Airbnb hosts reject guests with disabilities more often, researchers say

Airbnb hosts have already been found to discriminate against guests with "black-sounding" names, and now it sounds like host discrimination extends to guests with disabilities as well.

A study by researchers at Rutgers, highlighted in The New York Times today, found that guests who disclose a disability are less likely to be approved for a room and more likely to be outright rejected.

Guests who didn’t disclose a disability received “pre-approval” from an Airbnb host 74.5 percent of the time. But that number dipped sharply for guests who disclosed a disability. A person with dwarfism had a 60.9 percent approval rate, and a person who was blind had a 49.7 percent approval rate.

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