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Airbnb's impact on cities

theguardian.com

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Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#11

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

gruez wrote: post #6
EugeneOZ wrote: post #2

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.

>... every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels. Really? I thought the whole point of airbnb was to get accommodation for less.

The whole point of AirBnB is to make more money for landlords and for AirBnB. The service has economic value in itself, so it's not a surprise prices are more likely to trend upwards than downwards, especially if there's high demand.

"We have too many tourists" should be a good place to be, not a bad one. Trying to stop the flood is less constructive than trying to work out positive ways to manage it.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#12

Post by dhoe »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #2

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.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#13

Post by EugeneOZ »

gruez wrote: post #6
EugeneOZ wrote: post #2

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.

>... every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels. Really? I thought the whole point of airbnb was to get accommodation for less.

I hoped for same. Maybe it's because I'm not looking for hostel-like rooms, but in BCN I saw even room in the boat (Airbnb) for $900 per week. It's just one of examples.

This June our family (4 persons) spent 3 weeks in Barcelona apart-hotels (4 stars) with prices $1200-$1400 per week. It was less expensive than Airbnb.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#14

Post by sambe »

gruez wrote: post #6
EugeneOZ wrote: post #2

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.

>... every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels. Really? I thought the whole point of airbnb was to get accommodation for less.

No, I doubt most people find this to be true. I generally find clean private apartments in good areas, cheaper than hotels, sometimes cheaper than hostels too. Used to be more availability of single rooms for even cheaper too. Seems like prices have gone up over the last couple of years, but certainly not a surfeit of low quality expensive places.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#15

Post by quanticle »

Bombthecat wrote: post #9

The bigger question is, why should I create new houses and apartments when I just can raise the rent? Right, no one would and no one will. Without the state intervening we will have a lot of new york cities around the globe.

    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.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#16

Post by EugeneOZ »

dhoe wrote: post #12
EugeneOZ wrote: post #2

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…

It's not good apart-hotels. In every apart hotel we tried, there was equipped kitchen and we often make food there. And we don't even need to be vegetarians to do it.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#17

Post by EugeneOZ »

sambe wrote: post #14
gruez wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels. Really? I thought the whole point of airbnb was to get accommodation for less.

No, I doubt most people find this to be true. I generally find clean private apartments in good areas, cheaper than hotels, sometimes cheaper than hostels too. Used to be more availability of single rooms for even cheaper too. Seems like prices have gone up over the last couple of years, but certainly not a surfeit of low quality expensive places.

If you want to call me a liar, I can find apart-hotel in Barcelona for you (4 stars, good reviews on Booking), and comparable set of rooms on Airbnb. And after that you will bring apologizes. Deal?

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#18

Post by eulji »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #16
dhoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not good apart-hotels. In every apart hotel we tried, there was equipped kitchen and we often make food there. And we don't even need to be vegetarians to do it.

My advise would be to stop applying the soviet mentality to these things. Really sometimes it's not about the price but convenience. This is something that people in your and mine country fail to understand.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#19

Post by philipDS »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #5
joelrunyon wrote: post #4

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…

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.

I've been living in Barcelona on/off since 2013. I don't have a problem with the tourists. I do have a problem with drunk tourists who pee and shout in the streets at night. Very disrespectful.

I completely understand the protests.. Tourists are a real pain in Barcelona, especially in El Born/Raval/around La Rambla.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#20

Post by austinl »

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.

[1] http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/barcelona-airbnb-tour... [2] http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/01/inenglish/1441115926_651...

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