Airbnb’s New House Rules Policy: What Hosts Can’t Do From November 20, 2026

What Airbnb Announced

On October 20, Airbnb published a Resource Center post titled “Important changes to house rules” and emailed hosts under a similar headline. The post is mostly about the new listing editor: seven standard rules covering maximum overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, commercial photography, and locking up at checkout. Anything else goes under Requests, which replaces the old checkout-instructions tab.

The post also gives Airbnb’s own examples of what counts as reasonable. Guests can be asked to put used dishes in the sink, gather used towels, separate trash into indoor bins, and turn off the air conditioning when they leave. They shouldn’t be asked to wash and put away dishes, strip beds or start laundry, take garbage off-site, or avoid using an advertised amenity.

That’s the part most hosts read. The part that changes how you run an Airbnb stay is in the two Help Center policies the post links to.

The Part the Email Didn’t Headline: Contracts, IDs and Guest Data

Airbnb’s “Limiting host-imposed contracts and other requirements” policy replaces the old Off-Platform Policy for bookings from November 20. It says, plainly, that home hosts may not ask guests to sign contracts, collect personal information, or impose other requirements except in limited circumstances.

Contracts. A separate rental agreement is generally not allowed. If one of the four exceptions applies, you upload the contract under Contracts in your listing settings, disclose its terms on the listing, and may be asked for evidence that the exception applies. Airbnb doesn’t require guests to sign it and won’t help you enforce it.

Personal data. Hosts may not solicit a guest’s phone number, home address, or email; passport, driver’s license, Social Security number, or photo; card or bank details beyond what the pricing transparency policy allows; background or credit checks; or biometric or health data. The only exceptions are complying with a law or documented HOA/building rule, or getting a signature on an allowed contract — and in both cases you have to say on the listing what you collect and why, collect nothing beyond that, and store and dispose of it securely.

ID at the door. You can physically look at a guest’s ID at check-in to confirm it’s them, if your Requests say you will. You can’t keep a digital or physical copy.

Apps and portals. You can’t require a third-party app or registration on another site to get in or to use a critical amenity. Keyless-entry apps are fine if you offer another way in on request. Optional in-stay apps — Airbnb names Sonos, Nest, and concierge apps — are fine. A Wi-Fi portal that asks for an email or other personal information is not, unless you’re a hotel or resort.

Reviews and side activity. No asking guests to review or survey the stay on a separate site. No timeshare presentations, subscriptions, or memberships. You can recommend local businesses as long as it’s optional and you disclose any referral fee or ownership interest.

Enforcement runs from education to warnings to suspending or removing listings, and suspending or removing the account for repeat offenses.

What’s Actually New, and What Was Already Banned

Some of this is being reported as if Airbnb just took guest contact details away from hosts. It didn’t — not this month. The old Off-Platform Policy already prohibited soliciting a guest’s email or mailing address after booking, using Airbnb-provided contact information for marketing, and signing guests up to a list. The anonymized @guest.airbnb.com email went away in 2020.

What’s new is that the workarounds hosts used to build a guest relationship anyway are now named and closed.

A rental agreement with a contact-details field. A Wi-Fi login that asks for an email. A check-in form that captures a phone number “for emergencies.” Each of those was a quiet way to end up with a guest list from Airbnb bookings. From November 20, each one is a policy violation with a listing flag attached.

What This Costs You

Airbnb’s host-only fee is 15.5% of the booking. For most of the hosts we talk to, that’s the number they think about when they weigh the platform. The November 20 policy adds a second cost that doesn’t show up in the payout: on an Airbnb booking, you now have no owned relationship with the guest at all.

No email to send a “ski season is back” note to next October. No phone number to text a last-minute opening to. No way to tell a guest who loved the place that you’d rather they booked direct next time, because you can’t take the conversation off the platform and you can’t collect the details that would let you. A guest who stayed three times through Airbnb is, from your side, three separate strangers.

That matters most for the hosts with the most to lose: anyone running multiple properties, anyone in a repeat-visit market — ski towns, lake towns, college towns, wine country — and anyone who has been quietly building a list for a direct booking site. The playbook that worked for that, a signed agreement and a Wi-Fi portal, is the playbook Airbnb just wrote out.

It also removes the leverage hosts used to manage guest behavior without going through Airbnb. No fines, no deposits, no chore list with a penalty behind it. Airbnb’s answer is AirCover for damage and its own enforcement for rule-breaking; you can cancel a reservation without penalty if a guest breaks a house rule or says before check-in that they intend to. Whether that’s enough depends on how much you trusted the old tools.

What You Can Still Do on an Airbnb Stay

The policy is strict on data and permissive on experience. Within the lines:

• Check ID in person at check-in, as long as your Requests say so.
• Offer a digital guidebook or concierge app as an optional tool during the stay. Airbnb’s policy explicitly names concierge apps as allowed. The guest chooses to use it; you can’t require it or gate entry behind it.
• Recommend local businesses, with any referral fee disclosed.
• Use the local-rules section of your listing to warn guests about HOA or municipal fines, without imposing your own.
• Message guests on-platform. House rules are now available as a quick reply.
• Cancel without penalty if a guest breaks a house rule.
• Earn the review. It’s the only part of the relationship Airbnb lets you keep, and it still compounds — into search placement, conversion, and pricing room.

What you can’t do, by any mechanism, is build a list from Airbnb guests.

What to Do Before November 20

1. Open the listing editor and read your rules as a guest would. Airbnb is already highlighting requests that don’t meet the new policy. Fix anything flagged; appeal if you have a context exception (bear country, water restrictions).
2. Delete chore lists and penalties. Strip beds, wash dishes, take trash out — gone. Fines, deposits, “$50 if you don’t…” — gone. Replace with the four permitted asks: dishes in the sink, towels gathered, trash in the indoor bins, AC off.
3. Decide what happens to your rental agreement. If you’re not in one of the four exceptions, drop it, and move whatever you actually need — max occupancy, quiet hours, no events, lock up at checkout — into the standard rules. If you are in an exception, upload it under Contracts and be ready to show why.
4. Remove email capture from your Wi-Fi. If your router or mesh system runs a captive portal that asks for an email, switch it to a plain password. Hotels and resorts are exempt; a four-bedroom house is not.
5. Audit your check-in flow. Any form that asks for a phone number, email, or ID photo is now a violation unless law or your HOA requires it, and if it does, say so on the listing.
6. If you check ID at the door, say so under Requests. The in-person check is allowed only if it’s disclosed before booking.
7. Look at bookings already on the calendar. Anything booked before November 20 runs under the old rules through the stay. Don’t retroactively drop a contract a guest already signed; just stop asking for new ones.
8. Keep guest experience inside the stay. A good digital guidebook, fast answers to questions, and a smooth check-in are all still yours to do, and they’re what earns the review.

The Bigger Picture

This is the third platform change in two months that moves cost or control from the host to the OTA. Airbnb moved everyone to a host-only 15.5% fee. Vrbo is moving all hosts to a single 12% commission with a rate-parity clause attached. Now Airbnb has formalized that, on its bookings, the guest is Airbnb’s.

The policy is defensible on its own terms. Guests shouldn’t be surprised by a contract after they’ve paid, and nobody wants their passport sitting in a host’s photo roll. But hosts should read it for what it is: the end of the halfway position where you listed on Airbnb and built your own guest base from it on the side. There are now two kinds of bookings. The ones where you keep the relationship, and the ones where you don’t.

That makes the question for 2027 simpler than it used to be. Growing a rental business was already shifting from more listings on more platforms to more guests you can actually reach. The ways to do that — on a direct booking site, through the guests you’ve already hosted — are what Charlie Butt lays out in how short-term rentals grow in 2027, and they’re the same ideas we covered for the tournament crowd in our post-FIFA guest retention strategy.

Inside the Airbnb stay, the guest experience is still yours. A digital guidebook that answers questions before they become messages is explicitly within Airbnb’s rules, and it’s the part of the relationship that still earns reviews, repeat requests, and the kind of stay guests tell people about.

The Bottom Line

From November 20, an Airbnb booking comes with Airbnb’s rules on what you can ask and nothing on who the guest is. Contracts, ID copies, Wi-Fi email capture, chore lists, and fines are out, and non-compliant listings get flagged to guests and pushed down in search.

Before the date:

• Clean up your listing editor — rules, requests, and any contract.
• Kill email capture on your Wi-Fi and in your check-in flow.
• Keep your guest experience strong inside the stay; it’s the only lever on an Airbnb booking you fully control.
• Decide how much of your 2027 you want to run on bookings where the guest is yours.

Have an Airbnb email or a flagged-listing notice that adds detail we’re missing? Send it to us.