12 ms·

Airbnb canceled booking, saying city rejected license number

jstanley 8y ago
Title should say: "Cities wreck travellers' holiday plans as battle with AirBnB intensifies"
- detaro 8y ago
  Or "Airbnb hosts fail to comply with regulations and accept reservations anyways, wrecking their guests holiday plans". Or "Airbnb fails to properly warn travellers they're booking stays that potentially will have to be cancelled later".
  - superkuh 8y ago
    Or, "Airbnb fails to warn travellers city plans to wreck their holidy plans." It's almost funny that the city is engaging in rent-seeking behavior against renters. In this move San Francisco makes it clear that they believe they own your property and you merely occupy it on their whim.
    - Angostura 8y ago
      > In this move San Francisco makes it clear that they believe they own your property and you merely occupy it on their whim. In this move, San Franciso makes it clear that you can't change the use of a property without permission.
      - superkuh 8y ago
        Right, the premise of this is that it's their and not yours. You have to get permission to use your own property how you like. Living in a city means giving up rights to the authoritarians who keep high population density centers from killing each other. Living in a city is a big trade-off. More jobs, less liberty.
    - jlgray 8y ago
      Zoning requirements and permits for operating hotels are not unreasonable. Some people rent out a spare room now and again for extra cash, and some people have multiple properties that are occupied exclusively by Airbnb renters, essentially running an unlicensed hotel. The latter can be extremely obnoxious if its your upstairs neighbor, not to mention the effects that being discovered by Airbnb real estate investors can have on a town or neighborhood.
  - cornholio 8y ago
    Or: "Cities fail to properly regulate Airbnb, widely deploy sinister measures to discourage people from using it"
    - detaro 8y ago
      What would "proper regulation" be, and why isn't a registration and review system for hosts such? (If it turns out it was the city's fault that Airbnb erroneously thought the registration was invalid, that'd clearly be an implementation failure, I agree, but still leaves open the question why Airbnb only reacted so late)
      - cornholio 8y ago
        If only there was a way to make tourists and hosts pay for the inconvenience and externalities they cause, and put that revenue to the benefit of everyone in the city. I know, let's call it a tax. As opposed to a rigid system of "designated uses" for private properties that prevents economic transactions depending on how much they inconvenience upper class and politically connected residents and competing hospitality interests.
        ghaff 8y ago
        If I'm living in a building and it becomes intolerable because of noisy transient visitors on a regular basis, a tax that goes to the city does me no good whatsoever.
        ensignavenger 8y ago
        If you are in a condo, your homeowners association should have rules about making noise, and the owners of the airbnb should be forced to take responsibility. If an apartment complex, your landlord should deal with it.
        bjl 8y ago
        Or, and here's an idea, we can enact sane regulations like licensing requirements to prevent the negative externalities from happening in the first place.
  - notwhereyouare 8y ago
    The woman added: “I called the city authorities and they confirmed my application, and the licence number I’ve been issued is what Airbnb requires, so that’s what I provided. But Airbnb still says the city rejected my number. Both sides are pointing at each other.” Your first quote is wrong according to the article
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Actually, no. AirBnb bungled the process. The host was able to rent. I also found it weird that the PR nonsense said that “2 million” people are using the service and putting money in the pockets of “countless” hosts. Hosts aren’t countless... so I wonder why they aren’t calling that out?
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    They probably don’t have data to count. So technically they are countless.
- FussyZeus 8y ago
  It's almost like thumbing your nose at government regulations isn't a good plan for a solid future in business. Who knew.
- dang 8y ago
  Certainly the article's original title is both misleading and clickbait, but the idea is to change such titles to something accurate and neutral. I've taken a crack at it based on the contents of the article, but if someone comes up with a more accurate and neutral title we can change it again.
paulsutter 8y ago
Airbnb’s policy is to wait until 10 days before checkin, even when they already know they need to cancel. Same is true for the mountain of Japan cancellations this summer. They won’t tell anyone till 10 days before They think they’re being “aggresive”, hoping that the rules change. But they’re screwing up vacations selfishly > Airbnb – the company, not the hosts of the property – pulled the plug on their week’s stay in San Francisco, 10 days before they were due to arrive.
- ensignavenger 8y ago
  In Japan, AirBnB claims they were led to believe that previously booked stays were going to be okay while the hosts worked to get licensed for future stays. Maybe they are outright lying, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
  - paulsutter 8y ago
    Regardless, they appear to be waiting until 10 days before the reservation to notify people of the cancellation. Which is distinctly uncool. By that time, hotels will be more expensive than if reserved in advance.
    - DINKDINK 8y ago
      >By that time, hotels will be more expensive than if reserved in advance. Hotel rooms are “perishable goods”. Generally prices will be lower than farther out but value will be lower than if you bought earlier. It’s like milk, grocery store can’t sell spoiled milk so yes the milk that’s about to turn you can get at a discount but it’ll be less value per dollar.
tylermenezes 8y ago
I think this is a good example of how playing the hardline, aggressive "disruptor" can backfire. I've talked to the Airbnb founders a few times, and they're probably the most passionate founders I've met. It's clear that they believe in their vision 100%, even without the money (just look at their history of self-funding for years before they could attract VC interest). But by refusing to cooperate with cities on some legitimate complaints (like a small number of hosts who own a ton of properties, which is even sketchy to me as a guest), they really brought this hardline pushback on themselves.
- kayoone 8y ago
  I was in Budapest recently and had a very good experience with the host, but was already a bit perplexed that i was in contact with 3 different people over the course of the stay. In the end i realised that the host owns 25 properties in the city centre and probably has a dozen assistants to take care of stuff. It's a full blown tourism business and a problem for the local community at that point.
  - bamboozled 8y ago
    I once lived in Amsterdam and during summer, my neighbourhood was overrun with loud Airbnb tourists coming and going at all hours of the night. As a resident it was an impossible situation for 2-3 months each year. I ended up leaving over it, it was affecting my ability to to my job. I learned (the hard way) why regulations and building codes exist.
    - cornholio 8y ago
      I don't want to minimize your plight, sleeping above a commercial street can be a nightmare. And it's a bugger when your quiet neighborhood suddenly transforms into Tourist Ground Zero. But cities do need to grow and expand. Quiet backstreets turn into busy boulevards. They have done so for millennia. The economic opportunities such transformation brings for the city far outstrip the cost of new sound insulating windows - not to mention that, for owners, those are more than covered by the appreciation of the property. That's why I prefer a system where tourists and hosts pay for the creative destruction they do to residential areas, and put that revenue to good use for everybody else.
qwerty456127 8y ago
> If city officials reject an application to let out a property, any future bookings are canceled It's unbelievable you are to ask somebody else's permission to be able to let your legitimate property in the 21th century USA. It looks more characteristic for Soviet Russia or something like that. Is having to let it on the officials demand regardless to whether or not you were willing to let it the next step?
- teej 8y ago
  You have never had carte blanche to do whatever you want with your property in the US. You cannot run a nail salon out of your residentially zoned house, either. Many actions come with negative externalities. The whole purpose of regulation like this is to protect the interests of the community and the permanent residents.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jabgrabdthrow 8y ago
  Fucking unbelievable my centrifuges were sabotaged when they were on my property. Now the government thinks it can put me in a cage just because I transported some atoms around without their permission.
  - sctb 8y ago
    Since we just asked you to please post substantively, we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll follow the guidelines in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
polyomino 8y ago
And once the RIAA sued Napster, nobody pirated music ever again. The End.
ghaff 8y ago
It actually seems an odd anecdote to build a story around given that some of the facts seem to be in dispute between the host and Airbnb. Also, while I know San Francisco can get pretty booked up at peak times, it's at least surprising that the travelers couldn't have found something; it's not like their Airbnb reservation was super cheap. I get that a lot of cities are cracking down on Airbnb and this is disrupting some travelers. This just doesn't seem like a great example.
telesilla 8y ago
Cities simply cannot continue having living space rented out for tourists, increasing rent for the residents and worse, removing properties entirely from the residential market. I will be SO glad when AirBnB'ing an entire apartment as a business is shut down: I try and use it exclusively with private rooms and where it is clearly the host's usual home, or it's a property that is created specifically for tourism. I also find that in areas where city tourist tax is applied, AirBnB apartments aren't much cheaper than hotel rooms: at which point I usually look for a hotel instead if I can get better amenities. In a city like Chicago, where weekend hotels go for $250-300 a night on the low/mid end in the Loop, you are still looking at about the same with an AirBnB apartment, once you add service and cleaning fees. Can anyone prove to me, that this isn't pushing up rents because landlords and tenants can now afford higher monthly rents knowing they can AirBnB a few weekends or more to cover the higher costs?
- dorchadas 8y ago
  Oh, it's definitely driving up rent. Even if not for the cost you suggested, simply because people can make more money renting out an AirBnB for a weekend or a summer than they can by renting to a family for a year. So it drives up the rent to compensate for that. And AirBnB also increases the demand for rental places, as every apartment/house that is bought to be used as an AirBnB is one less to be used for residents of the city.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
UncleEntity 8y ago
So...the property owner had the proper permit and the renter was in direct contact with them which leaves a perfect opportunity to cut out the middle-man (err, middle-person?) and not ruin someone's holiday plans. A little over a decade ago I was wandering around Europe for a couple months and only stayed in a proper hotel a couple times, once because I needed an address to ship my luggage the airlines lost and the other because I got into town late and there wasn't anyone at the train station hunting for tourists -- every other time as soon as I stepped off the train there were people offering up rooms to rent in private houses for some extra cash on the side. All in all it worked out and I saved a few bucks in the process.
ksmsjm 8y ago
Would take legal steps to get two booking.com apartments removed from our little apartments house, but there is nothing we can do. Guests smoke and bang doors (wooden house amplifies these sounds) and we just have to suck it up.

Title should say: "Cities wreck travellers' holiday plans as battle with AirBnB intensifies"

detaro 8y ago
Or "Airbnb hosts fail to comply with regulations and accept reservations anyways, wrecking their guests holiday plans". Or "Airbnb fails to properly warn travellers they're booking stays that potentially will have to be cancelled later".
- superkuh 8y ago
  Or, "Airbnb fails to warn travellers city plans to wreck their holidy plans." It's almost funny that the city is engaging in rent-seeking behavior against renters. In this move San Francisco makes it clear that they believe they own your property and you merely occupy it on their whim.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    > In this move San Francisco makes it clear that they believe they own your property and you merely occupy it on their whim. In this move, San Franciso makes it clear that you can't change the use of a property without permission.
    - superkuh 8y ago
      Right, the premise of this is that it's their and not yours. You have to get permission to use your own property how you like. Living in a city means giving up rights to the authoritarians who keep high population density centers from killing each other. Living in a city is a big trade-off. More jobs, less liberty.
  - jlgray 8y ago
    Zoning requirements and permits for operating hotels are not unreasonable. Some people rent out a spare room now and again for extra cash, and some people have multiple properties that are occupied exclusively by Airbnb renters, essentially running an unlicensed hotel. The latter can be extremely obnoxious if its your upstairs neighbor, not to mention the effects that being discovered by Airbnb real estate investors can have on a town or neighborhood.
- cornholio 8y ago
  Or: "Cities fail to properly regulate Airbnb, widely deploy sinister measures to discourage people from using it"
  - detaro 8y ago
    What would "proper regulation" be, and why isn't a registration and review system for hosts such? (If it turns out it was the city's fault that Airbnb erroneously thought the registration was invalid, that'd clearly be an implementation failure, I agree, but still leaves open the question why Airbnb only reacted so late)
    - cornholio 8y ago
      If only there was a way to make tourists and hosts pay for the inconvenience and externalities they cause, and put that revenue to the benefit of everyone in the city. I know, let's call it a tax. As opposed to a rigid system of "designated uses" for private properties that prevents economic transactions depending on how much they inconvenience upper class and politically connected residents and competing hospitality interests.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        If I'm living in a building and it becomes intolerable because of noisy transient visitors on a regular basis, a tax that goes to the city does me no good whatsoever.
        ensignavenger 8y ago
        If you are in a condo, your homeowners association should have rules about making noise, and the owners of the airbnb should be forced to take responsibility. If an apartment complex, your landlord should deal with it.
        bjl 8y ago
        Or, and here's an idea, we can enact sane regulations like licensing requirements to prevent the negative externalities from happening in the first place.
- notwhereyouare 8y ago
  The woman added: “I called the city authorities and they confirmed my application, and the licence number I’ve been issued is what Airbnb requires, so that’s what I provided. But Airbnb still says the city rejected my number. Both sides are pointing at each other.” Your first quote is wrong according to the article
Spooky23 8y ago
Actually, no. AirBnb bungled the process. The host was able to rent. I also found it weird that the PR nonsense said that “2 million” people are using the service and putting money in the pockets of “countless” hosts. Hosts aren’t countless... so I wonder why they aren’t calling that out?
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  They probably don’t have data to count. So technically they are countless.
FussyZeus 8y ago
It's almost like thumbing your nose at government regulations isn't a good plan for a solid future in business. Who knew.
dang 8y ago
Certainly the article's original title is both misleading and clickbait, but the idea is to change such titles to something accurate and neutral. I've taken a crack at it based on the contents of the article, but if someone comes up with a more accurate and neutral title we can change it again.

Airbnb’s policy is to wait until 10 days before checkin, even when they already know they need to cancel. Same is true for the mountain of Japan cancellations this summer. They won’t tell anyone till 10 days before They think they’re being “aggresive”, hoping that the rules change. But they’re screwing up vacations selfishly > Airbnb – the company, not the hosts of the property – pulled the plug on their week’s stay in San Francisco, 10 days before they were due to arrive.

ensignavenger 8y ago
In Japan, AirBnB claims they were led to believe that previously booked stays were going to be okay while the hosts worked to get licensed for future stays. Maybe they are outright lying, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
- paulsutter 8y ago
  Regardless, they appear to be waiting until 10 days before the reservation to notify people of the cancellation. Which is distinctly uncool. By that time, hotels will be more expensive than if reserved in advance.
  - DINKDINK 8y ago
    >By that time, hotels will be more expensive than if reserved in advance. Hotel rooms are “perishable goods”. Generally prices will be lower than farther out but value will be lower than if you bought earlier. It’s like milk, grocery store can’t sell spoiled milk so yes the milk that’s about to turn you can get at a discount but it’ll be less value per dollar.

tylermenezes 8y ago

I think this is a good example of how playing the hardline, aggressive "disruptor" can backfire. I've talked to the Airbnb founders a few times, and they're probably the most passionate founders I've met. It's clear that they believe in their vision 100%, even without the money (just look at their history of self-funding for years before they could attract VC interest). But by refusing to cooperate with cities on some legitimate complaints (like a small number of hosts who own a ton of properties, which is even sketchy to me as a guest), they really brought this hardline pushback on themselves.

kayoone 8y ago
I was in Budapest recently and had a very good experience with the host, but was already a bit perplexed that i was in contact with 3 different people over the course of the stay. In the end i realised that the host owns 25 properties in the city centre and probably has a dozen assistants to take care of stuff. It's a full blown tourism business and a problem for the local community at that point.
- bamboozled 8y ago
  I once lived in Amsterdam and during summer, my neighbourhood was overrun with loud Airbnb tourists coming and going at all hours of the night. As a resident it was an impossible situation for 2-3 months each year. I ended up leaving over it, it was affecting my ability to to my job. I learned (the hard way) why regulations and building codes exist.
  - cornholio 8y ago
    I don't want to minimize your plight, sleeping above a commercial street can be a nightmare. And it's a bugger when your quiet neighborhood suddenly transforms into Tourist Ground Zero. But cities do need to grow and expand. Quiet backstreets turn into busy boulevards. They have done so for millennia. The economic opportunities such transformation brings for the city far outstrip the cost of new sound insulating windows - not to mention that, for owners, those are more than covered by the appreciation of the property. That's why I prefer a system where tourists and hosts pay for the creative destruction they do to residential areas, and put that revenue to good use for everybody else.

qwerty456127 8y ago

> If city officials reject an application to let out a property, any future bookings are canceled It's unbelievable you are to ask somebody else's permission to be able to let your legitimate property in the 21th century USA. It looks more characteristic for Soviet Russia or something like that. Is having to let it on the officials demand regardless to whether or not you were willing to let it the next step?

teej 8y ago
You have never had carte blanche to do whatever you want with your property in the US. You cannot run a nail salon out of your residentially zoned house, either. Many actions come with negative externalities. The whole purpose of regulation like this is to protect the interests of the community and the permanent residents.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jabgrabdthrow 8y ago
Fucking unbelievable my centrifuges were sabotaged when they were on my property. Now the government thinks it can put me in a cage just because I transported some atoms around without their permission.
- sctb 8y ago
  Since we just asked you to please post substantively, we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll follow the guidelines in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

polyomino 8y ago

And once the RIAA sued Napster, nobody pirated music ever again. The End.

ghaff 8y ago

It actually seems an odd anecdote to build a story around given that some of the facts seem to be in dispute between the host and Airbnb. Also, while I know San Francisco can get pretty booked up at peak times, it's at least surprising that the travelers couldn't have found something; it's not like their Airbnb reservation was super cheap. I get that a lot of cities are cracking down on Airbnb and this is disrupting some travelers. This just doesn't seem like a great example.

telesilla 8y ago

Cities simply cannot continue having living space rented out for tourists, increasing rent for the residents and worse, removing properties entirely from the residential market. I will be SO glad when AirBnB'ing an entire apartment as a business is shut down: I try and use it exclusively with private rooms and where it is clearly the host's usual home, or it's a property that is created specifically for tourism. I also find that in areas where city tourist tax is applied, AirBnB apartments aren't much cheaper than hotel rooms: at which point I usually look for a hotel instead if I can get better amenities. In a city like Chicago, where weekend hotels go for $250-300 a night on the low/mid end in the Loop, you are still looking at about the same with an AirBnB apartment, once you add service and cleaning fees. Can anyone prove to me, that this isn't pushing up rents because landlords and tenants can now afford higher monthly rents knowing they can AirBnB a few weekends or more to cover the higher costs?

dorchadas 8y ago
Oh, it's definitely driving up rent. Even if not for the cost you suggested, simply because people can make more money renting out an AirBnB for a weekend or a summer than they can by renting to a family for a year. So it drives up the rent to compensate for that. And AirBnB also increases the demand for rental places, as every apartment/house that is bought to be used as an AirBnB is one less to be used for residents of the city.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

UncleEntity 8y ago

So...the property owner had the proper permit and the renter was in direct contact with them which leaves a perfect opportunity to cut out the middle-man (err, middle-person?) and not ruin someone's holiday plans. A little over a decade ago I was wandering around Europe for a couple months and only stayed in a proper hotel a couple times, once because I needed an address to ship my luggage the airlines lost and the other because I got into town late and there wasn't anyone at the train station hunting for tourists -- every other time as soon as I stepped off the train there were people offering up rooms to rent in private houses for some extra cash on the side. All in all it worked out and I saved a few bucks in the process.

ksmsjm 8y ago

Would take legal steps to get two booking.com apartments removed from our little apartments house, but there is nothing we can do. Guests smoke and bang doors (wooden house amplifies these sounds) and we just have to suck it up.