A host from Airbnb finds fault with the guest because of “hatred of Russian.” The guest appeals against the review and … gets banned

In early January, a Ukrainian entrepreneur Mykyta Semenov rented an apartment in Thailand using the Airbnb service. After the trip, he received a sharply negative review from the host, allegedly for violations in the use of the accommodation. In a hidden review, the host added “hatred of Russian” and nationalism.

Mykyta appealed against the review, indicating that it contained hostility on a national basis, but the service did not delete the review and instead blocked the account of the Ukrainian user. Mykyta described his situation on Facebook. An editor of AIN.UA contacted the user and found out the details.

How the accommodation was rented

From January 4 to January 8, Mykyta rented the accommodation in Phuket. For trips abroad, he always uses the Airbnb service, which allows renting apartments or houses directly from the hosts. Before this incident, Mykyta has booked accommodation for about a hundred times, his account had about 50 positive comments from the hosts.

But this time it has turned out in another way. After the guests left, the host, registered as Nik Maximov on the service, left a devastating review in which he mentioned spoiled mattresses, a dirty toilet, late check-out, and refusal to pay the deposit.

The owner also added a hidden review to this comment, visible only to the user, that the guest (Mykyta) “was wound by a greeting in Russian” (while Mykyta communicated with him first in English, then in Russian).

According to Mykyta, the hosts themselves behaved inappropriately from the moment they had found out that the Ukrainians would rent a place: “The conflict began from the moment the host’s wife called the guests Russians. My girlfriend replied to this that we are from Ukraine and that is a different country. Since then, there have been a lot of problems in correspondence and calls. They constantly demanded something from us: either a deposit on the 3rd day or an overpayment for electricity.”

As Mykyta told AIN.UA, all accusations from the host were untrue, including ones regarding the deposit: “We were ready to give a deposit even for 2 or 3 days, it was peanuts, 400 baht, less than $13, and the host wrote that we did not have that amount of money for three people.”

What happened later

At the end of January 2020, Mykyta tried to dispute the review through the support team of Airbnb. He was told that they would make an inquiry and contact the host. On February 5, the service replied to the user’s request that it could not disclose the details of the inquiry:

Mykyta applied to the support team again, asking for his case to be considered not by the support from the Russian Federation.

After the support stopped responding, Mykyta commented on the host’s review, indicating his bias towards Ukrainians.

On February 18, an employee from the Russian support team contacted him again and informed him that his account was being blocked because of national discrimination.

The user hopes that by telling the story in public, he will draw attention to the problems in the work of the Airbnb support team.