Use this article to understand how Airbnb protects travelers who book an Airbnb stay on Perk, and what support is available before, during, and after a stay. It's useful for travelers, travel managers, and duty-of-care and risk teams.
In short: Airbnb protects every stay at 3 levels. Platform-wide trust and safety controls apply to every stay, the listings Perk shows go through an extra quality filter, and AirCover and 24/7 support cover the stay itself.
How Airbnb vets hosts, guests, and listings
Every Airbnb stay, including stays booked through Perk, goes through the following Airbnb safeguards:
| Safeguard | What it does |
|---|---|
| Identity verification | Every host, co-host, and booking guest must be identity verified. Where the law allows, this supports background checks. |
| Reservation screening | Airbnb screens every reservation for hundreds of risk factors. It blocks high-risk bookings, such as likely parties or property damage. |
| Listing verification and community standards | Listings must meet Airbnb's safety, accuracy, and reliability standards. Airbnb can remove listings that don't. |
| Host quality system | Since Airbnb launched its updated system in 2025, it has removed about 500,000 listings that fell short of guest expectations. |
| Reviews | Only guests who completed a stay can leave a review, and hosts can't remove reviews. |
| Secure messaging and payments | Travelers can message hosts before booking. Payment stays on Airbnb, which protects against off-platform fraud. |
| Cancellation enforcement | Stricter penalties for avoidable host cancellations cut them by 30% year over year. |
According to Airbnb, these controls are working. The average rating on Airbnb is now 4.75. Last year, more than 4 in 5 reviews were 5-star and fewer than 1% were 1-star. A TD Cowen survey found that 90% of business travelers rated Airbnb as satisfactory as hotels or better.
Airbnb also highlights its strongest listings:
- Guest favorite: the most-loved homes, based on ratings, reviews, and reliability data.
- Top listing highlights: badges for the top 1%, 5%, and 10% of listings worldwide.
- Superhosts: about 1.3M experienced, highly rated hosts.
How Airbnb decides which listings can appear in Perk
Listings in the Airbnb tab in Perk are chosen with a quality score, not a minimum number of reviews. This means a listing with only a few reviews can appear in your results, and that's by design.
Airbnb builds the quality score like this:
- It uses guest review outcomes over a 4-year window, weighted by the number of reservations.
- It's confidence-weighted, so a listing with 3 reviews doesn't count the same as a listing with 300.
- It replaced an older flat 4.8 average-rating cut-off. A flat cut-off rewarded new listings with a few 5-star reviews as much as well-established listings.
Two things follow from this. A listing with only a few reviews can appear if those stays went well. A listing with many reviews can be left out if its guest outcomes are weak.
Support before, during, and after your stay
Airbnb gives travelers protection and someone to call at any hour if something goes wrong.
AirCover for guests is included in every Airbnb booking at no extra cost. It includes:
- Booking Protection Guarantee: If the host cancels shortly before check-in, Airbnb finds a similar or better home or refunds the stay.
- Check-In Guarantee: If the traveler can't get in and the host can't fix it, Airbnb rebooks or refunds.
- Get-What-You-Booked Guarantee: If the listing isn't as described (for example, a missing amenity or an unclean home), Airbnb helps rebook or refunds.
- 24-hour Safety Line: In the Airbnb app, travelers can reach specially trained safety agents, day or night.
Airbnb also offers 24/7 customer service in multiple languages.
When Perk books an Airbnb stay on a traveler's behalf, Perk names the traveler on the reservation. This helps the AirCover protections and Airbnb support work as intended.
To learn what happens to your money if you cancel, see How Airbnb refunds work.
Resources from Airbnb
Airbnb publishes these pages for travelers. Use them to learn more about safety, protection, and host verification:
| Resource | Use it to |
|---|---|
| Airbnb Trust & Safety | Get an overview of safety for travel managers and risk teams |
| AirCover for guests | Understand what each traveler is covered for |
| Identity verification | Answer "Who is the host?" questions from duty-of-care teams |