Accessibility Policy - Airbnb Help Center (2024)

Our community is built on the principles of inclusion, belonging, and respect, which includes welcoming and supporting people with disabilities. In general, guests who require reasonable accommodations and services should not be discriminated against or denied service while using Airbnb.

In some jurisdictions, legal requirements may expand or limit the reasonable accommodations a Host must provide. Hosts and guests must comply with these legal requirements.

Service Animals and Emotional Support Animals

Service Animal: A dog or miniature horse that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities.

• What we allow:
  • Guests are allowed to be accompanied by service animals during a stay or Experience and are not required to disclose the presence of a service animal before booking. A Host may qualify for an exemption in certain circ*mstances — for instance, if the service animal directly threatens their health or safety.
  • Hosts are only allowed to ask the following about a guest’s need for a service animal:
    • Whether the guest requires their service animal because of a disability
    • What work or task the service animal has been trained to perform
  • Hosts and guests are responsible for understanding and complying with all applicable state and local laws, rules, and regulations.
    
• What we don’t allow:
  • When a guest is accompanied by a service animal, Hosts are not allowed to:
    • Refuse a reservation
    • Charge pet fees or other additional fees
    • Apply differential treatment
    • Use discriminatory language
    • Hold guests to different rules
  • A guest’s service animal must not be:
    • Out of control
    • Unhousebroken
    • Left alone at the listing without prior approval
    • Allowed into areas that are considered unauthorized to the guest
    • Allowed in a public space without being harnessed, leashed, or tethered and not under the guest’s control

Emotional Support Animal: An animal that provides companionship, relieves loneliness, or helps with depression, anxiety, or certain phobias but is not required to have special training to perform tasks that assist people with disabilities

• What we allow:
  • Unless the reservation is a stay in New York or California (USA) or another location where applicable law prohibits it:
    • Hosts may charge pet fees for a guest who is traveling with an emotional support animal
    • Hosts are allowed to decline the presence of emotional support animals from a stay or Experience
• What we don’t allow:
  • For jurisdictions where Hosts are required to accept emotional support animals (unless the Host has an exemption) a Host cannot:
    • Charge pet fees, decline a guest, or apply different rules, treatment, or behavior to a guest traveling with an emotional support animal
    • Ask for information or documentation about a guest’s emotional support animal beyond the questions outlined above for service animals
  • For jurisdictions where Hosts are required to accept emotional support animals, a guest’s emotional support animal must not be:
    • Out of control
    • Unhousebroken
    • Left alone at the listing without prior approval
    • Allowed into areas that are considered unauthorized to the guest
    • Allowed in a public space without being harnessed, leashed, or tethered and not under the guest’s control

Reasonable Accommodations

We encourage hosts and guests to communicate in advance of a booking about reasonable accommodations. Hosts should try to accommodate a guest’s reasonable requests around accessibility needs.

• What we allow:
  • Guests are allowed to request reasonable accommodations at a stay or Experience that would help them access a stay/Experience, communicate during a reservation, or participate in an Experience. Hosts are allowed to make a reasonable counter offer to a guest’s original reasonable accommodation request.
  • Hosts are allowed to refuse certain unreasonable or unattainable requests that:
    • Increase the safety risk to the Host or others
    • Fundamentally change the nature of an Experience or impact it for other guests
    • Require a structural modification to a building or listing
    • Require the Host to take on added responsibilities that are time-intensive or put a significant physical or financial burden on them
    • Ask a Host to violate local laws or HOA/building requirements
• What we don’t allow:
  • Hosts are not allowed to refuse a guest’s reasonable request for accommodations, when the request is specific, clearly expressed, made with sufficient notice, and is not unreasonable or unattainable (See our list of requests that qualify as unreasonable or unattainable above.)
  • Hosts are not allowed to commit to providing a reasonable accommodation and fail to fulfill it at the time of the reservation.
• Additional considerations:
  • A Host will not be penalized if the Host’s failure to make a reasonable accommodation is deemed out of their control or if the Host has objectively shown why the request is unreasonable or unattainable for them.

What happens when a Host or guest does not comply with our policies?

We ask our community to work together to make Airbnb as accessible as reasonably possible. Airbnb may take steps up to and including suspending or removing the Host or guest from the Airbnb platform if they are unwilling to comply with our policies.

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