Airbnb Says It's Narrowed the Racial Gap in Booking Success Rates

Sometimes Black, Latino/Hispanic and Asian people in the U.S. feel that their Airbnb reservation requests are getting rejected by hosts because of their race, but Airbnb said it trimmed the booking acceptance gap with whites in 2023 compared with 2021.

In an announcement Thursday – "How we're using data to make travel more open for all" – Airbnb provided data to show that the booking acceptance rate in the U.S. in 2023 for people perceived to be white was 96.2%. For would-be guests thought to be Black it was 94.8% — a 1.4 percentage point disparity.

That's roughly half the disparity in 2021, when the booking acceptance rate gap between white and Black travelers was 2.7 points, the largest of any racial group. As can be seen in the chart below, people perceived to be Black still had the lowest booking success rate (94.8%) in 2023 compared with Asian (95.7%), Latino/Hispanic (95.8%), Other/Unknown