I know this isn't the main point, but airbnb lost me a long time ago with statements like this:
“If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that they would like to share their homes,” Airbnb fumed.
By "share", do they mean a quid pro quo exchange of goods and services for money?
It's nuts to call this "sharing", and I don't think this is quibbling about words when people at pro airbnb rallies chant "sharing is caring". Of course they're trying to grab the emotional connotations of "sharing" that exist outside the commerce world, which include friendship, generosity, and a wish to help others. I don't expect airbnb to stop this bit of manipulation, but I do think the mainstream media should certainly stop referring to the contract "you may stay in my house on the condition that you pay me the price I have specified" as "sharing". An argument by ambiguity uses the fact that words have more than one meaning, but honestly, I'm not sure how "sharing" even applies at all to such a clear cut unambiguous example of commerce.
There they go again, claiming that governments are regulating or fining "sharing". No, they are regulating commerce. They are threatening fines on businesses that fail to properly comply with regulations on commerce.
I'm generally in favor of letting companies like AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, and Turo operate in cities. But I completely agree with you that it's infuriating to see the word "sharing" being used to describe them. They're platforms that make it easy for people to operate various kinds of small businesses - or sometimes maybe micro businesses.
I suppose they think it's good for PR to peddle the warm and fuzzy concept of "sharing" but in most people's eyes it just makes them seem more deceptive and untrustworthy. I'm generally a fan of what these companies are doing, and I worry that pushing a false description of themselves only sets them up for stronger backlash.
A much better term than the "sharing economy" for these kinds of two-sided marketplace platforms is the "access economy". The fundamentally new thing they provide is much easier access to both buyers and sellers. As a traveler, AirBnB gives me access to lots of vacation rental listings, many of the them reviewed and to some extent vetted by the crowd. As someone looking to rent out my home, AirBnB gives me access to millions of potential customers, who are, to varying degrees, vetted by other hosts.
- give a portion of (something) to another or others.
- use, occupy, or enjoy (something) jointly with another or others.
The first one has a lot of positive connotations, and 'sharing economy' startups are definitely taking advantage of that, but I think the second is a totally valid use of the word when talking about 'home sharing' or 'car sharing'. It's actually hard to think of a better term to describe those.
Here in Dublin, Ireland, rents are exploding, mostly because of a severe shortage in apartments, and it's a fair question to ask if AirBnB is partially to blame. From [1]:
> The average rental value of a two-bed apartment in the city centre at €2,000 per month, less a management fee, would equate to the apartment being occupied for just 120 nights of the year through Airbnb.
> Investors have confirmed that if correctly managed, the income can be double that of a long-term rental.
(AirBnB disagrees [2])
As much as I like the idea of AirBnB, their impact on the housing market in any given city needs to be considered. Unfortunately the article doesn't mention that at all, focussing solely on tourism.
I can't speak to Ireland, but here in the US, there's an extremely strong relationship between expensive apartments and a lack of new construction. Here's the graph:
How difficult is it to build new housing in Dublin? Does the city allow new apartment buildings, or are most areas single family, detached residences only?
The obvious solution to a severe shortage in apartments is to build more. Why doesn't Ireland do this?
Pigeonhole principle: if K people want to be in Ireland at any one time, and there are N < K apartments, K - N people will have a problem. All the folks criticizing AirBnB want to do is make sure they aren't the ones who face the problem.
I'm staying longer term in BCN for a month and a half and accidentally ended up at an outdoor concert last night before realizing that it was protesting tourists. "Tourism kills the city" was the slogan on the signs around the area. In 2 weeks, I've seen at least 2 demonstrations like this and it seems to be picking up from previous years that I've been here. Things are a little more crowded and I feel like every day there's a bachelor / bachelorette party running around - the density of which reminds me of vegas.
I like to think that I blend in more than most tourists - the ones you see in groups of 8 with 2-3 roller bags each fumbling for the keys and trying to make sure they find the right building - but I'm probably biased.
I'm not sure what BCN's solution will be. Tourism is 12-15% of their economy in Catalonia, so it's not a small chunk for a country with 20% unemployment rate. The hotel options aren't great for what you pay for. AirBnB is definitely cheaper (and usually roomier), but it's a difference when you notice that all your neighbors in "old town" are german / british tourists that pop in for a weekend and then leave. Barcelona does have an ordinance that you can only rent rooms for longer than 30 days - so they have people that come around on occasion to check - but I think it's sort of hit & miss enforcement.
I'm not sure I have answers as much as questions - and it's interesting being on the ground zero and seeing this take place.
Take it with a grain of salt: the Catalans will find any excuse to protest. I've lived all over the world and nothing even comes close to the number of street demonstrations I witnessed during my time in Barcelona.
Catalonia is not only Barcelona. In Barcelona tourism is about third of city's income, so protests like this are ridiculous. Noisy tourists are usually in hotels/hostels. And I have to say locals sometimes are more noisy than tourists.
It's not only Airbnb in Europe, but also Erasmus (twice a year they make finding housing very difficult), Uniplaces (like Airbnb but for EU students), local classifieds sites (which now just double as Airbnb and Uniplaces listings) and being known as an affordable city (like here, in Lisbon, which is being called "the new Berlin" as well as the new "startup capital city").
Over the past 3 years, rental prices here have increased 30%, pushing locals out of the city center. A quick look on Airbnb for Lisbon, one sees the average monthly price at around 700 euro (for a room) while some listings go well above 1,000 euro. Three years ago, the norm for a room - no matter how you found it - was 180 to 220 euro per month, now the minimum is 300 and increasing. People are mad, and rightly so since minimum wage here is 530 euro.
If anyone wishes to see all the stats well laid out, this article below (in Portuguese) has been circulating locally. I suggest running it through an online translator. It's titled "Who is going to be able to live in Lisbon?"
http://www.buala.org/pt/cidade/quem-vai-poder-morar-em-lisbo...?
One of the images from the article is this (http://i.imgur.com/FFDVm0M.jpg) showing local Airbnb saturation, where 75% of listings are entire homes/apts. Airbnb's regional head says in 2015 there were 12K homes listed in the Greater Lisbon area, a 60% jump from 2014 numbers. We're a small city but data shows there are 174 hostels and 184 hotels here, with many more in the pipeline.
It's out of hand and the govt hasn't done much of anything to stop it. By the way, that local listing at over 1K euro per month? It had lots of reviews, meaning there have been plenty of takers.
As someone who rents out rooms in Lisbon (not on AirBnB), I can assure you the minimum is not 300/month, nor are those rare. A five minute search finds multiple available rooms for <250€ - often with expenses included.
I do agree there is cause for concern, but the knee-jerk attacks on AirBnB is silly. For example, there's not a single word in that article regarding the concerns of landlords in making long term rentals. When it takes two years, hundreds of euros and many lost working days to evict a non-paying tenant, is it any wonder that people prefer short term rentals? When you have a building falling to pieces after decades of rent-controlled tenants paying ridiculously low amounts (I know people paying 30€/m for a three bedroom apartment) and you can't afford to fix it, is it any wonder that you'll sell to foreign investors who can?
Why do you see this as something bad? Some people are willing to pay more than others for housing, so others have to move elsewhere; this is normal market at work, why would anyone want to stop it?
Surely the projections cited in this article aren't accurate.
> Already operating in 191 countries and 34,000 cities, analysts at financial services company Cowen & Co predict that, by 2020, Airbnb hosts will be taking 500 million bookings a night, rising to a staggering one billion by 2025.
If the population of the world is about 8.2 billion in 2025, which is the UN's expectation [0], that'd mean one Airbnb booking a night per eight humans on Earth. Perhaps they mean yearly, not nightly?
Extrapolated from their numbers, in 2045 it will be an unbelievable 16 billion, 2 bookings a night per human. All that vacationing will lead to vacation fornication and generate the increase in population needed to sustain the growth. What a keen business model.
Isn't the "ruining" of cities more due to general lack of affordable space in light of increased urbanization and tourism?
Granted, Airbnb will add its share to the overall shortage, but if I'd take all Airbnb apartments off of any market, would this put rents back to an affordable level or curtail tourism?
Airbnb reminds me a bit of eBay - good idea led to an influx of professional sellers, which at some point had to be regulated (register as business, taxable income) and in growing up, the platform lost most of its appeal and discoverability of the things it once was created for. Still fills a large enough demand to be around.
I'll call the same for Airbnb: There's demand for staying at a place which does not feel like a hotel and I found the Berlin ruling made for Airbnb to be going in a good direction (Zwecksentfremdungsverbot - use Airbnb if you rent out part of your place, but if you rent on as a business, it must be registered as such). I'll expect other cities to follow suit, because it also postpones having to address the underlying issue.
Answer? Probably not. Especially if you don't provide housing stock numbers.
The last AirBnB complaint I read was in Seattle which had a whopping 1000 units on the market. Which is jack shit.
If you want top argue that AirBnB is a problem then you have to list the number of houses, apartments, hotel rooms, and AirBnB units. I'm not convinced it's s talk problem in any city in the world.
Now regulations that inhibit new construction? That's an issues in more than a few places!
Again, for Dublin only. A quick search of all properties for rent in Dublin on the market leading website (daft.ie) comes up with 1,437 properties, and that's without any limitations to the search. A quick search on AirBnB for just the next weekend (in the middle of tourist season) finds "300+" listings. That's a very rough snapshot of course (e.g. there might be many double listings), but it hints at the potentially large portion of properties that could be off the long-term market thanks to AirBnB (and their competitors, for what it's worth).
The bigger question is, why should I create new houses and apartments when I
can just raise the rent?
It might actually be more profitable for you to have more units of housing at a lower price, than fewer units of housing at a higher price. Profit follows a quadratic formula, and it's quite possible to raise profits dramatically by selling more units at a (slightly) lower price.
Another question is "why shouldn't I create new houses and apartments and create more profit"? This is true whether or not that person/company already owns apartments in that place. The market is global.
Because if housing prices are out of whack with development costs it can be more profitable to sell your current apartment (with its associated discounted cash flow) and use the capital to build a new one for cheaper.
> analysts at financial services company Cowen & Co predict that, by 2020, Airbnb hosts will be taking 500 million bookings a night, rising to a staggering one billion by 2025.
In a world of 7-8 billion people (and where most people live with and travel with others, so there are many fewer households and travel groups), these numbers seem more than a little unlikely.
The author misread the actual predictions from Cowen & Co, which predict 500 million "room nights" per year — a term that we refer to internally as "nights booked" per year — which would mean that a total of 500 million nights were booked across all hosts over the course of a year. A single "booking" may count as multiple "nights," since often you'll be staying at (and have booked) a place for more than one night. Here's a better report of the Cowen & Co analysis: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/one-wall-s... — it's a far, far cry from "500 million bookings a night."
You're 100% correct that the size of the total world population makes it spectacularly unlikely that we'll ever have 500 million bookings per night.
I am also becoming wary of using airbnb, for some of the reasons mentioned here. I did meet some great hosts, but at other times I felt I would have been better off e.g. in a hostel.
Also, people who care about hosting and getting to know travelers could just sign up to Couchsurfing or Hospitalityclub, which strangely don't seem to be booming.
"Earlier this month, it released data showing that since it began it has collected $85m in tax revenue for cities worldwide."
That's not a very impressive figure. That's for a global company with massive revenue, now in it's eight year?
“If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that they would like to share their homes,” Airbnb fumed.
Uhm no, lower class New Yorkers don't own they rent and this is the point - the property is not theirs to profit from. Most middle class New Yorkers don't own their own homes either and if they do its likely a one bedroom or a studio. A two bedroom in New York is well out of reach of whatever is left of the middle class there. People that can afford two bedrooms in New York are generally not the "lets make a few extra dollars from this sharing economy" types.
I know that in New Orleans the hotel industry has felt the pinch of Airbnb. Even during big weekend like Jazz Fest, you could still get a room last minute this year, something that used to be unheard of. While its great that tourist dollars still enter the local economy, the hotels employ a lot of people. This is significant in an economy that is almost solely based around hospitality and tourism.
In the past 6 years, I've traveled significantly in New England, the New York City region, the Paris and Marseille regions, London, Leeds, Manchester, and Edinburgh, Iceland, Barcelona, Mallorca, Rome, Geneva, Genoa, Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Austin, across a mix of work-related travel to conferences, vacations, and graduate school that involved time at a foreign program.
I have not ever used Airbnb, never found difficulty in getting good hotel accommodations for reasonable prices, never found difficult being shown around the "non-touristy" parts of every place I've visited, either by just asking locals, getting advice from friends, using travel websites, etc., and have really, really valued the nicer accommodations in traditional hotels (especially the extra privacy, standardized cleanliness, and lower variance in terms of noise and sounds that reduce sleep quality).
I'm not being snarky or critical of Airbnb, many of my good friends love it and seem to get a lot of value out of it. But I cannot see any aspect of Airbnb that offers value to me or satisfies my search criteria when looking for housing.
Given this, it is almost bewildering to me that there is so much demand for Airbnb-provided short term lodging that landlords would even consider the idea that renting an apartment solely as an Airbnb rental is more profitable than traditional rental agreements.
I mean, I can't blame the landlords if that's the case. But I sure do feel like the mass of travelers who believe they are getting value from Airbnb simply cannot be correct in their belief that they are actually receiving that value. I just wonder why they think they are.
I find that Airbnb is most attractive when (a) travelling in a small group, because it can be cheaper to get a place that fits three adults and a kid on airbnb than at a hotel, and (b) when visiting people that live somewhere, since it's frequently hard to find a hotel in the residential suburbs where they live, but you can often find an airbnb nearby or (c) when I'm staying somewhere long enough that I want to be able to cook my own food. In specific cities (like Dublin) it also turned out to be much cheaper than an equivalent hotel.
I stayed in 4 different Airbnbs in Barcelona around the time when Ada Colau was pushing to have them all registered [1]. The major concern I heard from my hosts were about properties used _only for Airbnb_, which were particularly notorious in Barceloneta.
A few people figured out they could pose as fake tenets in several apartments at once, then turn a profit by listing them all on Airbnb. This was where things went from bad to worse — some people were listing 10+ properties at the same time [2].
With all of that, I'm not surprised there was such a backlash. The type of subletting that was going on in BCN is clearly not what Airbnb is about. It's unfortunate that it's led to a much larger/more political movement against tourism in general.
New businesses and ways of doing business always disrupt the existing businesses, and the existing ones frequently advocate for regulations to preserve their niche.
In Budapest, Hungary I can see a rise in prices from 250 EUR/month to almost 350 EUR/month for the same flat in the last 2 years thanks to Airbnb. What happens here is that most property owners realized that they can make more money by renting their flat (not just a room) instead of underleasing it. This leads to a LOT of people hopelessly scrambling for flats to rent because there are not a lot of new flats being built. Basically tourists are taking away flats from people who are trying to live in the city. This is horrible IMHO. I hope that the government will assess brutal taxes on Airbnb to make it useless or otherwise a lot of people will either become homeless or are forced to return to the countryside.
Obviously this must be an impact of increased mobility and globalization forcing previously isolated economies to compete in larger market, with Airbnb merely riding the wave.
Dwellers of comparatively more well-off cities probably aren’t complaining about tourists driving them out, in other words. In Seoul, for example, monthly rate for a studio on Airbnb right now seems close to what a local would pay for a similar option found via old-school real estate agency[0].
[0] If they could get away without depositing some $xxxxx upfront. Based on experience of a friend who in 2014–2015 rented a studio found via an agency.
No it's not that hotel prices are artificially high, they are priced in a completely separate market to residential properties. If there is no regulation on Airbnb rentals, tourists are now competing more in the residential market. This can obviously have an effect on cities.
Airbnb is definitely not the analogy of Uber. It's extremely expensive service - prices of dirty rooms with old furniture are higher than in 4-stars apart-hotels. In city I live (Saint Petersburg) price for room in Airbnb is 8-9 times higher than on local sites. And I tried to find room in Rome, Prague, Barcelona - every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels.
That's not been my experience at all, and I've booked dozens of places through Airbnb over the years. Also, one big advantage for me as a vegetarian is that I can get a fully equipped kitchen, so instead of hunting for the one restaurant that has more than one salad to offer, I can shop in local markets and cook myself - I enjoy it and it saves me money too. Even good apartment hotels often just have two sad pans and three plates.
[+] [-] geebee|9 years ago|reply
“If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that they would like to share their homes,” Airbnb fumed.
By "share", do they mean a quid pro quo exchange of goods and services for money?
It's nuts to call this "sharing", and I don't think this is quibbling about words when people at pro airbnb rallies chant "sharing is caring". Of course they're trying to grab the emotional connotations of "sharing" that exist outside the commerce world, which include friendship, generosity, and a wish to help others. I don't expect airbnb to stop this bit of manipulation, but I do think the mainstream media should certainly stop referring to the contract "you may stay in my house on the condition that you pay me the price I have specified" as "sharing". An argument by ambiguity uses the fact that words have more than one meaning, but honestly, I'm not sure how "sharing" even applies at all to such a clear cut unambiguous example of commerce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
There they go again, claiming that governments are regulating or fining "sharing". No, they are regulating commerce. They are threatening fines on businesses that fail to properly comply with regulations on commerce.
Airbnb's corporate-speak is pretty brazen.
[+] [-] skewart|9 years ago|reply
I suppose they think it's good for PR to peddle the warm and fuzzy concept of "sharing" but in most people's eyes it just makes them seem more deceptive and untrustworthy. I'm generally a fan of what these companies are doing, and I worry that pushing a false description of themselves only sets them up for stronger backlash.
A much better term than the "sharing economy" for these kinds of two-sided marketplace platforms is the "access economy". The fundamentally new thing they provide is much easier access to both buyers and sellers. As a traveler, AirBnB gives me access to lots of vacation rental listings, many of the them reviewed and to some extent vetted by the crowd. As someone looking to rent out my home, AirBnB gives me access to millions of potential customers, who are, to varying degrees, vetted by other hosts.
[+] [-] voodoomagicman|9 years ago|reply
- give a portion of (something) to another or others.
- use, occupy, or enjoy (something) jointly with another or others.
The first one has a lot of positive connotations, and 'sharing economy' startups are definitely taking advantage of that, but I think the second is a totally valid use of the word when talking about 'home sharing' or 'car sharing'. It's actually hard to think of a better term to describe those.
[+] [-] trusche|9 years ago|reply
> The average rental value of a two-bed apartment in the city centre at €2,000 per month, less a management fee, would equate to the apartment being occupied for just 120 nights of the year through Airbnb.
> Investors have confirmed that if correctly managed, the income can be double that of a long-term rental.
(AirBnB disagrees [2])
As much as I like the idea of AirBnB, their impact on the housing market in any given city needs to be considered. Unfortunately the article doesn't mention that at all, focussing solely on tourism.
[1] http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property... [2] http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/airbnb-insists...
[+] [-] apsec112|9 years ago|reply
http://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/asking.price...
How difficult is it to build new housing in Dublin? Does the city allow new apartment buildings, or are most areas single family, detached residences only?
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|9 years ago|reply
Pigeonhole principle: if K people want to be in Ireland at any one time, and there are N < K apartments, K - N people will have a problem. All the folks criticizing AirBnB want to do is make sure they aren't the ones who face the problem.
[+] [-] joelrunyon|9 years ago|reply
I like to think that I blend in more than most tourists - the ones you see in groups of 8 with 2-3 roller bags each fumbling for the keys and trying to make sure they find the right building - but I'm probably biased.
I'm not sure what BCN's solution will be. Tourism is 12-15% of their economy in Catalonia, so it's not a small chunk for a country with 20% unemployment rate. The hotel options aren't great for what you pay for. AirBnB is definitely cheaper (and usually roomier), but it's a difference when you notice that all your neighbors in "old town" are german / british tourists that pop in for a weekend and then leave. Barcelona does have an ordinance that you can only rent rooms for longer than 30 days - so they have people that come around on occasion to check - but I think it's sort of hit & miss enforcement.
I'm not sure I have answers as much as questions - and it's interesting being on the ground zero and seeing this take place.
[+] [-] hyperbovine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EugeneOZ|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personlurking|9 years ago|reply
Over the past 3 years, rental prices here have increased 30%, pushing locals out of the city center. A quick look on Airbnb for Lisbon, one sees the average monthly price at around 700 euro (for a room) while some listings go well above 1,000 euro. Three years ago, the norm for a room - no matter how you found it - was 180 to 220 euro per month, now the minimum is 300 and increasing. People are mad, and rightly so since minimum wage here is 530 euro.
If anyone wishes to see all the stats well laid out, this article below (in Portuguese) has been circulating locally. I suggest running it through an online translator. It's titled "Who is going to be able to live in Lisbon?" http://www.buala.org/pt/cidade/quem-vai-poder-morar-em-lisbo...?
One of the images from the article is this (http://i.imgur.com/FFDVm0M.jpg) showing local Airbnb saturation, where 75% of listings are entire homes/apts. Airbnb's regional head says in 2015 there were 12K homes listed in the Greater Lisbon area, a 60% jump from 2014 numbers. We're a small city but data shows there are 174 hostels and 184 hotels here, with many more in the pipeline.
It's out of hand and the govt hasn't done much of anything to stop it. By the way, that local listing at over 1K euro per month? It had lots of reviews, meaning there have been plenty of takers.
[+] [-] icebraining|9 years ago|reply
I do agree there is cause for concern, but the knee-jerk attacks on AirBnB is silly. For example, there's not a single word in that article regarding the concerns of landlords in making long term rentals. When it takes two years, hundreds of euros and many lost working days to evict a non-paying tenant, is it any wonder that people prefer short term rentals? When you have a building falling to pieces after decades of rent-controlled tenants paying ridiculously low amounts (I know people paying 30€/m for a three bedroom apartment) and you can't afford to fix it, is it any wonder that you'll sell to foreign investors who can?
[+] [-] golergka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Techowl|9 years ago|reply
> Already operating in 191 countries and 34,000 cities, analysts at financial services company Cowen & Co predict that, by 2020, Airbnb hosts will be taking 500 million bookings a night, rising to a staggering one billion by 2025.
If the population of the world is about 8.2 billion in 2025, which is the UN's expectation [0], that'd mean one Airbnb booking a night per eight humans on Earth. Perhaps they mean yearly, not nightly?
[0] http://www.unfpa.org/news/world-population-increase-one-bill...
[+] [-] awesomepantsm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanjodonnell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conceit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vemv|9 years ago|reply
It could even extract the taxes from each host's incomes and pay them directly to each city council.
Prediction: if Airbnb doesn't do it, someone else will and councils will rule out competitors as illegal.
[+] [-] frequent|9 years ago|reply
Granted, Airbnb will add its share to the overall shortage, but if I'd take all Airbnb apartments off of any market, would this put rents back to an affordable level or curtail tourism?
Airbnb reminds me a bit of eBay - good idea led to an influx of professional sellers, which at some point had to be regulated (register as business, taxable income) and in growing up, the platform lost most of its appeal and discoverability of the things it once was created for. Still fills a large enough demand to be around.
I'll call the same for Airbnb: There's demand for staying at a place which does not feel like a hotel and I found the Berlin ruling made for Airbnb to be going in a good direction (Zwecksentfremdungsverbot - use Airbnb if you rent out part of your place, but if you rent on as a business, it must be registered as such). I'll expect other cities to follow suit, because it also postpones having to address the underlying issue.
(regular Couchsurfing host and sparse surfer)
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|9 years ago|reply
The last AirBnB complaint I read was in Seattle which had a whopping 1000 units on the market. Which is jack shit.
If you want top argue that AirBnB is a problem then you have to list the number of houses, apartments, hotel rooms, and AirBnB units. I'm not convinced it's s talk problem in any city in the world.
Now regulations that inhibit new construction? That's an issues in more than a few places!
[+] [-] trusche|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] germanier|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bombthecat|9 years ago|reply
Right, no one would and no one will.
Without the state intervening we will have a lot of new york cities around the globe.
[+] [-] quanticle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|9 years ago|reply
Your theory doesn't seem to match reality.
[+] [-] nawitus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aianus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
In a world of 7-8 billion people (and where most people live with and travel with others, so there are many fewer households and travel groups), these numbers seem more than a little unlikely.
[+] [-] reissbaker|9 years ago|reply
You're 100% correct that the size of the total world population makes it spectacularly unlikely that we'll ever have 500 million bookings per night.
[+] [-] f_allwein|9 years ago|reply
Also, people who care about hosting and getting to know travelers could just sign up to Couchsurfing or Hospitalityclub, which strangely don't seem to be booming.
[+] [-] bogomipz|9 years ago|reply
That's not a very impressive figure. That's for a global company with massive revenue, now in it's eight year?
“If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that they would like to share their homes,” Airbnb fumed.
Uhm no, lower class New Yorkers don't own they rent and this is the point - the property is not theirs to profit from. Most middle class New Yorkers don't own their own homes either and if they do its likely a one bedroom or a studio. A two bedroom in New York is well out of reach of whatever is left of the middle class there. People that can afford two bedrooms in New York are generally not the "lets make a few extra dollars from this sharing economy" types.
I know that in New Orleans the hotel industry has felt the pinch of Airbnb. Even during big weekend like Jazz Fest, you could still get a room last minute this year, something that used to be unheard of. While its great that tourist dollars still enter the local economy, the hotels employ a lot of people. This is significant in an economy that is almost solely based around hospitality and tourism.
[+] [-] p4wnc6|9 years ago|reply
I have not ever used Airbnb, never found difficulty in getting good hotel accommodations for reasonable prices, never found difficult being shown around the "non-touristy" parts of every place I've visited, either by just asking locals, getting advice from friends, using travel websites, etc., and have really, really valued the nicer accommodations in traditional hotels (especially the extra privacy, standardized cleanliness, and lower variance in terms of noise and sounds that reduce sleep quality).
I'm not being snarky or critical of Airbnb, many of my good friends love it and seem to get a lot of value out of it. But I cannot see any aspect of Airbnb that offers value to me or satisfies my search criteria when looking for housing.
Given this, it is almost bewildering to me that there is so much demand for Airbnb-provided short term lodging that landlords would even consider the idea that renting an apartment solely as an Airbnb rental is more profitable than traditional rental agreements.
I mean, I can't blame the landlords if that's the case. But I sure do feel like the mass of travelers who believe they are getting value from Airbnb simply cannot be correct in their belief that they are actually receiving that value. I just wonder why they think they are.
[+] [-] jacalata|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austinl|9 years ago|reply
A few people figured out they could pose as fake tenets in several apartments at once, then turn a profit by listing them all on Airbnb. This was where things went from bad to worse — some people were listing 10+ properties at the same time [2].
With all of that, I'm not surprised there was such a backlash. The type of subletting that was going on in BCN is clearly not what Airbnb is about. It's unfortunate that it's led to a much larger/more political movement against tourism in general.
[1] http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/barcelona-airbnb-tour... [2] http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/01/inenglish/1441115926_651...
[+] [-] WalterBright|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edem|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goblin89|9 years ago|reply
Dwellers of comparatively more well-off cities probably aren’t complaining about tourists driving them out, in other words. In Seoul, for example, monthly rate for a studio on Airbnb right now seems close to what a local would pay for a similar option found via old-school real estate agency[0].
[0] If they could get away without depositing some $xxxxx upfront. Based on experience of a friend who in 2014–2015 rented a studio found via an agency.
[+] [-] khattam|9 years ago|reply
Suggesting that hotels were keeping the prices artificially high to limit tourists and hence conserve the cities?
Try harder next time.
[+] [-] sammoth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emerongi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EugeneOZ|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhoe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|9 years ago|reply
Really? I thought the whole point of airbnb was to get accommodation for less.
[+] [-] jkot|9 years ago|reply