Airbnb on Wednesday announced it had teamed up with the NAACP, a move made following complaints of discrimination, the Washington Post reported.
The partnership will aim to increase listings in minority communities.
"For too long, black people and other communities of color have faced barriers to access new technology and innovations," Derrick Johnson, interim president and chief executive of the NAACP, said in a prepared statement.
The home-sharing service has come under fire for incidents of bias. Just this month, an Airbnb host was fined $5,000 for canceling a reservation in February because of a woman's ethnicity. The woman, Tami Barker, texted Dyne Suh minutes before she arrived and wrote, "I wouldn't rent to u if u were the last person on earth," and, "One word says it all. Asian."
Last January, a study from the Harvard Business School found that Airbnb users with distinctly African-American names were roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted as guests than people with distinctly white names.
Local NAACP chapters will work with Airbnb to promote travel and offer new economic opportunities to communities of color by launching a community campaign educating minorities on the benefits of home-sharing.
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