airbnb guest are asked to use this website.
However, Michael Cook with Defenders of Greater Ivins, which has been lobbying against short-term rentals in Ivins, told St. George News such technology and rules still have loopholes.
“Airbnb may say they have a policy but it is not uncommon for people to rent a home for the required minimum stay and then just use it for a one-night New Year’s Eve party,” Cook said.
St. George News ran the same test as above with a new user looking for an entire home listing and instead of a one-night stay on Dec. 31 added a second night on Jan. 1. Instead of no listings, 440 entire-home listings locally were available.
Cook also said the neighbor hotline is ineffective.
“When things do get out of hand and even if a local Airbnb contact is reached, the noise complaint is generally turned over to the local police department,” Cook said. “Many times, this proves to be ineffective because the local police only have so many officers on duty and noise complaints are not given high priority.”
Cook doesn’t lay all the blame on Airbnb and says other short-term rental companies are responsible for guests using vacation rentals to hold loud parties in residential neighborhoods.
The other leading vacation rental company, Vrbo, doesn’t have any limits on a new user renting a property for one night on New Year’s Eve and also doesn’t have a stated no-party policy. However, Vrbo says on its website that if it is determined that a guest has created a “nuisance” or an “unauthorized or disruptive” gathering, they may be banned from using the site in the future.
As a new user on Vrbo, St. George News found 30 entire-home listings available on New Year’s Eve for a one-night stay and more than 300 if that stay is extended beyond one night.
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