Airbnb Says It's Narrowed the Racial Gap in Booking Success Rates

Sometimes Black, Latino/Hispanic and Asian people in the U.S. feel that their Airbnb reservation requests are getting rejected by hosts because of their race, but Airbnb said it trimmed the booking acceptance gap with whites in 2023 compared with 2021.

In an announcement Thursday – "How we're using data to make travel more open for all" – Airbnb provided data to show that the booking acceptance rate in the U.S. in 2023 for people perceived to be white was 96.2%. For would-be guests thought to be Black it was 94.8% — a 1.4 percentage point disparity.

That's roughly half the disparity in 2021, when the booking acceptance rate gap between white and Black travelers was 2.7 points, the largest of any racial group. As can be seen in the chart below, people perceived to be Black still had the lowest booking success rate (94.8%) in 2023 compared with Asian (95.7%), Latino/Hispanic (95.8%), Other/Unknown (95.8%), and white (96.2%) guests.

The company said the disparity between all groups was significantly reduced in 2023, and all groups have a higher booking success rate than in 2021.

Booking Success Rate for All Groups in the U.S., 2023 Versus 2021

Are the statistical gains for minorities trying to book properties on Airbnb meaningful in the real world?

“Seeing the increase of hundreds of thousands of bookings in the U.S. is significant," Janaye Ingram, Airbnb’s director of community partner programs and engagement, told Skift. “I think overall we’ve made Airbnb easier to use for anyone who wants to come and participate in our community.”


How Did Airbnb Make the Improvements?

There are two ways to make a booking on Airbnb, Instant Booking, which happens automatically with no host involvement, and Request to Book, where accepting a reservation is at the prerogative of the host.

Instant Booking can help remove bias from the process, and Airbnb, which has a nondiscrimination policy, has been asking hosts to do more of them.

Prior to 2022, hosts had an option to enable Instant Booking for guests only if 100% of their reviews by hosts recommended that they would be suitable for a future stay.

Airbnb modified that option in 2022 so hosts could enable Instant Booking if guests had traveled on Airbnb and have no negative reviews or disruptive incidents.

"And the change really opened up some eligibility [for Instant Booking] to more people, including people who have stayed on Airbnb but might not get a review for one reason or another," Ingram said.

For people totally new to Airbnb, they can use Instant Booking if the host enables such bookings. However, they would be forced to use Request to Book — where hosts accept or reject reservations — if the host enables the Instant Booking setting to only take guests with good track records on the platform.

Ingram said another step Airbnb took to improve the booking acceptance rate was to provide tools to help hosts manage the volume of Request to Book inquiries they receive so fewer would go unanswered.

How Do Cancellations Fit In?

When Airbnb determines that a host cancelled a reservation in bad faith, it can block the listing calendar for those dates to ensure the host can't take another booking on that date.

Such a cancellation can also adversely impact a host's Superhost status, when relevant, and lead to a suspension or deactivation of the host's account.

Anti-Discrimination Efforts

Airbnb's anti-discrimination efforts use its Project Lighthouse tool. Launched in 2020, Project Lighthouse takes a user's first name and photo to determine the perceived race, and that's used to measure the booking acceptance rate of various racial groups.

Partners from the NAACP, the National Action Network, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and LULAC, all expressed their support for Project Lighthouse in Airbnb's announcement.

The focus of the released data at this juncture is on the booking acceptance process, but doesn't cover other aspects of the Airbnb guest experience, such as the stay itself or dealing with customer support, for example.

“We want to make it easier for everyone to book an Airbnb, and this latest update shows that our data-driven approach is working," said Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky in the announcement. "While the work continues, we are thankful for the guidance and feedback from our community and partners who have helped inform this important progress.”