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Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

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Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#161

Post by mrsuprawsm »

em500 wrote: post #66
srmarm wrote: post #36

Airbnb was amazing to start with, I stayed with some many interesting people and in interesting places. It's a shame that it's now so commoditised.

Lot's of experiences are amazing and wonderful when very few people do it, but they morph into something different when the masses come in. National parks. A rustic cafe in an old town. A picknick along a river bank. High signal internet forums. Venice. Zhangjiajie. Driving cars. I don't know if any solution exists. It seems to me that the only way to preserve the original experience is via some sort of exclusiveness…

"Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded" - Yogi Bera

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#162

Post by jdasdf »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #59
djbebs wrote: post #3

Shame that local councils are once again meddling in things they have no business being in.

This libertarian idealism does not work in practice. I mean look up what a local council does and what they 'meddle' in, then think about what would happen if they stopped 'meddling'.

I'm very familiar with exactly what local councils do in terms of urbanism and licensing, my entire family is involved directly in every stage of the construction business, from the initial architecture design, to the real estate sale.

I am telling you this because I want you to know that i have as close of an experience with local governments in regards to this subject matter as almost anyone can have.

From my experience, and the experience of my parents, uncles and grandparents i can assure you there is almost no place where you will find more corruption and needless bureaucracy as in local councils.

while there does indeed need to be some forms of regulation, say by outlining noise limits outside the properties, or by establishing emissions standards or light level restrictions, the vast, vast majority of restrictions and regulations are fundamentally senseless and exist primarily to make work for local council employees, and to enforce peoples views on what other can do with their property.

It is NIMBYism of the worst kind, and we would all be significantly better off if local councils had their powers castrated.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#163

Post by colechristensen »

mysterydip wrote: post #151

I find it interesting that the law has been in place since April, but only enforced as of October, which is presumably when all these listings were removed.

Pretty common practice, give folks a decent chance to comply and develop a history of not doing so before starting to enforce a regulation, especially when compliance is really low (80% of listings after half a year noncompliant... jeez)

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#164

Post by toshk »

ralfn wrote: post #132
toshk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not completely. Most were dormant advertisements. There is not a big tourist tax here; the biggest tax evasions for private people is probably on their income tax level, but that's not solved by this. The direct issue it addresses is the take over of many tourists of certain neighborhoods meant for living. The favorite hobby of habitants of Amsterdam is complaining about tourists. The fight against Airbnb is a symbol…

>The fight against Airbnb is a symbolic fight for the left winged parties in the city. That is just bullshit. The people complaining about their AirBnB neighbours are mostly in Zuid. Definitely in not Social housing. Please don't start projecting left/right schoolyard tribe politics in an international context. You embarrass our country. Usage of the phrase "left" and "right" is already dumb when Americans do it. But…

GroenLinks has always been the most outspoken against Airbnb. Complaints are probably heaviest in West and not South. But it doesn't matter where, the green left is the most dominant party under upper middle class, together with D66.

And indeed I wrote it in a way that complaining people led to the fight against Airbnb but I think there are many more reasons. GroenLinks ideology is definitely not caused by that to be sure.

And whether you agree with their policies or not. It's hard to argue against that they at least have made some symbolic political moves, for instance the removal of Iamsterdam because the I was to indivualistic.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#165

Post by LurkingPenguin »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #140
jacquesm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this, even so, for Amsterdam it was a very much needed reprieve.

So you work hard to make your city to become one of the major tourist destinations in the world, who bring in a lot of money and help the local business flourish, and then need a reprieve from that? Kinda counterproductive, no?

Even as an expat who has been traveling and living abroad for years, I'd have to admit it's true that tourism doesn't necessarily remain a beneficial thing as tourist numbers get larger.

I'm generally not a fan of the word "sustainable" so I won't use the phrase "sustainable tourism", but it behooves cities (and countries) to find a balance between making themselves attractive to tourists and making sure that the costs of tourism don't exceed the benefits.

Tourism should allow tourists to experience a different place and everything that it's home to (the people, the food, the culture, etc.). When places fundamentally change in an effort to serve tourists, you basically have what I like to call "Disneyland syndrome". They become artificial destinations and the interests of the people who live there are sacrificed to create an optimal experience for the guests.

Airbnb is a parasite and one of the first things cities should look at when rethinking their tourism strategies.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#166

Post by TheGigaChad »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #59
djbebs wrote: post #3

Shame that local councils are once again meddling in things they have no business being in.

This libertarian idealism does not work in practice. I mean look up what a local council does and what they 'meddle' in, then think about what would happen if they stopped 'meddling'.

Your place is in a Mass GRAVE NIMBY!

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#167

Post by justincormack »

bjarneh wrote: post #156
nikanj wrote: post #9

So essentially 80% were not properly registered and paying taxes? I’m not that surprised, once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way to remain competitive.

> once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way Good point, but how little oversight does this country have of money being sent to peoples accounts from Airbnb etc? In my country (Norway), all transactions > 500 USD, (or multiple transactions from the same sender of lesser amounts), would register with the tax office. The receiver would have to disclose the source of these transac…

That doesn’t happen in most countries.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#168

Post by eecc »

toshk wrote: post #63
eecc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely about both. And about returning the city to citizens who've been priced out by the tourism industry. There's nothing wrong with being a cultural hot-ground, a travel destination, a mindshare icon... but turning a city into an intensive farming Disneyland is another thing.

It was already obligated to register every time you rented.

For what I know, it was rarely done for very short stays as it was meant and organized around the concept of traditional seasonal rents (i.e. students, workers on short assignment dispatches, transitions between longer stable residential arrangements.

This is especially designed around the distributed hotel business model, for which the previous tracking and enforcement infrastructure was not qualified for.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#169

Post by prox »

simias wrote: post #150
dorchadas wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how a few individuals can flood the short-term rental market in an area. And, if it's like some cities (Dublin, Galway), they do this at the expense of the long-term rental market.

And the housing market at large, since they also buy flats to turn them into short term rentals.

Decreasing house availability and upping prices, in turn making more money. Starters are usually the victims in this trend.

Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation

#170

Post by Macha »

sumedh wrote: post #153
jacquesm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How it started out is irrelevant, how it is today is what matters.

Sometimes you need to break some laws to make progress that does not make it a scam. Sometimes the existing laws hurt consumers breaking such laws is good not bad.

This kind of thinking is less well received in Europe, which is why e.g. so many cities banned uber and only let them back in as a registered taxi app to contact registered taxi drivers charging regulated taxi prices, while a lot of US cities turned a blind eye.

Those same regulations also kept a higher floor of taxi quality, which helped avoid the stereotype that exists in the US of "regular taxis are always dirty and late", so there wasn't consumer outcry for their return like US cities which had tried banning them.

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