As the state capital and South Carolina’s second most populated city, Columbia draws steady visitor traffic, and short-term rentals have multiplied to meet it. But when a guest is hurt at an Airbnb or vacation rental because of an unsafe condition, multiple questions regarding responsibility arise.
South Carolina premises law may allow a claim against the host, but these cases add a layer most premises claims do not: that of platform insurance. The Arndt Law Firm represents guests injured at short-term rentals across Columbia and Richland County, helping them recover compensation and guiding them on how to file a successful claim.
A paying guest at a short-term rental occupies a position that South Carolina premises law treats favorably.
Since the guest is on the property for the host's financial benefit, the guest is generally an invitee, a category that is owed a reasonable duty of care. That means the host must use reasonable care to keep the property safe. This includes inspecting for hazards, fixing dangerous conditions, and warning of dangers that cannot be immediately corrected.
This duty has real content in the short-term rental setting: a host who rents a property to strangers is responsible for ensuring that the stairs are sound, the railings secure, the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors functional, the walkways clear, and any amenities like pools, hot tubs, decks, and grills reasonably safe.
A host cannot simply hand over the keys and disclaim responsibility for the condition of the property; the duty to provide reasonably safe premises runs with the rental. Someone who rents a flat near the University of South Carolina or a house in Ravenwood has to make sure that it is safe for guests.
The reasonable-care standard can have real bite in a short-term rental case: guests are unfamiliar with the property, do not know where hazards lie, and rely entirely on the host to have addressed them, which makes the host's duty to inspect and warn particularly important.
A loose step that a long-term resident would learn to avoid is a genuine danger to a guest who has never seen it, and the law accounts for that reliance in measuring what the host owed.
This reliance cuts against a defense that hosts and their insurers sometimes raise, which is that the guest should have noticed and avoided the hazard.
A guest arriving at an unfamiliar property at night, navigating stairs and rooms they have never seen, is not in the same position as someone who knows a space intimately, and the law's recognition of the invitee relationship reflects that a host who invites paying guests must make the property reasonably safe for people who do not know it.
The duty to warn is especially meaningful here because a hazard the host knows about but a guest cannot reasonably discover (an unmarked step, a faulty railing, a pool with no functioning safeguard) is exactly the kind of danger the host is obligated to address or disclose.
In a short-term rental injury claim, it is central to measure the host's conduct against their duty, rather than against an assumption that guests should fend for themselves.
Short-term rental injuries arise from different hazards, many tied to the features that make these properties appealing. Falls are the most common, from defective or poorly lit stairs, slippery surfaces, uneven flooring, and unsecured rugs. A fall on a defective stairway of a two-story house can cause serious injury, particularly to a guest unfamiliar with the layout.
Other appealing amenities are a frequent source of serious injuries. Swimming pools and hot tubs carry drowning and slip risks, particularly when they lack required safeguards or are poorly maintained, and decks, balconies, and porches can fail when they are not properly built or maintained.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, between 2021 and 2023, more than 70 percent of fatal drownings among children younger than 15 occurred in residential settings, such as a home, the house of a family member or friend, or a neighbor's residence, the very setting a vacation rental recreates for a family staying for a weekend.
A rental with a backyard pool or hot tub that lacks a compliant fence, a self-latching gate, or working safety equipment can be extremely dangerous, and ensuring those safeguards are in place before paying guests, especially children, ever arrive is the host's responsibility.
Grills, fire pits, and outdoor features add burn and injury risks that a host is expected to manage.
Carbon monoxide (CO) from faulty heating or appliances is a hidden and potentially fatal danger when detectors are absent or non-functional. The CDC says that, each year, 400 Americans die from unintentional CO poisoning not linked to fires, and more than 14,000 are hospitalized.
Also, defective furniture, inadequate lighting, and unmarked hazards around the property cause injuries to guests who do not know the space.
Negligent security can also be an issue at a rental in an area where foreseeable criminal activity was not reasonably addressed. Each of these turns on whether the host met the duty to provide a reasonably safe property.
After being injured because of a hazard at a short-term rental injury you can recover both economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages cover medical expenses from emergency treatment through future care, lost wages during recovery, and reduced earning capacity. Non-economic damages compensate for the harm that does not appear on a bill: pain and suffering, emotional distress, and the loss of enjoyment of life.
What sets short-term rental injury claims apart from ordinary premises cases is the platform insurance that may apply.
Airbnb provides host liability coverage, part of its AirCover for Hosts program, that offers up to one million dollars in coverage when a host is found legally responsible for a guest's injury during a stay booked on the platform. This coverage applies automatically to bookings made through Airbnb and can be a significant source of recovery for an injured guest.
Vrbo offers comparable liability coverage for bookings made through its system.
This platform coverage has important limits, which is why understanding it matters. The coverage generally applies only to stays booked through the platform, not to direct bookings arranged outside it, and it applies during the booking period rather than before or after.
It also contains exclusions, such as for intentional harm and certain other categories, and because the policy is the platform's rather than the host's own, the platform administers the claim. These features make the analysis of which coverage applies a real part of the case.
Beyond the platform coverage, the host may carry other insurance. Many hosts hold short-term rental policies or homeowner's coverage, though standard homeowner's policies often exclude short-term rental activity, which can create disputes about whether the host's personal insurance responds.
Identifying every potentially applicable policy, the platform coverage, the host's short-term rental or homeowner's policy, and any others, is central to a short-term rental injury claim, because the available coverage determines what the injury can actually recover.
The way these claims are administered creates its own challenges for an injured guest. Because the platform's coverage is the platform's policy rather than the host's, the platform controls how a claim is handled and how much it pays, and the injured guest is not a named insured with the usual policy rights.
At the same time, a serious injury can exceed the platform's coverage limit, leaving a gap that the host's own insurance or another responsible party's insurance must fill.
This coordination of multiple coverage sources is one of the features that most distinguishes a short-term rental injury claim from an ordinary premises case.
In a typical premises case against a business, there is usually a single commercial policy to look to, but a short-term rental injury may implicate the platform's program, the host's separate short-term rental or homeowner's coverage, a property manager's policy, and others, each with its own terms, limits, and exclusions.
A claim that stops at the platform's coverage without examining the other layers may leave significant resources unexamined, which is why mapping the full insurance picture early matters so much.
Airbnb offers host liability coverage up to a million dollars for covered guest-injury claims, part of what the company calls AirCover for Hosts, and VRBO offers similar protection. Whether it applies depends on the program's terms and the facts, which is why these claims should be evaluated carefully.
Columbia's role as a destination shapes the short-term rental landscape and the injuries that arise within it. The city draws visitors year-round as the state capital, as the home of the University of South Carolina, and through Fort Jackson, whose training graduations bring families to the area on a regular cycle.
This steady demand has filled neighborhoods near downtown, the Vista, Five Points, and the university with short-term rentals, and the guests who fill them are often unfamiliar with both the property and the city.
The patterns of visitor traffic concentrate rental use at predictable times, which bears on these claims. University of South Carolina football weekends fill rentals with fans, Fort Jackson graduation cycles bring military families, and the general flow of business and government visitors to the capital keeps rentals occupied throughout the year.
A guest injured at a rental during one of these visits faces the same questions of host duty and platform coverage as any other short-term rental guest, but with a complication: an injured visitor may return home before addressing the claim, which makes prompt documentation of the hazard and the injury especially important before the property is turned over to the next booking.
South Carolina's modified comparative negligence rule applies to short-term rental injury claims, allowing recovery as long as the injured guest was 50 percent or less at fault, reducing the recovery by their percentage, and barring it at 51 percent or more.
The rule comes from the 1991 ruling Nelson v. Concrete Supply Company. The host's insurer will look for any basis to assign fault to the guest, such as arguing the guest misused an amenity or ignored an obvious hazard.
As in any premises case, the open-and-obvious defense is common, with the insurer arguing the guest should have seen and avoided the hazard. South Carolina courts consider whether a condition was open and obvious.
However, visibility does not automatically defeat the claim, particularly when the host created the hazard or the layout made avoidance impractical. A guest unfamiliar with the property is in a different position than someone who knows the space, which bears on what the guest could reasonably have been expected to notice.
Because partial fault reduces the recovery and majority fault defeats it, establishing the host's failure while minimizing any share attributed to the guest is central to the case.
The guest's unfamiliarity with the property, the host's duty to warn of hazards, and the specific condition that caused the injury all bear on the fault analysis. The recovery can only be protected by developing a strong claim based on the facts.
The host is the primary defendant in most short-term rental injury claims, as the party responsible for the condition of the property and for meeting the duty owed to guests. But the host is not always the only responsible party, and identifying every potential defendant is part of building the case.
When the property is managed by a property management company, that company may share responsibility for maintenance and safety depending on its role.
Other parties can bear responsibility depending on the circumstances. A contractor whose defective work created a hazard, such as a poorly built deck or faulty wiring, can be liable, and a manufacturer can be held liable for a defective product like a heater that produced carbon monoxide.
If the rental is part of a larger building or community, the entity responsible for common areas may be a defendant when the injury occurred in a shared space.
Sorting out these relationships matters because it determines which insurance is available. A serious injury at a short-term rental can exceed the platform's coverage, and identifying every responsible party and every applicable policy is what allows the claim to reach the full coverage the injury requires.
The investigation that maps the host, any management company, contractors, and the relevant insurance is the foundation of a complete claim. So, in order to file a successful claim and receive adequate compensation, you should rely on a lawyer who can identify with certainty which policy is responsible and pursue the applicable platform program.
Usually, the host bears the primary duty, like any property owner, to keep the rental safe and warn of hidden dangers. However, there could be other parties that could also be held liable: a management company, contractors, or even manufacturers when the injury was due to a faulty product. The platform's coverage may also add a source of recovery.
After an injury at a short-term rental, you should take steps to protect both your health and your claim. The priority is medical care, both for health and to document the injury at its origin; this is crucial for a visitor who may be far from home and tempted to delay treatment until returning.
It is important to get medical care at a medical facility in the area, such as Prisma Health Richland Hospital, because that creates the medical record on which the claim depends and protects against an argument that the injury was minor.
If you are at a remote location and the injury is severe, it can be helpful to call 911 and ask the Columbia Police Department for help.
It is also urgent to document the hazard and the property listing, because those things can change rapidly. If you are able, photograph the hazard, the surrounding area, the lighting, and any missing safety features such as detectors or railings before anything is changed; the host may repair or alter the condition before the next guest arrives.
Report the injury to the host and through the booking platform: that way, you create a dated record and preserve the booking information that bears on which insurance applies. Note the names and contact information of anyone who witnessed the incident, including other guests.
In the days that follow, preserve the digital trail and be careful about communications. Keep the reservation confirmation, the listing as it appeared when you booked, and any messages with the host, all of which can establish the host's representations and what they knew.
Avoid giving a recorded statement to the host's insurer or the platform's representatives before understanding your rights, and keep a file of medical records and expenses.
Some lawyers might also suggest not posting on social media while pursuing a claim, since insurance companies and defense attorneys might monitor your accounts, and even the most minor photo or post could be twisted to argue that your injuries are not as severe as you claim.
Because the property and its online listing can change quickly, seeking advice early allows the evidence to be preserved before it is altered or removed.
| Coverage source | When it may apply | Notes |
| Platform host liability (e.g., AirCover) | Injury during a platform-booked stay where host is liable | Up to $1M; excludes intentional harm; platform administers |
| Host's STR or homeowner's policy | Depends on policy terms and rental activity | Standard homeowner's policies often exclude short-term rentals |
| Property manager's coverage | When a management company shared responsibility | Depends on the manager's role and contract |
| Contractor or manufacturer coverage | When defective work or a product caused the hazard | Adds another potential source of recovery |
Yes, if an unsafe condition caused your injury and the host failed in the duty to keep the property reasonably safe. A paying guest is owed a reasonable duty of care.
Airbnb's host liability coverage can provide up to one million dollars when the host is found legally responsible for a guest's injury during a platform-booked stay, subject to its terms and exclusions.
Platform coverage generally applies only to bookings made through the platform, so a direct booking may fall outside it, making the host's own insurance the relevant source.
Three years from the injury under S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5). Different deadlines can apply if a government entity is somehow involved.
Photographs of the hazard, your booking, and the listing, messages with the host, any reviews mentioning the problem, and witness information. A listing can easily be edited after an injury.
Yes, as long as you were 50 percent or less at fault. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage and is barred at 51 percent or more.
At the Arndt Law Firm, we approach every Columbia short-term rental injury by establishing responsibility, gathering every available piece of evidence, and identifying every applicable source of coverage. Because attorney Jonathan Arndt previously defended insurers, the firm understands how these claims are evaluated and contested and builds them to reach the coverage the injury requires.
If you were hurt at a vacation rental in Columbia or Richland County, contact us; you may be owed compensation. The consultation is free, and we handle these cases on a contingency basis with no fee unless there is a recovery.
Last reviewed: June 2026
This page was reviewed by Jonathan S. Arndt, licensed in South Carolina since 2018.
