How We Vet Every Airbnb Guest: Our Exact 8-Step Procedure

The question every landlord asks before handing us their keys, usually within the first ten minutes, is some version of: "but who's actually going to be in my property?"

It's the right question. A short-let lives or dies on who walks through the door. So rather than offer the usual reassuring vagueness ("we carefully screen all guests"), here is our exact procedure, step by step, for every single reservation across every platform.

The 8 steps every guest goes through

1. Every guest uploads their ID. Government-issued photo identification, before check-in details are released. No ID, no key codes. There are no exceptions, whichever platform the booking came from.

2. They take a selfie. A live photo, taken during verification, not an uploaded picture from a camera roll.

3. AI matches the ID to the selfie. Our verification technology compares the document photo against the live selfie to confirm they're the same person. This kills the oldest trick in the book: booking with borrowed or stolen credentials.

4. It confirms the verified person is the person who booked. The match is run against the reservation itself, so the name on the booking, the face on the ID and the person holding the phone all line up. Third-party bookings don't slip through unannounced.

5. It flags guests who live within 10 miles of the property. This one surprises people, and it's one of the most useful signals we have. Most genuine visitors are travelling to Manchester. When someone books a night five minutes from their own address, especially a weekend night, the most common explanation is a party. The system flags it automatically, and a human looks before anything is confirmed.

6. It verifies the guest's age against the reservation policy. Our properties carry minimum-age requirements. Verification confirms the lead guest actually meets them, rather than taking a date of birth on trust.

7. We ask the reason for the visit, and who will be staying. A simple, human question that does a lot of work. Honest guests answer it instantly, "concert at Co-op Live, me and my partner", and the answer sets expectations on both sides. Evasive or contradictory answers get a follow-up conversation.

8. We take a damage deposit. Before arrival, every reservation is secured with a deposit. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's returned untouched. The hundredth time, your property is protected, and the deposit conversation itself filters out guests with the wrong intentions.

A booking that fails any of these steps doesn't get keys. Sometimes that means a conversation and a sensible explanation, a guest staying locally during a house move, for instance, will pass step 5 with no drama. Sometimes it means we decline the booking and re-open the dates. A blocked Saturday is far cheaper than a party.

Why we go this far

We've hosted over 33,000 nights since May 2017, and the honest lesson of nearly a decade is this: almost all guests are great, and the small minority who aren't can do disproportionate damage, to the property, to the neighbours, and to your ability to keep hosting at all.

So the procedure exists to protect three things, in order:

Your property. The right guests treat a home like a home. Verification, the visit-reason question and the deposit mean the people staying are who they say they are, there for the reason they gave, with their own money on the line.

Your neighbours and the neighbourhood. This is the part of vetting most managers don't talk about, and we think it matters most. A short-let only works long-term if the building and the street barely notice it's there. Declining the wrong bookings is how we stay welcome, and how the complaints, the freeholder letters and the licensing pressure that follow party houses never start.

Your ability to host long-term. Our philosophy is simple: we'll always work to maximise what a property earns, but never at the detriment of the neighbourhood it sits in. Chasing every possible booking is a short-term game that ends with restrictions, soured neighbour relations, or worse. Turning away the wrong guests is how the right ones keep coming for years.

What this means for you as an owner

In practice, the vetting layer is invisible to owners, it simply runs, on every booking, as part of our guest vetting and booking management. What you notice is the absence of drama: no party aftermath, no mystery guests, no 9am call from the building manager.

And when something does go wrong, a broken glass, a stained sofa, the documentation from this process (verified identity, signed terms, deposit on file) is exactly what makes recovery straightforward rather than hopeful.

Guests notice it too, in the best way. Serious travellers expect professional check-in processes; the only people put off by ID verification are the people we built it to put off.

The standard, not the upsell

One thing worth saying plainly: this is not a premium tier. Every property we manage gets the full 8-step procedure on every reservation as part of our flat 15% + VAT management fee. We wouldn't manage a property any other way, most of our portfolio is in buildings and on streets we know personally, and our name is on the guest's phone, not just yours.

If you've been self-managing and your current vetting is "Airbnb seems to check something, I think", that's the gap we'd close first.