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Airbnb's impact on cities

theguardian.com

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Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#121

Post by colinbartlett »

makomk wrote: post #93
YokoZar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't help but think this whole thing could be solved by charging hotel taxes on AirBNB room nights. Can someone explain why it's not that simple?

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#122

Post by colinbartlett »

awesomepantsm wrote: post #111
Techowl wrote: post #110

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…

I just assume that Cowen & Co must be bad at predictions.

They got to 191 countries in 8 years. By 2024 AirBNB will be in 382 countries!

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#123

Post by jacalata »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #116

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 pr…

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.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#124

Post by jdhzzz »

makomk wrote: post #93
YokoZar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I assume that hotel/car rental/occupancy taxes are just an easy way to generate revenue for the government without affecting local voters. Is there any relation between hotel tax and government services consumed by hotel guests? I'd be surprised if there were.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#125

Post by edem »

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.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#126

Post by ryanjodonnell »

Techowl wrote: post #110

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…

There's no way that can be correct, they only did 80 million bookings in 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-growth-idUSKCN0RS2Q...

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#127

Post by Xylakant »

colinbartlett wrote: post #121
makomk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't help but think this whole thing could be solved by charging hotel taxes on AirBNB room nights. Can someone explain why it's not that simple?

AirBnB does not share who's renting rooms. A significant share of the hosts use that to dodge taxes. Now AirBnB could collect and forward those taxes but well, they have no incentive to.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#128

Post by skewart »

geebee wrote: post #117

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'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.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#129

Post by voodoomagicman »

geebee wrote: post #117

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…

Sharing has some different meanings:

- 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.

Re: Airbnb's impact on cities

#130

Post by towelrod »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #21
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…

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.

More to the point: Airbnb shifts regular, tax paying renters into a grey market -- non-renting, non-tax paying economy.

If a city/country wants to base its rental units on a day-by-day, airbnb model, then fine. The problem is when airbnb comes into a regular market and "disrupts" that market by not paying hotel taxes or following local subletting laws.

I say that as someone who very recently used airbnb for a great deal in NYC, and was admonished by the host not to talk about our situation in the lobby, the elevators, or anywhere else someone might overhear.

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