I also think that a lot of travelers ASSUME that the company is doing quality control and inspecting the listings and hosts and that is NOT happening. You can be an “innkeeper” in 5 minutes with zero oversight.

I have never stayed in an Airbnb nor would I. I just returned from a trip where I stayed in a motel I have been to many times. In the breakfast room is a wall of licenses and permits. Fire department, health department, transient accomodations licenses, business licenses. All of these things come at a cost to the business and are in place to help ensure guest safety. I am guessing that MOST Airbnb units have very little in the way of oversight meaning YOU the traveler could be at risk.

For me that risk simply is not worth it.

Except when using the expression “effect change”.

AirBnB makes its money by having little overhead because they don’t inspect the properties or really vet the people that use their service. This means you just have to go by a host/guest’s reviews and hope they are representative of people’s experiences. I once made a booking with someone with no reviews and this person accepted my booking to then immediately message me that not all days of my booking were available. I then had to cancel this because this was not what I booked, and this is the last time I booked with someone with no reviews. I personally don’t care whether someone’s confirmed their ID, I only care about reviews. Anyhow, I no longer use airBnB anyways.