Airbnb has announced the global expansion of one of its major safety features, the Urgent Support Line, to 11 new languages. The one-touch feature within the Airbnb app was first developed in 2020, and offers Hosts and guests, in an emergency during active reservations, direct access to the company's Community Support Safety team within 30 seconds.
Initially, the safety feature was only available in English, but now it is expanding to Airbnb users with either Hungarian, Czech, Italian, German, Malay, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, French, Brazilian Portuguese or Japanese as their primary language.
The announcement from Airbnb mentioned that:
Safety issues during Airbnb reservations are extremely rare, but when they happen, we provide quick support from our highly-trained crisis support team members to help our Hosts and guests de-escalate the situations and prioritize their safety. For example, situations where we strongly encourage use of the Urgent Support Line include threats to physical safety, like an unauthorized party in progress or a violation of privacy.
Airbnb users can use this feature only during active Airbnb reservations as "it appears within the Safety Center of the app 24 hours prior to check-in, and it disappears 24 hours after check-out". If the users call the Urgent Support Line with non-urgent problems, the support team transfers them over to the general Community Support line.
Users can also utilize the Local Emergency Services feature that is available to aid guests to contact local emergency services in 34 geographies. To read more about Airbnb's Safety initiatives, head over to the dedicated webpage here.
