host damage protection

AirCover for Hosts has two distinct halves. Host damage protection reimburses damage to your property and belongings caused by a guest, up to $3 million per stay. Host liability insurance responds, up to $1 million, when a guest is injured or their property is damaged and you are found responsible. They are different products with different processes, and a claim filed on the wrong one is refused on that basis alone.

The full breakdown of both is in the Airbnb damage policy guide, and host liability insurance covers the liability side on its own terms.

There is no premium, no deductible and no policy document you can hold up in a dispute. In exchange, there is also no adjuster acting in your interest, no contractual obligation to indemnify you fully, and no appeal to a regulator. It is a platform program applied at the platform's discretion within published terms.

The practical consequence is that the burden of proof sits entirely with the host, and the standard is documentary. This is why experienced hosts carry a real policy behind the program rather than instead of it; AirCover versus host insurance compares the two layers directly.

Four requirements come up in almost every decision. The damage has to be caused by a guest rather than by wear, age or a building failure. The claim has to be filed within 14 days of the responsible guest's checkout, or before the next guest checks in, whichever comes first. The guest has to have been asked to pay through the Resolution Center first, with 72 hours to respond. And the cost has to be documented by someone other than you.

Miss the deadline and nothing else matters, which is why the 14-day filing window is the first thing to check. The most common substantive refusal is that the damage reads as wear and tear.

Reimbursement on used goods generally follows depreciated value rather than the price of a new replacement. A four-year-old television is valued as a four-year-old television, while a contractor's invoice for a repair tends to survive review much closer to its face value, because a service has no age.

That asymmetry should shape what you claim. See actual cash value and depreciation for the arithmetic, and how much AirCover actually pays for worked examples by item type.

Damage protection applies to stays booked on the platform. A direct booking taken through your own site has nothing behind it, which surprises hosts in the middle of a claim rather than before one. Ordinary wear, your own building and contents risks such as fire or storm, and anything filed outside the window are all outside it too, and loss of income is treated narrowly.

For the channels the program never touches, see direct-booking damage with no AirCover and damage protection across platforms compared.