A young man whose father died while staying in an AirBnB says the company does little to protect the safety of people who stay in homes advertised on its site.
Zak Stone’s dad died when he hopped on a rope swinging hanging from a dead tree, and collapsed onto his head.
In an essay for Medium, Zak says the rope swing was “hanging from a tree as casually as baggy jeans … the swing was the essence of leisure, of Southern hospitality, of escape. When my father decided to give it a try on Thanksgiving morning, the trunk it was tied to broke in half and fell on his head, immediately ending most of his brain activity.
“I was in bed when my mom found him. Her screams brought me down to the yard where I saw the tree snapped in two and his body on the ground. I knelt down and pulled him up by the shoulders. Blood sprayed my blue sweatshirt and a few crumpled autumn leaves. We were face-to-face, but his head hung limply, his right eye dislodged, his mouth full of blood, his tongue swirling around with each raspy breath.”
Zak says he decided to speak out after feeling “isolated by the burden of this story and my sense of obligation to go public with it, but with an unclear aim. Am I ‘raising awareness,’ in the familiar path of the victim speaking out? And if so, to what end? What will sharing my story really mean for Airbnb? Could the company, with its reportedly $24 billion valuation and plans to go public, do more to ensure the safety of the properties where millions of guests stay each year?”
Zak notes that hotel rooms are standardised for safety, and monitored by staff. There have been other incidents at Airbnb properties: when an American man was bit by a dog left behind at a homeshare in Argentina this March, Airbnb refused to cover his medical expenses until after The New York Times began inquiring.
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