Airbnb and Service Animals

[Jake DeAtley]

I am an Airbnb host and am concerned about getting taken advantage of when it comes to service animals. I have reviewed the Airbnb policies and they state that hosts generally cannot deny guests with service animals, but we also cannot request documentation to verify the authenticity. I have a serious concern about this policy due to the nature of short term rentals and having various guests that may have allergic reactions. Does anyone have any personal experience with this? I personally think its ridiculous that as a host we cannot deny service animals and also cannot verify if the pet is in fact a legitimate service animal. I understand the policy is similar with long term rentals, but that's not as big of a deal to me as you dont have to worry about a new guest freaking out about allergies.  Thanks in advance for the input! 

Key words: Airbnb, STR, Olympia, Washington, Thurston, VRBO, Tumwater, Pierce, Lewis, Bed and Breakfast

[Julie McCoy]

There are very specific rules regarding service animals that are set by the ADA, an authority well above AirBNB.  You MAY NOT ask for documentation about a service animal.  You MAY ask IF an animal is a service animal, and you may ask what specific task the animal is trained to perform.  

See: https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm

That said, there's a couple of loopholes.  I don't have the source material right now, but I believe that if you are a private owner of three or fewer vacation rental properties, you are not obligated to abide by the commercial standard regulations for service animals.  

Also, with AirBNB specifically, when I inquired about this they instructed me to include verbiage in my listing in the vein of: NO ANIMALS of any kind are allowed. The property is allergy free due to owner's family being highly allergic to animal hair, dander, feathers and the like. This poses a severe health hazard to host's family members and therefore there are no exceptions to this rule. You will not be allowed to check in, your reservation will be canceled and a $200 deep cleaning fee will be assessed.

All my listings include this language, and I've very rarely had a question about a service animal (and have never had to host one).