AirBnB terminates Bangkok Superhost Kelly Kampen for no apparent reason

Bangkok AirBnB Superhost Kelly Kampen went public yesterday with his allegedly unjustified termination from the accommodation service.

Kelly Kampen, the Superhost who was featured on Huffington Post in January, spilled the beans in a blog post here. He said he received a phone call from AirBnB office in San Francisco last Friday coldly informing him that his account would be terminated from the accommodation rental service he had been a part of for the past two years. No reason for the termination was given.

The phone call Friday was followed by a scripted e-mail saying his termination would take effect the next day. His future bookings were cancelled and he was offered fifty percent of future earnings as compensation, he said. Kelly has written emails to the CEO and AirBnB Thailand country manager, but no explanation has been given.

“No one from AirBnB has been in touch with me since the last email received on Sunday,” Kelly told Coconuts Bangkok today. “I still have hope that they will reach out and correct this or tell me what happened. While they have not handled this in the greatest manner, I still love the AirBNB community. It is sad that I have had to go this route in hopes of a response.”

“I have no idea why my account was terminated,” he said. “All my interactions with my guest have been nothing but great, it could have been a guest [who reported my account], but I feel that’s unlikely. It could have also been someone else. All of these are possibilities. It could have also been an automatic algorithm that just flagged the account incorrectly.”

Kelly Kampen is a well-known brand evangelist and super user of the sometimes controversial accommodation-finding service that allows ordinary people to rent out their properties to travelers. In January, he joyfully announced in a blog post that had made nearly THB1.5 million in two years by hosting over 700 guests.

Kelly has been writing articles, guesting on podcasts, and was meant to speak at the AirBnB Open in Paris this year, before he was abruptly kicked out of the community.

We have reached out to AirBnB and are waiting for their response.



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