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Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

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Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate?

Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach... > Airbnb and Miami Beach Are at War. Travelers Are Caught in the Crossfire. > The Florida city, like others around the country, is trying to control the home sharing market. Renters often find out their weekend home is illegal when they get a knock on the door.

Airbnb is legal in most of Miami Beach. However, there are pockets of residential areas where short term rentals are prohibited.

Flamingo Park being one of them.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#22

AirBnb is a terrible, terrible company. Most of their money comes from corporate-owned mini-hotels yet they advertise as a mom and pop shop. At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods. Disgusting.

Why is your profile littered with anti Airbnb comments?

Because my neighborhood is littered with mini-hotels and AirBnb encourages this behavior.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#23
I think AirBnb is a wonderful, wonderful company. I don't want to stay in a hotel, and I don't want all of the hotel problems, including price. I value Airbnb's competition and think they are trying to do the best they can. Looking back at my history, 39 interactions across the country and not a single problem.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#24

AirBnb is a terrible, terrible company. Most of their money comes from corporate-owned mini-hotels yet they advertise as a mom and pop shop. At every turn their solution is to sue small towns and cities so they can continue to extract wealth from our neighborhoods. Disgusting.

What is a corporate owned mini-hotel? I am a fairly frequent Airbnb consumer and I have yet to stay somewhere that wasn't mom and pop.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#25

Edit, it was shut down because my local area has a rule against bed and breakfasts that aren't located on a main road. Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night. Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life. Asking them what they wanted for…

There are a lot of cities where apartments have become AirBnBs, caused great disruption to their neighbours, and driven up rents. This has resulted in people demanding that Something Be Done.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#26
I lived a few doors down to someone who basically ran an ad hoc AirBnB ... before Airbnb. It was pretty terrible. Parties all the time, trash, they parked anywhere (in other people's driveways...) because there were likely no long term consequences for doing so, the folks staying there didn't care because why should they?

I was on the association board, it's kinda thankless job as we had to deal with this house.

We got the usual riot act / pushback from the folks operating that short term rental about how the association was terrible and oh man the government and how we just were protecting hotels (like man, I don't have any connection to hotels...). They tried to organize the other folks who rented out their places (traditional long term rentals) to push us off the board, they actually got several to go along with it, but they failed (it wasn't even close, we had a limit on how many units could rent out at once anyway so they never were going to have enough numbers).

In the end it was just a horrible situation to open up what was a hotel, right in the middle of our association / neighborhood. Fortunately the law was on our side and they eventually sold the unit and left.

Local governments are run by the locals and they should get to decide where businesses like that operate and zone and so forth. The idea that Airbnb should just get to be the almighty "disruptor" and land on your neighborhood with no recourse is pretty absurd at face value, especially when the argument is usually about how folks should have some freedom, but what they mean is their freedom, not the communities.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#27
post #8

Edit, it was shut down because my local area has a rule against bed and breakfasts that aren't located on a main road. Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night. Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life. Asking them what they wanted for…

Perhaps you should try stating the reason it was shut down.

Corrupt government.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The illegal listings is crony capitalism. Hotels don't want to compete. And tax evasion is a completely different topic, that is not why Airbnbs are shut down. Every industry has tax problems.

The illegal listing is not just about hotels, it is about neighbors who don't want to deal with vacationers and parties and disruption.

It seems they want to enjoy travelling to other cities while blocking other travellers from coming to their city. Same with Waze traffic being routed on previously less known streets.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#29

To be sure, these aren’t Airbnb’s taxes, any more than Hilton “pays” taxes for its guests’ hotel stays. Rather, the officials sparring with Airbnb want the company to collect and forward the taxes from guests, much as hotels do. So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes,…

> Business models are changing along with the societal changes in communications technology.

No one is entitled to their particular business model; I don't see a reason why a company has to be automatically in the green because someone looked at what they're doing and gave it a name. The changing landscape of communications technologies enables things both good and bad, and it turns out that "burning through truckloads of VC money to get away with breaking laws and dumping externalities on people" is something that's both enabled by new technologies and a huge negative for society.

Re: Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments

#30
post #16

To be sure, these aren’t Airbnb’s taxes, any more than Hilton “pays” taxes for its guests’ hotel stays. Rather, the officials sparring with Airbnb want the company to collect and forward the taxes from guests, much as hotels do. So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. The local governments can't practically collect the taxes,…

So this is local governments trying to railroad an online information/marketplace/intermediation firm into becoming a tax collector. It's not "railroading", it's called "the regulated collection of reasonable usage fees." It's how cities are run, and have always been run. If Airbnb doesn't like it -- they don't need to go into the hospitality business in these places.

> the hospitality business

but they're a technology company!

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