What are house rules for Airbnb guests
Hosts set house rules for Airbnb guests on their listing to help set expectations. Guests must review and agree to the rules before requesting a reservation. There are a handful of default house rules to select from including the host’s policy on pets, smoking and using the space for events. A host can also write their own rules in addition to the default options.
Introduction to the Analysis
For the analysis, we’ll use a dataset of 233k listings from the US as of the summer of 2020. Data was sourced from Inside Airbnb, an activist project with the objective to provide data that quantifies the impact of short-term rentals on housing and residential communities.
First we’ll look at two of the most common policies hosts have: smoking and pets. For this, we’ll look at how many listings allow smoking and how many allow pets. Next, we’ll look at how many listings have additional rules. Finally we’ll do some text mining to uncover the most common additional rules hosts have.
Airbnb house rules no smoking
Allowing smoking inside is very uncommon in the US. This is to be expected as all levels of government have legislated against smoking for decades. In Airbnb listings analyzed, only 4% explicitly allowed smoking. Airbnb house rules for no smoking can include banning it outright on the property or designating where guests can smoke.
Airbnb house rules for pets
The ability to bring pets is a key benefit of Airbnb for many guests. 16% of listings analyzed allow pets. Hosts allowing pets often have additional house rules. These can include restrictions on dog breeds, maximum animal weights and additional cleaning fees.
How many hosts have house rules for Airbnb guests
As mentioned above, beyond the default options hosts can write their own additional rules. Of the listings analyzed 68% had something written in the additional rules section. To get an idea of what hosts write in this section, we can do some high-level exploration. To do this, we’ll prepare a word cloud of the most common words that appear in additional rules.
What’s interesting is words that appear as default options also appear very commonly in the additional rules. Smoking really jumps out, but pets and parties appears as well. This indicates how many hosts use the additional rules to emphasize their policy on these issues.
Uncovering the most common additional house rules
To uncover the most common additional house rules, we’ll take the above approach a step further by analyzing word pairings (also called bigrams). By doing so, more meaningful commonalities can be explored. Just as above, the data was cleansed and irrelevant terms were removed. In addition, because of how much more common it was than all other word pairing, the term “no smoking” was excluded. Hosts really do not want guests smoking in their space! The word cloud of word pairs is below.
We can infer the context of many of these word pairs, given they appear in the additional rules section. For example, it stands to reason the term “loud music” appears in the additional rules section because hosts prohibit it.
As a final step, we’ll manually group word pairs that share a common theme while excluding word pairs associated to default rules (smoking, pets, and parties). This will allow us to uncover other popular rules. The graph below summarizes this along with how common these rules are as a percentage of all listings with additional rules.
Finally, we’ll use those common themes to establish house rules. We’ll add these to the default options to establish the most popular house rules for Airbnb guests.
Sample house rules for Airbnb guests
- No Smoking: some hosts allow smoking in certain areas on the property while others ban it outright.
- No Pets: hosts allowing pets can set dog breed or animal weight restrictions.
- No Parties: some hosts will charge an additional fee for events.
- Additional guests: no additional guests beyond agreed upon number.
- Provide identification: guests must provide identification upon arrival
- No noise: including loud music, respect quiet hours.
- Penalties: guests breaking house rules or creating additional costs for the host will be charged a fee. Examples of fees hosts will charge include fees for lost keys, extra cleaning, additional guests, damage to the property, and late check-out.
- No shoes: guests are not allowed to wear shoes in the house or reminded to remove them when inside.
- No crime: hosts will call out specifically that they do not want illegal activities or illicit drugs on their property
Free Airbnb house rules template
To use this template, simply remove the rules that don’t apply to your listing and/or fill in details as necessary.
Please be nice and respectful.
No smoking at all on property.
Smoking only allowed in _____ (designated area)
No pets
Pets are allowed, an additional cleaning fee of _____will be applied
Only dogs under _____pounds are allowed on the property
No Parties
Events can be held for an additional fee of _____
No additional guests. For every additional guest a fee of _____will be charged
Guests must provide photo identification matching their reservation upon arrival
No loud noise including music
Respect quiet hours and please keep noise to a minimum after _____
Evidence of smoking will result in additional fee of _____ to be charged against the security deposit
A lost key will result in additional fee of _____ to be charged against the security deposit
Damage to the property will result in additional fee of _____ to be charged against the security deposit
Late check-out will result in additional fee of _____ to be charged against the security deposit
No shoes in the house. Please remove shoes inside
No illegal activity or illicit drugs will be tolerated
Template provided by BnBFacts
Key Takeaways
- Smoking, pets and parties are default rules because it is extremely common for hosts to have policies on those issues.
- Many hosts use the additional rules section to emphasize their policy on default rules
- Outside of the default rules, 68% of listings have additional house rules
- Hosts can use the popular rules uncovered here for inspiration in setting their own rules
