Hosts regularly have listing photos removed for containing text overlays. The enforcement is real and consistent enough that it functions as a rule. The published policy basis for home listings, however, is less straightforward than most hosts assume — and understanding the gap between what is written and what is enforced is itself a platform literacy issue.
Hosts who do not know this happens get photos removed without understanding why. Hosts who do know work around it. This post is about knowing it.
Airbnb’s published Content Policy prohibits content that includes “superimposed company logos, links, or company names, created for the sole purpose of advertising a separate business or other commercial entity unrelated to the listing.” That is the closest published basis for home listing photo removals — and it is written narrowly. It targets commercial advertising overlays, not all text on photos.
The explicit prohibition against text on photos appears most clearly in Airbnb’s Services and Experiences standards, which require “high-quality color photos with no text on the images.” That article covers Experiences, not home listings. There is no equivalent standalone help article for home listings with the same plain language.
What hosts experience in practice, however, is broader enforcement. Photos with labeled floor plans, property maps, distance arrows, bed type labels, and other informational overlays are removed from home listings — not just commercial logos. Whether that enforcement happens under the Content Policy, through internal review standards, or some combination is not documented publicly. What is documented is that it happens.
Airbnb requires hosts who list accessibility features to submit photos of doorways with a tape measure visible in the frame to prove the doorway meets the stated dimensions. That is a photo with measurement information embedded in it — informational content added to a photo to help guests make a decision.
Airbnb publishes guidance on how to photograph accessibility features, including exactly how to do this. The platform recognizes that certain information helps guests determine whether a property meets their needs — and builds that recognition into its own requirements. The text-on-photos prohibition and the accessibility photo requirement exist in the same rulebook.
This is not an argument for violating the rule. It is context for understanding that the rule as written is broader than the problem it was designed to solve.
Below is a range of photo types that hosts have used or attempted to use to communicate useful information to guests — all of which can run into the text prohibition depending on how Airbnb reviews them.
None of these are promotional. None of them include contact information or advertising copy. All of them help a potential guest determine whether the property meets their needs before they book. The rule does not distinguish between these and a logo stamped across a hero photo.
One specific collision between this rule and good hosting practice is the date and time watermark that many hosts enable on their phone cameras for documentation purposes.
Timestamped photos taken after every clean are one of the most important documentation habits an STR host can build — they establish the before state for every guest stay and are your primary evidence in any damage dispute. But the timestamp watermark on those photos is text on a photo. It cannot go on your Airbnb listing as-is.
The workaround is straightforward: keep the original timestamped photo for your documentation library, and upload a copy with the timestamp removed for the listing. Two files, two purposes. We cover the full timestamped photo system in Timestamped Photos Before Every STR Check-In — Always Landscape.
The photo caption and listing description are where informational content belongs on an Airbnb listing. Airbnb provides a caption field for each photo — use it. A floor plan photo with no text overlay can still carry all the room and bed type information in the caption. A parking photo can describe the number of spaces, surface type, and trailer access in text below the image.
Captions are not as visually immediate as text on the photo itself. A guest scrolling quickly through photos may not stop to read a caption. That is a real limitation. But a caption that stays on the listing is more useful than a labeled photo that gets removed.
For content that genuinely requires visual annotation to be meaningful — a floor plan, a property map, an aerial with distances — some hosts post those as images in the host profile or on their property website and link to them from the listing description. Airbnb’s rules govern listing photos. They do not govern what a host publishes on their own site.
Timestamped documentation photos after every clean are non-negotiable — and there is a right way to handle them for listing use.
Always Landscape →This post is part of STR Host Guide: Scout. Setup. Stay. Stream. Coming soon on Amazon.