How Airbnb is failing when it comes to sustainability

While the world’s tourism industry is responsible for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the world's biggest accommodation company fails to incentivise its hosts and guests towards more sustainability. 

• With more than 356.9 million nights booked via its platform in 2021 and more than 4 million hosts, Airbnb travels could be linked to carbon emissions of up to 273 million tons in 2021, similar order of magnitude as the carbon emissions of France
• Airbnb misses sustainability search options, carbon offsetting, badges, points, awards, trainings, industry cooperation, events and comprehensive reporting
• Competitors are filling the gap and continue to outperform Airbnb on sustainability

1. Status quo

Airbnb. The opportunity to explore new worlds. To seek out new places and new people. To boldly go where not everyone has travelled before. 

As much as the platform and many of the spaces offered on it are exceptional - its sustainability efforts are currently not. None of them are related to its core business model: Linking travelers with accommodations and their hosts. Airbnb’s main search provides 55 accommodation categories and another up to 83 filter options, its youtube page addresses its guests and hosts with more than 500 videos, it provides insurance options and local Airbnb experiences - but none of these are related to protecting the environment or local communities. The company itself claims that it is on its way to zero emissions with Science Based Targets - yet fails to really address the elephant in the room: The sustainability impact of its hosts and guests. While working with organisations on discrimination and enabling refugee and disaster support itself and through its hosts, it is completely blank in the area of enabling its hosts to be found or, ideally, to rank better if they are addressing social or environmental sustainability. It fails to prioritize host training beyond a meager 6 blog postings or to partner with sustainable solution providers, e.g. those linked to renewable energy or sustainable cleaning detergents or toiletries. And while most airlines nowadays give you an option to offset some of your travel-linked carbon emissions and flight comparison pages feature the most CO2 efficient solutions, none of that is offered when booking with Airbnb. It fails to encourage or enable its hosts and guests to choose or offer more sustainable travel options, to improve or offset their travel footprint, to book only legal accommodations or to support local NGOs.

When trying to estimate the potential impact of the platform, one quickly realizes the enormous potential of the "world's largest hotel chain", as it has been called by media and investors: 356.9 million nights are said to have been booked via its platform in 2021 and more than 4 million hosts are currently present on the platform. Working with scientific literature, one can estimate that the travels made through Airbnb might be linked to a carbon footprint of 24 to 48 million tons of CO2 in 2021 when assuming 8kg of CO2 emissions per room and night - or, when taking into account host induced footprint, bringing that number up to 273 million tons of CO2. This estimation would link travels booked via airbnb to emissions which are in the same ballpark as the total carbon emissions of Switzerland (33 million tons) or France (302 million tons) or to a minimum of 1% of total global tourism emissions and to up to 0.75% of global emissions. (Source: Own calculations based on Airbnb’s 356.9 million nights spent in 2021, this research paper estimating between 7.27 to 9.39 kg emissions per room and night (so about 4 - 8 kg depending on occupancy) and up to 46 kg when including induced emissions, and this Nature paper attributing 6% of tourism carbon emissions to lodging. Room for error e.g. in occupancy rate per room as well as over- or underestimated induced emissions - 8kg are comparable to other sources for holiday apartments and hotel rooms)

At the same time, Airbnb is seeing “most acceleration in growth for guests for trips of more than 3,000 miles from home”, so those that are most carbon intensive. There are very few available numbers on the platform's total social sustainability impact, though some sources do for example link Airbnb to increased rental prices.

2. Competitors are addressing some of the gaps

Others are leading the way instead - just a few examples:

• booking.com provides a sustainable travel badge with hard criteria for sustainable accommodations on its platform and allows guests to filter for it, vowing to make it easier for travelers to book sustainable trips and collaborating to decarbonise the industry
• fairbnb.coop uses 50% of the platform’s fees to fund a sustainability project in the area of the visit - making sustainability contributions obligatory, and is strict in only listing legal accommodations
• B’n’Tree plants a tree for every booked travel with its partners including HRS, skyscanner, booking and many more
• Kayak and other flight booking platforms offer sustainability information on which flights emit less CO2 emissions and how to emit less CO2 while traveling
• Meta/Facebook provides with its Green Boost program hotel and tourism training videos to encourage its SME users to become more sustainable
• Finnish oil refining business Neste hosted for more than two years the ZeroBnB website, listing sustainable Airbnb offerings, as it also has its own sustainable lodge. The page is now offline - while there is still no sustainability category at Airbnb.

3. Solutions

With the social, political and economic importance of sustainability rising, Airbnb should become a frontrunner and step up its sustainability effort by:

Nudging hosts towards more sustainability:

Significant impact could be achieved by leveraging on the competitiveness among the listings, introducing a sustainability badge and category and to include sustainability criteria into its “superhost” status. Listings could go through a process that checks their sustainability efforts with criteria like renewable energy, facilities for recycling waste, providing more sustainable toilet paper, shower gel and shampoo options to its guests, using more sustainable cleaning detergents, energy efficient LED lighting, upcycling furniture, insect hotels, water-efficient faucets, solar panels, sustainable bedding, working with neighborhood organizations, recommending local shops etc.. Hosts should also work with their guests to empower them to recycle the waste, use public transport or bicycles, shower with less water usage etc.. Not all listings will be able to or should check all boxes, with some criteria being more important than others. In a second step, localisation of the criteria could be in effect, e.g. with listings in drought affected areas prioritizing water saving measures. The Global Sustainable Tourism Council provides e.g. sustainability performance indicators for hotels and accommodations.

The process could either be a self-assessment where hosts complete a series of questions and are encouraged to show their sustainability efforts to their guests, e.g. by putting up a document in the accommodation or in the photos of the accommodation that proves the renewable energy provider etc. where guests are likely to check for the truthfulness of some of the statements as long as they can verify them themselves. Or it could be a stricter system in which documents like electricity bills and photos of the toilet paper need to be uploaded and verified by the Airbnb support team.

Airbnb should include at least a few sustainability criteria into its existing superhost status and then even more into a “sustainable listing” category and badge. If hosts fullfill a certain number of criteria, the badge is awarded, and the criteria are shown in the listing. The process should have to be repeated at least once a year. Qualifying listings should receive both an advantage over other listings in the search process before a booking as well as being available in a separate category in the listing search for conscious travelers.

Airbnb should also encourage hosts to offset their remaining carbon emissions and to include donations to local NGOs to address negative tourism impacts with their bookings as well as featuring locally-owned shops and restaurants. Local “experiences for good” could receive stronger emphasis. A “local hero” category or badge could be awarded to the most active hosts and/or social engagement could be part of being a superhost.

Last but not least, Airbnb should encourage hosts to go sustainable by giving visibility to sustainability partners such as renewable energy providers, solar panel solutions, sustainable toiletries etc.. And, in the spirit of the company, work together with hosts on these solutions, e.g. with its host advisory board and homesharing clubs, provide trainings and organize sustainability awards to its leading listings worldwide. 

Nudging guests towards more sustainability:

Airbnb should offer travelers to directly offset the CO2 emissions associated with their travels and to support a local NGO. The platform should during the booking process already automatically calculate and include the fees, and travelers might decide against it if they really do not want to offset or to support a local NGO e.g. because they are already offsetting somewhere else. Travelers who are only traveling to sustainable listings, outside of tourism hot spots and/or who are offsetting their emissions and support NGOs could collect points and qualify for a “sustainable traveler” badge or a loyalty program, including the ratings that they receive as guests from their hosts.  

Providing sustainability information and training:

Airbnb should be providing sustainability training to its hosts and guests: At host days, with information in newsletters and training videos and on the website, it can empower its community of millions of people. Completed trainings should result in points and be part of the sustainable host badge and a sustainable traveler badge. 

Improve compliance and legality:

Airbnb should only have active listings which comply with local zoning requirements and tax laws and always support local authorities to make sure hosts comply with local tax laws, avoiding unfair advantages of non-compliant hosts.

Favor homesharers:

As they are arguably more sustainable, Airbnb should privilege hosts that offer only one apartment or rooms within the location that they live in, in search result rankings, fees and support. 

Report, collaborate and improve:

The company should improve its sustainability reporting and publish more ambitious sustainability efforts (current report) as well as estimating and optimizing the emissions and impact of its hosts and guests. It also should be cooperating within the industry to become not only net zero as a company, but to move the whole sector to do so.

4. Conclusion

Airbnb’s potential for change is huge: the carbon emissions linked to the travels booked on its platform are in the same order of magnitude as those of many western countries, the social sustainability impact being at least as significant. However, beyond a few blog articles and efforts within the company to address its small corporate footprint, Airbnb is not living up to the responsibility that comes with its enormous popularity among hosts and guests, missing out on business opportunities for responsible hosts and guests and itself and most importantly, the chance to make our planet a better place for us all. Time for Airbnb to step up its efforts - or for responsible hosts and guests to take their business elsewhere. 

Sebastian Olényi is hosting guests in his home while he has been traveling since 2003, is a host on Airbnb since 2011 and has been volunteering in the hosting community, giving e.g. presentations to other hosts on sustainability and tax compliance. Leading his sustainability consultancy sustentio and being part of the sustainable natives eG cooperative of sustainability consultants, he has been involved in the concept and implementation of Meta's Green Boost program mentioned in this article. He also has been briefly in contact with Chris Lehane, Nathan Blecharczyk & Ameet Konkar from Airbnb and with many hosts such as Till Zieger from the platform's host advisory board on the platform's disappointing sustainability performance in the past. Second to actual reactions and improvements by the platform, he is particularly curious if any reader catches the Star Trek and the Spider Man reference in the text.