Airbnb blocks Ukrainians due to citizenship

Ukrainian media Liga.Tech writes about the problem.

In September 2023, the American company Airbnb, which provides a platform for daily rental housing for tourists, signed a memorandum with Ukraine's State Agency for Tourism Development. It stipulates that after the war, Airbnb will advertise Ukraine as a tourist destination. But while at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Airbnb helped Ukrainians with housing in Europe, the company is now blocking Ukrainians and preventing them from renting housing even within Ukraine. Moreover, Ukrainians are being contacted by Russian-speaking customer service operators.

“Olha, a resident of Kyiv, lost access to her Airbnb profile. After uploading a passport photo, she received a notification that this type of document is not supported. She could not submit a complaint,” Liga.Tech writes.

Artem, a soldier who was planning to rent a house in Dnipro during his vacation, said that he tried twice to restore access to his account and create a new one, but Airbnb blocked him after uploading a Ukrainian document, according to the publication.

Mentions of similar problems can be found on social media. In September 2022, Ukrainian Yulia Myronenko shared her negative experience with Airbnb. The support team explained to her that the system does not support users with Ukrainian documents: "It doesn't matter how many months you've been out of Ukraine. This is related to your document, which has all the information about you.”

At the same time, there are many active Airbnb ads in Ukraine with reviews in recent months. So, Airbnb does not block all Ukrainian users. However, in the community center on the service's website, you can find messages from Ukrainians whose rental ads have been blocked.