The second thing that jolted them was that there were no locks on the bedrooms. That was definitely a red-flag. According to Apartments Apart, Jackson “noticed that the keypads weren’t set for the rooms; it would essentially give anyone access to their rooms at any time. Jackson reconfigured the keypads herself.”
But they still stayed.
Three days after their arrival, a man appeared out of the blue and said he was a security guard. Of course, it could have been a legitimate security guard that had arrived that day, but it made the women even more suspicious.
Jackson tried to contact the concierge, with no success. She and her friends had trouble sleeping that night, and had knives at the sides of their beds, just in case. They checked out the following morning.
Jackson then contacted Airbnb with her complaints and heard back from the rental space owner. She was offered a $67 refund for a stay that cost over $3,500.
Although nothing bad happened to the women, except for their fearful, unpleasant experience triggered by perhaps their intuition, if not imagination, other women have experienced similar problems while using Airbnb rentals.
When Jackson shared her experiences online, she heard other stories about the same Airbnb owner in Turin. Eventually, due to all the bad reviews and complaints, the operator changed its name and profile picture on Airbnb.
There have been other incidents with Airbnb that didn’t turn out as well.
For example, in 2018, it was reported that Airbnb rentals in Toronto were being used for sex trafficking, and two people were arrested.
In an effort to improve their image, Airbnb came out with a plan to protect both hosts and guests. They initiated in-person host training, which according to USA Today, “would help the host community identify signals or triggers in the nature and style of the reservation, and provide action steps to report potential trafficking.”
Airbnb is working with an anti-trafficking nonprofit group called Polaris to train its employees and work with police, to prevent and report cases of trafficking. Airbnb operates in nearly 200 countries and has had more than 260 million home and room rentals.
Just like everything else, you never know what you’re getting into, especially when you’re renting a stranger’s private residence.
Unfortunately, even major hotels and motels also have had incidents of human trafficking. This is nothing new. Stay safe.