Signal18 Jan 2022
Airbnb pilots program in support of Black communityStarting in February 2022, Airbnb will trial a policy that targets discrimination on its platform by preventing landlords from seeing the full names of potential guests until a booking is confirmed. The move aims to overturn patterns of prejudice against people with names that don’t ‘sound White’.
The two-year Oregan-exclusive pilot means that only guests’ initials will be visible until a booking is confirmed. The decision, likely prompted by a 2019 lawsuit filed in Portland alleging that Airbnb was facilitating discrimination, aligns with research showing that prejudice can begin with the use of names as signifiers of racial identity. Indeed, a 2015 study found that hosts are 16% less likely to accept guests with ‘distinctively African-American names’ compared to ‘identical guests with distinctively White names’. As such, the pilot is an important step in making the platform a safer and more welcoming place for all users. “We will take any learnings from this process and use them to inform future efforts to fight bias,” says the brand. “We have much more to do and continue working [...] to make our community more inclusive.”
Microaggressions and concerns about a lack of representation have plagued users of Airbnb and the travel industry as a whole. In fact, communities like Nomadness Travel Tribe and Black Girls Travel Too were born out of this frustration with systemic racism, which affects both travelers and hosts on platforms like Airbnb. With 54% of US Black travelers preferring to travel to places that feature Black people in their advertising and 71% of Canadian and American Black travelers saying that safety is at least ‘very influential’ in their choice of destination, discrimination continues to be a significant concern. People want to see brands engage in serious anti-racism efforts and Bumble, for example, is answering this call by highlighting Black-owned businesses and educating users on fetishization.
©Nomadness (2021)
