Airbnb Cracked Down on Ukraine Listings. Some Donors Wish It Hadn't
Source: Wired
TWO WEEKS AFTER Russia invaded Ukraine, Gregory Offner was looking for ways to help from his home in Philadelphia. He scrolled through Twitter and saw people posting receipts of Airbnbs they had booked in Ukraine, to get money directly into Ukrainian bank accounts. Offner was inspired. He chose an apartment in Kharkiv, a city in the northeast that has been hit particularly hard, and booked four nights, for a total of $214. He left a note explaining that he wouldn’t actually be coming to stay—this was humanitarian aid.
The host replied the next day. “Thank you very much for your kind support, it means a lot to us now,” he wrote, adding that he would donate the money to the Ukrainian army. But Offner’s payment never arrived. The next day, Airbnb canceled and refunded the booking. “I got an email saying the person hosting or using the Airbnb account in Ukraine was ‘no longer able to receive money’ from Airbnb,” Offner says. “Like, what does that even mean?”
It meant—though the platform never communicated this to Offner directly—that Airbnb suspected the host wasn’t legitimate. “We identified a handful of hosts who did not support this effort in the spirit intended,” says Ben Breit, the global trust communications lead at Airbnb. After donation bookings started coming in, some hosts created “ghost listings” for apartments in Ukraine that didn’t exist. In some cases, they may not live in Ukraine at all. That runs afoul of Airbnb’s policy on fake listings, even if those listings were meant to fundraise. After Offner booked his stay, his Airbnb host directed him to several such listings in Kyiv that he said could use some help from benefactors like Offner. The listings were all created this month.
By now, people have booked more than 434,000 nights in cities like Kyiv, Odessa, and Lviv to show solidarity with Ukranians. These bookings have amassed more than $15 million in aid, according to Airbnb. (The company, which normally takes about 20 percent of each booking, waived its fees in Ukraine.) But in the rush to get money to Ukrainians from abroad, some “guests” have had their bookings canceled without much explanation, leaving them confused and uneasy about using Airbnb for such contributions.
Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/airbnb-ukraine-listings-donations/
Some of the listings have been posted fraudulently, so it pays to be cautious when taking this route to supporting Ukrainians.
Farther down, the article notes that Airbnb.org is "providing free, short-term housing for 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine." So that's another option for those who want to help.
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