Airbnb History & Founding Timeline

When COVID-19 caused mass travel cancellations in March 2020, Airbnb's initial response applied inconsistent cancellation policies that in some cases overrode existing host-cancellation policies to provide guest refunds—angering the host community who bore the financial cost of refunds for stays they had blocked their calendar for, creating lasting trust damage with the supply side of the marketplace at a critical moment.

Airbnb's persistence with a nightly rate display model that excluded cleaning fees, service fees, and taxes from initial search results—a practice that maximised apparent price competitiveness in search but created checkout sticker shock—damaged consumer trust over several years before the company introduced total price display in 2023, by which time the practice had generated significant regulatory and media criticism.

High-profile party incidents at Airbnb properties—including a Halloween party shooting in Orinda, California in 2019 that killed five people—revealed inadequate host screening and property use policy enforcement that had been deprioritised in the growth phase. The delayed implementation of the Party Ban policy (eventually introduced in 2020 and made permanent in 2022) allowed the brand association with disruptive parties to persist longer than necessary and generated ongoing negative media coverage.