A massive investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek has uncovered how a crack team of roughly 100 specially-trained agents work for Airbnb to make sure incidents like rapes don’t tarnish the company’s brand image.
This all came to light from the case of a 29-year-old Australian woman who was allegedly raped inside her Airbnb accommodation while visiting New York City in 2015. After coming home from celebrating New Year’s Eve at a bar, the woman didn’t notice a man standing in the shadows of her accommodation, holding a kitchen knife.
It’s alleged the man then attacked the woman and raped her in bed, before running away with her phone.
Police arrived at the Airbnb an hour later, while the alleged rapist returned to the apartment. In his backpack police found a knife, one of the woman’s earrings, and a set of keys to the apartment.
Officers took details the woman’s details. Meanwhile, Airbnb went into crisis mode.
“This brought me back to feelings of confronting truly horrific matters at Langley [where the CIA is based] and in the situation room at the White House,” former intelligence agent Nick Shapiro, who had just started his new gig at Airbnb at the time, told Businessweek.
To the company’s credit, the safety team sprang into action to put the woman up in a hotel, paid to fly her mum out to New York City, flew them both home, and offered to cover any ongoing medical or counselling costs.
But it’s what went on behind the scenes which tells the story of a company obsessed with protecting its image, even if that means making sure stories such as these never see the light of day.
According to the report, Airbnb sent someone to court to make sure the company wasn’t mentioned, and even paid the survivor of the alleged rape US $7 million (more than AU $9 million) as part of an agreement in which she said she would not discuss the settlement “or imply responsibility or liability” on the part of Airbnb as a company.
An Airbnb spokesperson has since denied the company bought the woman’s silence, with Benjamin Brait telling The Guardian: “In sexual assault cases, in the settlements we’ve reached, survivors can speak freely about their experiences.”
Junior Lee, 24, was ultimately charged with predatory sexual assault regarding the incident but pled not guilty. He’s now in custody and awaiting further examination, having been deemed mentally unfit for trial.
Businessweek was able to reconstruct all of this from court documents and confidential records, and from speaking to eight former members of the Airbnb safety team and 45 other current and former employees. The woman who was allegedly raped declined to speak to Businessweek for this report, the publication said.
At the time of the incident, the hotel industry was pushing for tougher restrictions against Airbnb in New York City, and insiders say the company was worried that the incident would be used to run them out of town if it came to light.
Members of the team, who are spread across cities like Dublin, Montreal, Singapore, told Businessweek that they’re expected to fire a “money cannon” to help victims of serious incidents.
“I had situations where I had to get off the phone and go cry,” one former Airbnb safety agent told the magazine.
“That’s all you can do.”
According to Businessweek, the Airbnb safety team has had to deal with things like violence, rape, cleaning bloodstains off carpets, and even one case where the guest was found naked in bed with the host’s seven-year-old child.
In fact, cases have already been reported all over the world including a family that died of carbon monoxide poisoning in Chile and a host who raped and photographed guests in Barcelona.
The lawyer of a family whose 23-year-old son, Raymon Hill, was shot at an Airbnb house party in California claimed the company is more interested in the news cycle than the actual victims.
“The only thing that really motivates them is the threat or potential threat of bad PR or a nightmare in the press,” the lawyer, Jesse Danoff told Businessweek.
In this case, Airbnb said that it already paid the man’s funeral bill.
Overall, the company says that fewer than 0.1% of all stays result in reported safety issues. But keep in mind that’s 0.1% of over 200 million bookings per year.
It also insisted that its priority in each and every of these instances was to take care of the victims.
“People are naturally unpredictable, and as much as we try, occasionally really bad things happen. We all know that you can’t stop everything, but it’s all about how you respond, and when it happens you have to make it right, and that’s what we try to do each and every time,” Airbnb’s head of global operations Tara Bunch told Businessweek.
“We go the extra mile to ensure anyone impacted on our platform is taken care of. We don’t really worry about the brand and image component. That stuff will take care of itself as long as you do the right thing.”
You can (and should) read the full investigation, which goes into how the company started its crisis management team in the first place, over at Bloomberg Businessweek.
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