Housing rental app Airbnb announced a new anti-party technology last week that will be used in Florida and throughout the United States — and for the “vacation rental capital of the world” that is Osceola County, that could mean big changes.'
This new technology is designed to help identify “potentially high-risk reservations, stop those reservations from going through and prevent those users from taking advantage of our platform,” according to a press release from the popular short-term vacation rental company.
This announcement follows news from June that the previously temporary ban on parties will become a codified policy. In Osceola County, similar blocks have already taken place, such as last year’s block during New Year’s Eve on certain single-night reservations of entire home listings in Kissimmee and Orlando, for guests without a history of positive reviews on the platform. In Florida, the company says they’ve seen a 67% year-over-year drop in party reports since the introduction of that temporary policy in 2020.
Large events at Airbnb rentals in Osceola County have previously resulted in action from law enforcement, like an out-of-hand event in October 2020 that was investigated by an Osceola County Sheriff’s Office saturation unit, where seven occupied residences and 10 vehicles had been shot at, according to previous reporting by the News-Gazette.
There are a few different factors that the technology looks at to determine whether a reservation is “high-risk” or not.
“This system looks at factors like history of positive reviews (or lack of positive reviews), length of time the guest has been on Airbnb, length of the trip, distance to the listing, weekend vs. weekday, among many others,” per the Airbnb website. “The primary objective is attempting to reduce the ability of bad actors to throw unauthorized parties which negatively impact our hosts, neighbors and the communities we serve.”
Sheriff ’s saturation patrols increased on the west side of the county — home to many vacation rental properties — after a number of incidents in 2020 and early 2021, during a time when bars and clubs were closed during the pandemic, or heavily scrutinized for crowd size, and house parties became a popular way to circumvent some of those rules.
Saturation patrols — and busts of dozens of people per party for things like illegal firearms, drugs, disorderly conduct and warrants for previous incidents — increased after noise complaints from neighbors became routine.
