What about regular homeowner's insurance? Surely there can be policies that can cover this kind of thing which a host can obtain on their own. AirBnB doesn't have to muddy their business model with doing insurance, let the insurance people do this.
I think this case of unofficially renting out your house/apt is difficult to buy insurance for. Most homeowner's insurance policies explicitly exclude damages caused when renting your house. You need a separate landlord insurance to cover rental, but you typically can't buy landlord insurance unless your property is properly registered/licensed/inspected by your municipality as a rental property.
In many places the business facilitated by Airbnb is illegal. New York state, Chicago, and many other places have strict hotel laws that forbid these kinds of informal apartment rentals. It is extremely unlikely that any one can buy an insurance policy to cover an illegal transaction.
If you read the Airbnb TOS you'll see that they are well aware of this and are just hoping that naive customers don't read the whole thing.
I expect the original poster's losses will not be covered by home owner's insurance.
There is virtually zero chance that a standard homeowner's insurance policy is going to cover an AirBNB-style rental. Rental insurance might -- I'm sure there are policies made for this -- but most people aren't going to have that kind of coverage unless it's bundled in some way with AirBNB as a value-add.
