I bet the reason is that most airbnb hosts haven't been checking or asking for riders, since they're violating local ordinances anyway, and riding in a rather g

I bet the reason is that most airbnb hosts haven't been checking or asking for riders, since they're violating local ordinances anyway, and riding in a rather grey area. The risk is small, so most have just been eating it. So who has been checking? People who have had repeated problems that have some specific ongoing source or reason due to something about their property or the way they conduct themselves. If so, these people are certainly about to file a claim. This means this is a terribly toxic pool of people, i.e. not the whole airbnb community. if this is true, airbnb has a really easy solution: just offer its entire customer base to an insurer, which solves the problem that most of its customers haven't been signing up for special coverage. This is actually close to what it's doing, though with the difference is that it sounds like it's being white-labelled. Maybe there is no national insurance company that can accept every airbnb in every market, which is why airbnb doesn't use the name of one for its own program.