If the doctor is doing it wrong... do the right thing for the patient.
If the hospital is doing it wrong... do the right thing for the patient.
If a police officer is doing the wrong thing... do the right thing for the patient.
The ultimate policy is... Do the right thing for the patient.
AirBnb... Do the right thing.
Stop the spin. Don't tell the world what your security features are. Don't tell the Financial Times you are shocked.
Pull out all the stops and make this right, or this will be the end of you.
I've talked countless times with people about your service, and one of the things that comes up all the time is wondering what will happen, "When the first AirBnB murder happens".
It's not a question of "If it happens" it's a matter of "what are you doing to do _when it happens".
People get murdered in Hotels. People get murdered in rental cabins. I've been an ER nurse for years. Murders happen all the time. Someone is doing to die while using AirBnb. You're lucky this was just a robbery.
Learn from this.
Your policy needs to be: Do the right thing for the person.
Build a crisis response swat team that can get on a plane within the hour, fly to a destination and evaluate a crisis situation like this. For the love of gods you need to have 24 hour customer service. Give those people the authority and the responsibility to do the right thing then and there, on the spot.
Stop writing Tech Crunch posts.
Don't worry about telling us that you made it right. That's not important. Don't worry about the press. If you do the right thing, the press takes care of itself. Don't post in this comment thread. Ask your customer, "What do you need me to do to make this right?" "Is there anything at all that I can do to help?" Assign two or three people to the job of fixing this.
Do the right thing. Don't stop until this is right. Do it now.