"only"? n.b.: If your business model is renting out luxury condos to people on the Internet, you're going to have a bad time. People will use them for parties.
There are ways to deal with potential issues, ie. security deposits
However, they obviously don't want to use the insurance regularly, as that will likely mean an increase in the rates they pay.
Both sides of this story could very well be true. He could have been a bad host AND a guest may have done a lot of damage to his apartment. BUT, if he's had problems with 15 guests, I'm sure that each time their is an issue, AirBnb tracks what owners are most problematic, and after this incident, they decided to sever ties.
It is possible AirBnb has an unspoken rule that if they spend x amount on a host with a specified period of time, they cancel the hosts account. 17% of guests doing damage to your apartment seems like quite a lot to me.
