Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airbnb's impact on cities

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 153 posts

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#91

Post by specialk »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #58
yummyfajitas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> to a severe shortage in apartments You're looking at it wrong. What AirBnB does is allow apartments to be rented as hotel rooms, at prices somewhere in-between. Thus you get mostly empty hotels and lots of mostly empty apartments (1/3 or 1/4 use yields better money than full-time rent). You've inverse-optimized resource usage.

This isn't purely a resource allocation problem. There are real people finding themselves homeless or in bad living conditions because of the explosion in rents in Dublin. Families shouldn't have to live in hotel rooms. We need to remember that the change and disruption that companies like AirBnB bring are not always good for society as a whole.

There is a supply and demand tension in Dublin over accommodation. Building more apartments, i.e. increasing supply, will help alleviate this tension. That doesn't mean we can't also tackle the problem from the other direction by reducing demand. AirBnB is demand.

It's hard to tell how much any government would want to pull on a lever that might reduce demand. Those tourists bring valuable outside revenue into the city. We need them too. There's lots to balance here. Let's not optimise just revenue.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#92

Post by dang »

kgwgk wrote: post #88
dang wrote: post #85

This article is better than a lot of comparables and the discussion isn't bad, so we've reduced the downweights (not Airbnb-related) that got automatically applied to this submission and replaced the baity title with something more neutral. If anyone wants to suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

What's wrong with the original title? Would the subtitle "Airbnb has become so successful that hotels are losing business and tourist sites face being ruined" be acceptable?

"Ruin" is hyperbolic and "ruin our most-loved" is over the top.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#93

Post by makomk »

YokoZar wrote: post #44
Symbiote wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourists before AirBnB would simply not visit somewhere if the hotel price was beyond what they could afford. Is there any justification at all that could prioritise tourists over residents for living space?

Tourists are seen as a way to generate revenue for a city while not incurring the sorts of costs in services that residents do. Similar motivations cause cities to build office buildings without corresponding homes. Empirically it seems like cities value tourists over residents -- if cities actually wanted residents, they'd approve construction of housing for them.

Tourism still incurs some costs, and a common solution to this is hotel taxes to pay for those costs. AirBNB dodges those taxes. Also, since AirBNB converts housing constructed for residents into tourist housing regardless of legality, it doesn't matter much which cities value more.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#94

Post by dang »

khattam wrote: post #89
dang wrote: post #82

You've been posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop doing that. Instead, please (re)-read the site guidelines and follow them. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html Edit: oops, I misread that comment, so have detached this one from https:…

That is exactly what I got from the article. I would suggest you to read it but that breaks the guidelines. Even the original title reads "From Berlin to Barcelona; will Airbnb ruin our most loved cities?". If anything, you should ban the article.

I'm sorry! I misread you. I thought "Try harder next time" was a swipe at another user, which it wasn't.

(But https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11979795 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963888, the other comments I had in mind, did break the site guidelines, so I still need to ask you not to do that.)

That title is indeed bad, but I've explained why we haven't banned the article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981664. Also, if we had, people would accuse us of trying to suppress criticism of a YC-funded startup, which is something we err on the side of not doing.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#95

Post by collyw »

hyperbovine wrote: post #28
philipDS wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Brexit is going to do wonders for la rambla.

I doubt it will affect it much at all.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#96

Post by collyw »

sammoth wrote: post #80
khattam wrote: post #33

So the argument is that since Airbnb makes travel cheaper, it is ruining the cities? Suggesting that hotels were keeping the prices artificially high to limit tourists and hence conserve the cities? Try harder next time.

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.

I don't see what is artificially high about hotel prices. As someone else pointed out tourist do incur costs, and that can be added to hotel taxes. So Airbnb are both reducing taxes as well as making less accommodation available for residents.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#97

Post by paulddraper »

trusche wrote: post #7

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 correct…

Ten years ago, I never dreamed that more efficient resource utilization would be demonized.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#98

Post by collyw »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #11
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.

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.

Have you ever traveled to somewhere that is "really touristy". Patong beach in Thailand, Magaluf in Mallorca are two that come to mind (as I have ended up in both in the last year). I am sure they were far nicer places before the tourism.

Tourism brings in money so from an economic perspective its a no brainier, but there is more to quality of life than economics.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#99

Post by kafkaesq »

hyperbovine wrote: post #26
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…

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.

Take it with a grain of salt: the Catalans will find any excuse to protest.

It's called having a backbone, and not just rolling over for whatever number the system and/or occupying power wants to pull on you.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#100

Post by Lucadg »

rencently Airbnb introduced Smart Prices. It's an optional automated system which allows the host to accept prices suggested by Airbnb's algorithm. They prices are usually very low and I have the feeling they'll make it less interesting for many renters to stay on the market. Maybe it will bring some balance. It's completely counterintiuitive but I'm afraid they are destroying the market. I already know some people going off Airbnb and moving to other platforms because it only brings cheap bookings.
Post reply on HN