Airbnb apologises for ‘slave cabin’ listed as luxury rental | Watch

Airbnb has apologised for a listing that advertised an 1830s slave cabin as a luxury vacation rental. The company came under fire this week after a TikTok video that first drew attention to the listing went viral online, reports ABC News.

TikTok user Wynton Yates, a US-based entertainment attorney, put the spotlight on the Airbnb slave cabin listing by sharing screenshots on TikTok. “How is this okay in anyone’s mind to rent this out, a place where human beings were kept as slaves?” he says in the clip which was viewed nearly 3 million times on TikTok.

Yates slammed the tone-deaf listing of the Panther Burn Cottage, part of the extant Panther Burn Plantation, which was moved to its current location in Greenville, Mississippi. "This particular structure, the Panther Burn Cabin, is an 1830s slave cabin from the extant Panther Burn Plantation to the south of the Belmont. It has also been used as a tenant sharecroppers cabin and a medical office for local farmers and their families to visit the plantation doctor," a screenshot of the listing reads.
The listing had a stellar rating of 4.97 out of 5 and several glowing reviews, which Yates again slammed as tone-deaf.

“A slave cabin is elegant?” says an incredulous Yates in the video, referring to one such review which referred to the cabin as “historic but elegant.”

According to Forbes, Airbnb removed the listing the same day that Yates posted his video. Properties that formerly housed the enslaved have no place on Airbnb,” the company said in a statement. “We apologize for any trauma or grief created by the presence of this listing, and others like it, and that we did not act sooner to address this issue.”