When you stay in an Airbnb, one of the foremost lodging options for travelers now, the worst you expect is a broken AC, not enough towels, or maybe a particularly grueling climb to a walk-up apartment. But last summer, reports of a mysterious safety team working behind the scenes at the hospitality company pointed to something grittier—a surprising number of violent crimes taking place at Airbnbs, requiring extensive crisis control.
This is the basis for a new series from producer Uri Singer’s Passage Pictures, which will be inspired by the shadowy crisis response team at Airbnb and how they handle crimes like sexual assaults, robberies, and shootings.
Cleverly titled Enjoy Your Stay, the series will be written by Wall Street Journal reporter Will Connors. It’s Connors’ first foray into screenwriting, but he has a lengthy résumé as a journalist covering political and business corruption. An anonymous source, formerly a member of Airbnb’s security team, is consulting on the project.
“We believe this project is an important contemporary story that needs to be told, to show both the victims’ and the crisis team employees’ stories,” Singer said in a statement.
In June 2021, Bloomberg published an explosive, in-depth investigation into the brand’s secret “black box” security team composed of 100 agents in cities all over the world. According to the article, the team’s strategy is essentially throwing money at whatever problem comes their way, taking extreme measures to clean up crimes. According to the article, “Team members have the autonomy to spend whatever it takes to make a victim feel supported, including paying for flights, accommodation, food, counseling, health costs, and sexually transmitted disease testing for rape survivors.”
It goes on to describe the extreme lengths to which agents have gone in crisis response scenarios, advising “guests hiding in wardrobes or running from secluded cabins after being assaulted by hosts.” They have reportedly patched up bullet holes in walls and hired “body-fluid crews” (that’s a thing, apparently?) to scrub blood from surfaces.
It all sounds very Taken-starring-Liam Neeson, which—based on the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for true crime content—means Enjoy Your Stay will probably be a hit.
