Host Guarantee

The Host Guarantee covered damage to a host's property caused by guests, up to a stated limit, on eligible bookings. It sat alongside a separate host protection insurance programme for liability, and hosts had to understand both to know where they stood.

Its reputation among hosts was mixed, largely because the evidence requirements were not obvious from the marketing. That gap between headline number and practical experience is the thread that runs through the Host Guarantee guide.

AirCover for Hosts brought the two strands together: host damage protection for guest-caused damage to your property, and host liability insurance for injury and third-party property damage where you are responsible.

The headline limits are higher and the branding is cleaner, but the substance a host has to get right is unchanged: prove the damage was caused by the guest, file inside the window, ask the guest through the Resolution Center first, and document the cost with something other than your own estimate. The current terms are set out in the Airbnb damage policy guide.

Search results and community answers written under the old programme still describe its deadlines and processes. A host following that advice can easily miss the current filing window, use a process that no longer exists, or expect a level of cover that was never carried over.

The same applies to security deposits, which disappeared from the booking flow in the same era; the history and its consequences are in security deposit and do Airbnb security deposits still exist in 2026.

Treat any guidance that names the Host Guarantee as historical unless it also names the current programme. Check the dates on anything you read, including on this site, and prefer sources that state which rules they are describing.

The parts of old advice that still hold are the unglamorous ones: document before and after, get third-party costings, file early, keep the message thread factual. Those were true then, they are true now, and they are covered in the first-damage 24-hour playbook.