Introduction

Fire continues to be a major source of injury and destruction in the USA. In 2015, there were over 1 300 000 fires, which caused over 2500 deaths and over US$14 billion in property damage.1 Most fire deaths occur in residential structures. Hotel and motel fires represent approximately 1% of structural fires and result in annual losses of nine civilian deaths, 120 civilian injuries and US$84 million in direct property damage.2 Settings such as hotels have specific challenges with respect to fire and injury, including the fact that guests are often unfamiliar with their surroundings and the venue’s layout. To help mitigate these challenges, hotels in the USA have standards that legally require fire protection specifications such as posted fire escape routes, fire doors, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, fire sprinkler systems and exit passageways.3 The same is not true for privately owned short-term rental properties now available through peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations. The emergence of P2P services, such as Airbnb, have made it easy for hosts to rent all or part of a private home as an alternative to a hotel. However, these emerging hospitality settings are not uniformly regulated across the USA raising the question what this means for injury prevention and fire safety.

Airbnb is the world’s leading online P2P hospitality service; founded in August of 2008 in San Francisco, Airbnb has over four million venues, in 65 000 cities, in 191 countries.4 Airbnb reports that approximately 660 000 Airbnb listings are in the USA.4 It has been highlighted that Airbnb hosts may not comply with the fire safety requirements regulating hotels.5 Airbnb venues are typically private homes, and therefore any fire safety requirements are more likely to be aligned with requirements for residential houses. Statutes and codes for smoke alarms required in residential houses vary by the type of smoke alarms to location (eg, on every floor) and person responsible (eg, owner/occupant) state by state.6 These regulations leave some ambiguity about Airbnb rentals for safety precautions, especially if they are not owner occupied. Some municipalities in the USA regulate Airbnb through business licenses, building and housing standards and zoning rules, permits or taxes,7 but most venues are not regulated.8 Public health concerns about Airbnb have been documented, including exposing guests to second-hand smoke.9

Airbnb hosts describe many features of their accommodations, including if there is parking, Wi-Fi or a pool. Airbnb hosts can further report on their profile if their venue has certain amenities such as smoke detectors. Airbnb has stated, ‘We strongly encourage all hosts to instal smoke and CO detectors in their listings, but we don’t require hosts to show proof that they have these devices in their space right now’.10 During 2016 and 2017, Airbnb conducted fire safety campaigns and distributed, free of cost, smoke detector and CO detectors to hosts.11

Concerns voiced about the risk of fires in Airbnb have been published in the press12, and hosts have detailed how fires in their Airbnb have impacted their lives. Airbnb hosts who have experience with guests starting a fire in their home have an online discussion forum. Given the documented life-saving benefits of working smoke alarms and requirements for them in other types of accommodations, it is valuable to assess the prevalence of these and other safety amenities in Airbnb properties.13 The current study addresses that gap by using existing data reports to determine the proportion of hosts who report having safety amenities in their Airbnb accommodations in a sample of cities across the USA.

Methods

Results

The proportion of amenities across the sample and in each city is reported in table 1. Across all cities in the sample, smoke detectors were the most prevalent amenity in Airbnb venues, ranging from a low of 74.4% in Austin to a high of 90.2% in Nashville. Across the sample, roughly half of the venues reported the presence of a CO monitor; cities with the lowest prevalence included Austin (36.9%), Washington, DC (43.4%) and New Orleans (46.9%). The cities with the highest prevalence of CO detectors were Denver (73.9%), Seattle (64.3%) and Chicago (64.2%). Fire extinguishers were less common; the prevalence of fire extinguishers ranged from approximately 29% in New York City to over 70% in Austin. Portland, Oregon was the only city in the sample to have first-aid kits present in more than half of the venues.

Discussion

The majority of online Airbnb profiles report the presence of smoke detectors (approximately 80%) and CO detectors (approximately 58%); however, this is substantially lower than the universal requirement for hotels, all must have smoke detectors. Less than half of venues report having a fire extinguisher. Some online discussions about fire extinguishers in Airbnb settings suggest that hosts put their Wi-Fi password on the fire extinguisher to make sure guests know where it is.

Nashville and Portland’s relatively high presence of smoke detectors was notable and may be explained by each city’s requirement for a permit to register an Airbnb venue. The Nashville permitting process, amended in February 2015, requires hosts to include a drawing of the Airbnb venue, showing the locations of smoke detectors.15 Portland’s ordinance from February 2015 requires Airbnb venues instal a smoke detector in each bedroom to be rented to overnight guests, interconnected with a smoke detector in an adjacent hallway, common area or immediate vicinity of sleeping rooms. The city of Portland also requires CO alarms to be located on a floor of a dwelling located in each bedroom or within 15 feet outside of each bedroom door.16

There are some limitations to consider in interpreting these findings. The data are from a wide-ranging time period and only present a snapshot of the venues available for each city. Also, there is no validation of the accuracy of the host’s reporting of the presence of the selected amenities or if they are in working order. Further, hosts in dwellings such as apartments or condominiums, where certain safety features are required by law, may not report the presence of safety amenities if they are installed and maintained by their facility manager. Future research should monitor the prevalence of these amenities over time, particularly as cities enact regulations for P2P accommodations. Future research should include some validation measures.

This study reports fire safety issues for Airbnb venues in America; however, Airbnb is an international platform and fires occur worldwide. Future research could further explore this issue in other countries and jurisdictions.

The amenities selected for this study include those that are evidence based, required by National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards for hotels and homes and/or recommended by safety experts. Thus, the low proportions reported from some cities are troubling and suggests the need for further investigation and intervention. Distributing safety information and products to hosts is an initial step, but the rates reported here suggest that Airbnb and other similar P2P models should consider requiring safety regulations for hosts. Airbnb should adopt NFPA codes 72 (National Fire alarm and Signalling Code)17 and 720 (Standard for the Installation of Carbon Monoxide Detection and Warning Equipment).18 There are other possible regulatory mechanisms that could be used to regulate Airbnb venues, including building codes that require sprinkler systems, or state or local laws that mandate fire safety amenities in the home.17 Jurisdictions without regulations should be made aware of the low prevalence of some of these amenities and the need to strengthen their regulations and enforcement. Finally, public information efforts to make guests more aware of the importance of these safety amenities could facilitate demand for them, which might also increase the number of hosts who offer them.