Christian Bayerlein loves to travel. But his disability complicates things – he is in a wheelchair due to spinal muscular atrophy. Although he books the majority of his accommodation through Airbnb, Bayerlein, who lives in Koblenz, Germany, doesn't find it particularly easy.
Finding a wheelchair-friendly place takes longer than just a few clicks: the minimum requirements are no steps or stairs, wide entrances and a large lift. Airbnb recently addressed this by introducing 27 accessibility filters to help travellers with disabilities find the home that suits their needs.
In April, Bayerlein made sure he checked all of them when booking a flat near Winterthur in Switzerland. He contacted the host with additional questions before booking the place. Shortly after, however, the host came back saying the bathroom could only be reached using a staircase, that the door to the bathroom was too narrow and that he should therefore cancel the booking.
After further discussion, the booking was cancelled with the host saying she was afraid he would be uncomfortable. “This is paternalistic, patronising and discriminatory,” says Bayerlein.
In 2017, a study from Rutgers University showed that travellers with disabilities are more likely to be rejected by Airbnb hosts. Two years later, it seems not much has changed.
Multiple people with disabilities say they have experienced difficulties when trying to book apartments with Airbnb – despite the company's efforts to improve the services it offers. Criticisms include hosts being unprepared to accommodate their needs and a general lack of transparency about a property's accessibility.
Bayerlein did not report the incident in Switzerland to Airbnb as he booked another room. However, there have been other cases. A few weeks ago in Rome, he found the building’s lift too small for his wheelchair. “The host did not mention this anywhere,” Bayerlein says. “My girlfriend had to lie me down on the floor of the lift. Although we padded the floor with a blanket, it was still very painful and unpleasant.” (A move to another flat or hotel was not an option on such short notice, he says).
Bayerlein says he tried resolving the issue in Airbnb's resolution center – a place for renters to raise issues with hosts – requesting a discount of €50 (£45). The host refused, claiming that she had hosted several other wheelchair users who hadn’t had any issues.
After contacting Airbnb's community support team, the company refunded the €50 (£45) and offered a goodwill travel credit of €100 (£90). An Airbnb spokesperson said the company was disappointed to hear about this experience, and that it had “provided support to the guest at the time and required the host to update their listing details with accurate accessibility information.”
While Bayerlein's case is one example, the scale of potential problems are currently unclear. When asked, Airbnb says it doesn't have any data about the number of wheelchair users who book through its service.
"I went to great lengths to make sure the Airbnb was wheelchair-accessible, asking very specific questions about accessibility after the place comes up as wheelchair-accessible under all the filters,” says Vicky Kuhn, who recently travelled to London to represent a charity that fights for the rights of LGBTQ+ people with disabilities.
Despite a protracted conversation with the host about their needs as a wheelchair user, the host had booked them a room on the top floor of a townhouse. When he came by to assess the situation, Kuhn says he was very aggressive and overheard him telling other guests: "We have to look after the people that are not normal like you and me.”
Read more: Airbnb listings in China are littered with racist discrimination
“I was crushed during the time I stayed at the Airbnb,” Kuhn says, adding they were afraid of booking another stay after the first experience. When asked to comment about this case, an Airbnb spokesperson said they launched an immediate investigation and provided the guest with its full support. “We suspended the host account at the time, and have educated and reminded them of our policies and warned that any future report could result in account removal.”
There are exceptions, though. Double Paralympic bronze medallist Lucy Shuker is a happy customer. “I've actually rented through Airbnb a few times in London for Wimbledon without any issues,” she says. Shuker started playing wheelchair tennis in 2002 following a motorbike accident that left her paralysed from the chest down (T4).
30-year-old Otto Kern says he finds the accessibility filters very useful and hasn’t encountered any issues with hosts. “The majority of them are very responsive and were able to answer all of my questions,” he says. Based in Paris, Kern is in a wheelchair due to an incomplete cerebral palsy and works as a consultant at Deloitte. He is also the secretary general of APHPP, an NGO that promotes disability within French law.
“Our mission is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere and that includes making our platform accessible to everyone," an Airbnb spokesperson said in a comment after this story was published. The company said it has an accessibility team that runs workshops to educate hosts about accessibility and it was not "complacent and it was working to " build a community where everyone belongs".
The spokesperson added: "Discrimination has no place on Airbnb and goes against everything we stand for, and we take appropriate action on matters brought to our attention, including removing users from our community and supporting guests under our Open Doors policy.”
Still, some believe that Airbnb hosts should be clearer when listing their homes on the portal. “It would help for Airbnb to educate hosts about accessibility and review listings for accuracy,” said Carole Zoom, who is a disability advocate and realtor in Hawaii. Zoom, who has lived with muscular dystrophy since birth, uses a mobility scooter and a ventilator full-time. She’s travelled to 30 countries since 2012 and has had her fair share of bad experiences with peer-to-peer lodging platforms. “When I faced a serious issue with my lodging, Airbnb was uneducated, unprepared and unresponsive,” she added.
Zoom refers to a one-month trip she booked in Portland, Oregon in 2014 where she had reserved a unit that was Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant. After checking in and setting up her medical equipment, Zoom and her husband went to bed. A few hours later, the building manager, who got wind of their stay, pounded on their door – turns out the owner of the condo wasn’t allowed to sublet the flat to external guests. The police arrived shortly after and the couple had until 10AM the next morning to find another place to stay, Zoom says. Airbnb ultimately moved them to another listing, but Zoom says it was not accessible.
This is one of the main issues with the sharing economy – regulations are murky at best. While traditional industries like travel and hospitality abide by existing laws meant to prohibit discrimination, tech companies themselves don't always directly fall under the rules. Airbnb's website says ADA and other state-level disability laws "may apply to some hosts with five or more listings".
“This issue is larger than one company as the platform economy continues to grow, and it should not be left to individual companies to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access,” wrote Lisa Schur, a professor at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. “There needs to be new laws, like an ADA for the 21st century, to ensure full and equal access.”
Schur is one of the researchers who worked on the Rutgers study that came out in 2017, which showed that Airbnb hosts were less likely to pre-approve, and more likely to reject outright, requests from travellers with disabilities than requests from travellers without disabilities.
While there are several other peer-to-peer lodging services, such as CouchSurfing, HomeAway and VRBO, none have the scale and reach Airbnb has. According to the company’s latest factsheet, Airbnb has more than six million places to stay in over 100,000 cities and 191 countries.
Founded in 2008, Airbnb has improved its accessibility. In 2016, the San Francisco-based company hired an ex-attorney general to advise on anti-bias policy and subsequently implemented a non-discrimination policy users have to agree to. In November 2017, shortly after the Rutgers study came out, the company acquired Accomable, a London-based startup that sought and listed wheelchair accessible peer-to-peer rentals.
The firm has made some steps to improve its accessibility efforts. It hired Srin Madipalli, one of Accomable's founders, as its accessibility product and program manager. “I started Accomable because I love to travel and know how difficult that can be with a disability,” he says. The Oxford graduate, who has been in a wheelchair his whole life due to spinal muscular atrophy, has made it his mission to inspire and implement changes around accessibility. Madipalli says Airbnb recently launched a new photo tool to provide more accurate information about the properties. But he says it’s important to make changes beyond the company website by educating hosts around the world about what accessibility means.
"Guests can easily search for places that will be a good fit by using accessibility features," the company says on its website. "For example, guests can filter search results so they only see homes with an elevator or an entrance without steps."
It goes on to say that hosts and guests should discuss individual needs together. "We expect our hosts to be open to discussing accessibility details with guests, and sometimes make small adjustments to help a guest safely and comfortably move through a home."
Educating hosts about accessibility is one thing – making sure they follow the guidelines and list accessibility features correctly is another. “It's really important to include audits, or some way to make sure that the claims made [by the host] are actually true,” says Toronto-based Lene Andersen, who uses a powered wheelchair due to lifelong rheumatoid arthritis.
Andersen wanted to book an Airbnb a few months ago but quickly got discouraged, even after using the accessibility filters. “Based on photos of the units, none of them were actually even minimally accessible. After checking about 10 listings, I gave up and ended up booking a room in a hotel, which was hideously expensive.”
Updated July 30, 2019 11:54BST: This story has been updated to add further comment from Airbnb
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
