11 ms·

Airbnb is making life hell for young renters in tourist hotspots

89 points by dorchadas 3y ago

inglor_cz 3y ago
I just visited Venice. The old city does not really have any economy outside tourism. There is a naval academy at one of the outer islands, but that is it. The rest of the old city is just one big tourist trap, end of story. All everyday activity moved to the mainland (Mestre). What an end to an ancient merchant republic - selling themselves. Maybe this is an unescapable consequence of globalization and specialization. We have grown accustomed to the facts that the best microchips are made in Taiwan and the most influential software corporations reside in Silicon Valley. Perhaps some cities are destined to be tourist traps and nothing else. Many people want to visit Prague, Florence or Mecca; no one wants to go to Gary, Indiana. Remember: the global tourist class is destined to grow. As numerous Asian nations are slowly (or faster) climbing towards the developed status (India, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc.), the # of people who want to travel and have the means to do so will rise enormously. 15 million people visit Rome yearly - now. It might be 50 million in 2050. Edit: this comment attracted at least two downvotes. I am not too salty about it, but I would like to know why you think I am misinformed/wrong. Don't just downvote - argue, please. I don't particularly like human mobs in tiny medieval streets either, but I believe the global trend does not depend on what I like or not.
- mantas 3y ago
  This fucks over both tourists and locals. The legit stuff is being killed and people come to see outer shell at best. And be ripped off. What's the point of traveling when all you see around is other tourists and it's just a collective ripoff experience? It's sort of like F1. Best experience is at home watching on TV. Or really really really expensive. Going cheap route is just cargo cult for the sake of a worthless picture. Going to a tiny local event is likely to be so much better on many fronts. Aside from bragging rights to other cargoculters.
  - atleastoptimal 3y ago
    Doesn't matter, the market still drives towards the brand names, even if they're a shell of their former selves. Lamenting the lost authentic past is for DFW wannabees. The Nouveau Riche masses will flock to the neolib Meccas to christen their legitimacy.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    I had similar thoughts on my way. I tried to compensate by visiting not-so-wellknown locations such as Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome, which is most of the time reasonably empty. And yet, there is something magical about walking around the ruins in Forum Romanum or seeing the Dome of Florence towering over you, all the people notwithstanding. The touch of ancient marble, the smell in the air, the heat of the early May Italian sun, the reverbation of ambient sounds in an ancient amphitheatre, all this cannot really be "tasted" in the virtual space. I am personally torn on this, seeing both the good and the bad things.
    - mantas 3y ago
      I get your point. But, to be honest, what portion of the crowd take it in this way? Instead if taking a selfie and moving on to the next hotspot? Somehow from this crowd I usually hear reviews of restaurants and hotels rather than out-of-body transcendental experiences like yours. I agree such experiences are awesome. But IMO 1) you've to prepare yourself for such trip and get yourself immersed in that context (be it historical or cultural) 2) have a proper setting to get into mood. Which is quite a task in peak season in many hotspots... At the same time, you don't need top-tier hotspots for that. Once you're prepared, there're lots and lots of places off the beaten path that are likely to offer better overall experience than top-tier places. IMO there're the good parts for immersive experiences. But, unfortunately, the crowds seem to apply very consumerist fast travel approach. It just became too cheap (frequently by externalising the costs) and many people don't take it seriously.
  - namaria 3y ago
    While I agree with the sentiment, I think herd mentality fits better then cargo cult.
- carlob 3y ago
  > I just visited Venice. The old city does not really have any economy outside tourism. That's just not true. My brother went to university in Venice a few years ago and the tourists and their traps concentrate in a few hotspots. It's true that some parts have completely been eaten up by tourism, but tourists hardly wander away from the few streets that connect the main sights. > 15 million people visit Rome yearly - now. It might be 50 million in 2050. I think by 2050 we will have to reckon with the true costs of flying, large swaths of the global South will not be livable anymore and a lot of people will be forced to move to cooler climates.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    I wandered quite far from the main connecting streets and I never encountered: a school, a dentist's, a lawyer office etc. Come to think of it, I never saw a local child there, or a mother with a pram. What I encountered, even far from the main thoroughfares, were AirBnBs and restaurants with multilingual menus. The only object that I saw and that was unambiguously not-touristy was a naval academy.
    - carlob 3y ago
      Well a pram would not be very practical in Venice:)
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    >large swaths of the global South will not be livable anymore and a lot of people will be forced to move to cooler climates. The global North is unlivable for most of the year. Winter as a phenomena is a form of natural disaster, making it impossible to grow food and energy intensive for humans to survive.
- thinkindie 3y ago
  while that's true - you can't increase the number of tourists indefinitely. There are limits to infrastructure (airports, trains, hotels, restaurants). Therefore travelling long distance or to popular destinations will get way more expensive, and people will explore more outside of the popular destination or will travel closer to home.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    Absolutely, yes. Medieval cities have an upper limit to them, and that upper limit is fairly close. (Already exceeded in Dubrovnik.) We will see high tourist taxes introduced all over. I wonder if the cities blessed/cursed with an enormous influx of people willing to pay high tourist taxes just to see them will develop something akin to "Dutch disease" = basically stagnation and corruption based on certain income regardless of quality of governance, which disincentizives competition, learning, investment etc. The original concept of Dutch disease is based on resource-rich states, but being touristically attractive is a kind of "natural" resource too. As long as places like Rome can prevent street crime and keep the monuments from falling apart, the crowds will come, even if the local town hall consisted of mediocre politicians. Mafia is also known to prey on tourist establishment. If the main lucrative attribute of your pizzeria is that the guests can see Colosseum from its windows, you cannot move your business and are forced to pay whatever protection money they want from you.
- usrusr 3y ago
  Venice is particularly difficult because of the lack of any in-between. Rome on the other hand can easily fit those millions into an authentic self, because there's so much local life around the tourist hotspots, with a natural blend in between. And tourism is authentic Rome anyways, it would not be Rome without. In Rome tourism is not even a modern invention, back when it was still called "pilgrimage" English and Welsh kings have made that trip between battling Vikings, it's that old. In smaller Italian towns I have seen AirBnBs that I'd want to grant a "maybe it's not all bad" exception: old town flats that are basically museums to live in. A permanent resident would likely want modernize quite drastically, but tourists interested in the past can be the perfect solution to keep the legacy setup maintained. But that should be easy enough to regulate, plenty of existing cultural heritage protection schemes to tie in with.
mantas 3y ago
Fuck airbnb and all those „startups“ where main goal is to break the law and shrug it off because somethingtech.
- namaria 3y ago
  It's high time communities start regulating the so-called 'app economy'. Monetizing everything into a global marketplace is great when your income is orders of magnitude greater than the global average. This is exploitation pure and simple.
  - farseer 3y ago
    Yet all common folk uses Airbnb for short rentals unless you are rich enough to afford a Hotel. Sure some regulation is required, but would you rather have a few Hotel chains corner the market on short stays and rentals?
    - namaria 3y ago
      Everyone wants to be paid a lot and have lots of cheap options to consume. This is untenable. I'd rather everyone have affordable homes than affordable holidays.
    - tmnvix 3y ago
      Where I am AirBnB is generally around the same cost as a hotel. It used to be cheaper but not anymore.
hermitcrab 3y ago
We stayed in Aviemore (Scotland) last year and the local businesses were really struggling for staff. We were told that there was very little accomodation for seasonal staff, because it was more lucrative to rent it out to tourists. So you can go stay in Aviemore, but good luck finding anywhere to eat your dinner.
- substation13 3y ago
  I wonder if wages have risen in response to this? You cannot operate a business that doesn't pay staff enough to live for very long.
- stewartmcgown 3y ago
  St Andrews, where I went to university, suffers from the same issue. When rich tourists can spend hundreds of pounds a night to stay in AirBnBs at the "home of golf", the broke students get forced into paying £2000pcm for a dilapidated council house.
  - jwestbury 3y ago
    I honestly don't understand using AirBnBs in most places in the UK -- traditional, proper B&Bs offer a better experience, often at a better price point. I guess if you've got a whole family, children in tow and all, maybe AirBnB begins to make sense, but even then, there are so many good self-catering options that don't eat up the local housing market.
    - iggldiggl 3y ago
      I, too, absolutely love traditional UK B&Bs – but in my experience they typically operate from what rather looks like a converted regular house, so couldn't they, too, be accused of taking away regular housing?
    - pjc50 3y ago
      Sheer availability beats everything. And as the other commentor says, quite a lot of BnBs are just staying in someone's house that isn't intermediated by a global megacorp.
oifjsidjf 3y ago
House and food should be treated completely differently then other non-essential goods like entertainment and electronics. Destroy housing -> destroy people's future and family creation. Air b&b is cancer for people trying to start families as it destroys all local affordable housing.
- mantas 3y ago
  And neither should focus on just „build more houses“ or „grow more tons of food“. Both must be high quality in terms of (mental) health as well as environment.
  - lachstar-x 3y ago
    You must construct additional pylons.
- dorchadas 3y ago
  Living in a city heavily impacted by it, I couldn't agree more. People love it, because they feel entitled as tourists to live like locals, at the expense of the actual locals. It's literally all about entitlement, while forcing the negative externalities on the community you came to visit! Outta sight, outta mind.
  - SwiftyBug 3y ago
    And on top of that there's nothing in renting an AirBnB that provides a "local" experience. It's an ego-based illusion of experiencing the local life at best.
    - joshlemer 3y ago
      If not AirBnB to have a local experience, then what?
      - badpun 3y ago
        Move there and live for a couple of months, or, better yet, a couple of years. You can't have a "local experience" without being a local.
4pkjai 3y ago
Hong Kong is a tourist hotspot, but it hasn't had an effect on our rental market. It's already hell here!
- dorchadas 3y ago
  It's definitely impacted Dublin, where I live, and the rest of Ireland. There's 10x more rooms on AirBnB than there are long-term rents in Dublin; in other parts of the country it's 100x.
  - rtpg 3y ago
    Is that "10x more rooms on AirBnB then there are open rental ads in Dublin"? Surely there aren't literally 10x more rooms on AirBnB then there are renters in Dublin? I am also very frustrated at rental markets in many place, though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots. I am very prepared to lay a lot of blame on Airbnb for high prices, just haven't seen anything conclusive (US-centric stuff I've seen, the fact that building has crawled to a halt feels way more relevant)
    - dorchadas 3y ago
      Yes, 10x more rooms on AirBnB than open rooms to rent in Dublin. At least with single bedrooms; I haven't looked into more rooms as I'm only searching for a new place for myself. > though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots. It very much is happening. Dublin saw this during the pandemic, when the long-term rent market doubled after tourism was shut down. These are houses that are zoned for residents, not people coming in, and landlords see they can easily make more money letting them out to the tourists. See this article from The Irish Times about it: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/pandemic-reveals-impact-of-airbnb-on-irish-rental-market-1.4335784 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/pandemic-reveals... It's only gotten worse now, too, with many going back to AirBnB.
      - 3y ago
matsemann 3y ago
I'm from a small ski resort in Norway. How this has been "solved" here is that it's always been "boplikt", aka "duty to live", in the residential zones. And then there are separate zones for cabins and rental apartments. So the normal houses, someone has to live in, or you will get fined. You can't just buy a normal house and use it as a cabin or for short time rental. This creates two markets with different prices. A similar sized "cabin property" is probably 3-4x as expensive as the same house on a boplikt-property. But this has kept locals from being prized out. (I write "solved", as it's not easy to just move to the small city and find somewhere to live, but that's not really because of airbnb like situations. It's more that no one dares to build housing hoping someone will move here, and possibly have it unsold for ages)
- cal85 3y ago
  This sounds like a good solution to the problem described in the article. Are there any issues with it?
  - wodenokoto 3y ago
    That people rent out non-rentals (basically the business model of Airbnb) Buildings that can’t be sold in a market with high demand for realestate.
  - junofan 3y ago
    At scale it just makes lawyers rich.
    - atoav 3y ago
      In the US it would.
  - carapace 3y ago
    Not to be snarky but to me it sounds like OP just described 'zoning'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning
spuz 3y ago
From an economic point of view, the situation is very inefficient - holiday homes lie empty while locals struggle to find vacant places to live. Anyone care to propose an "economist's" solution to the problem?
- tmnvix 3y ago
  Maximum of 2-3 months that a residence can be rented short term in any one year. This allows owners to rent their homes while they are on holiday (and demand for the short term rentals is highest). Anyone wanting to do short term rentals all year must abide by the same regulations that traditional accommodation providers do - paying commercial rates, not running their business in a strictly residential area, etc.
- flask_manager 3y ago
  An economists point of view would say there is nothing wrong with empty houses; and in fact its a good thing because short-term low-barrier agreements allow the optimal price for housing in an area to be determined. They would then say that the local wages will eventually increase to the point where a worker can live close enough to make the job in the high cost town worth the commute.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  Land value tax
- wongarsu 3y ago
  The classic solution to high prices is to increase supply. But in this instance the supply for long-term dwellings is used up by another sector (vacation stays), and that would happen to most new supply too. Eventually the profits of the two home uses would converge if you increase supply enough, but many tourist hotspots might run out of space to build long before that. I think segmenting the space, as mentioned by matsemann, is a good solution here. If you allocate half the town (including half the areas for future development) to long-term housing and the other to short-term stays, you prevent the markets from sharing a single supply. In the first years it will still be much more profitable to invest and build in the short-term half of town, but as long as there's profit to be made in building in either half of town this will sort itself out.
carabiner 3y ago
OMG I know a girl who went through exactly this. She signed a 1 year lease on an apartment in a ski town, then a few months in out of nowhere, her landlady was kicking her out. Why? Landlord decided to Airbnb the place for a month to make twice the profit. And she had signed a lease! This was a town in France, and so it's affecting places around the world.
- ozinenko 3y ago
  There are very few reasons for a landlord to prematurely terminate the lease in France, and deciding to lent it for more money is specifically not one of them. In winter, you can't evict anyone at all (making money from ski town rentals likely means this is winter high season). There is unfortunately a lot of abuse, especially if the tenant is young and/or foreign and wouldn't know how to fight back.
- slau 3y ago
  I used to live in France, and I remember hearing about how it's functionally impossible to evict someone who refuses to move out. There are many horror stories of people squatting places, or just not paying rent anymore. The police won't intervene as it's a civil matter, and you need to get a court order which takes anywhere from 6 months to multiple years. The tennant has 2 months to comply with the court order. If after the two months, the tennant still hasn't complied, you need to get a "commissaire de justice" to execute the eviction (who is typically appointed by the court). In addition to this, there are specific months in the year where you cannot evict people (November-April). Whenever a tennant wants to live somewhere for free, they just use that clemency period as a weapon and make the court proceedings wait from one year to the next. Obviously, "for free" means you still owe the rent after all is said and done. But if you file for bankruptcy and wait 10 years, the debt is forgiven. If a landlord attempts to evict the tennant themselves, they risk a 30k€ fine and 3 years in jail. In other words: your friend was most likely served an illegal eviction (it's also not possible to end a "bail" in France on a whim), and she could've just stayed put. Edit: the reason for the fine/jail time for a landlord is because an individual's home is considered quite sacred. Trespassing is taken very seriously by the law, it's called "violation de domicile" for a landlord to enter a tennant's home without permission.
neilv 3y ago
For a start, I'd like to immediately outlaw short-term rentals (outside of traditional regulated hotels, etc.). Then we need to end institutional and foreign investors ownership of single-family and few-unit homes. (I don't mean this as a "wouldn't it be great if someday, but we're never going to do it", but I think the housing crisis some places warrants state legislative efforts this year, requiring immediate halt to new purchases, and liquidation within 12 months.) We might first have to outlaw campaign contributions.
- zephyrus1985 3y ago
  Have you considered building more ?
  - kieselguhr_kid 3y ago
    Without appropriate regulations you're just building more AirBNBs. A little less flippantly, just adopting this YIMBY line without thinking through regulating the market to ensure houses are for human habitation will not address the underlying issues. It will just line the pockets of real estate developers.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    Sure, let's create more supply for foreign owners - that's not going to alleviate anything. All the new building near where I live is high-priced apartments that no one can afford anyway (unless you airbnb them).
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Why should the owner of 20-story hotel be able to rent, but the owner of a 1-story house not?
  - rspoerri 3y ago
    Typically (in all countries i know) the usage of land is defined by the state. Residential vs. commercial usage is clearly differentiated. I have not researched it, but i'd assume that a hotel must be built on commercial ground (all i know are). With airbnb the commercial rental of a residential housing became common and is unregulated up till now.
andrewstuart 3y ago
I wish AirBNB would leave Australia. Even better would be house sharing either banned or severely restricted. It is ruining our society, making renting impossible in some towns, driving up house prices, pushing society towards "houses for the rich, nothing for everyone else". I'd really like to give a big middle finger to AirBNB.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  The disparity is what I find so sad. On one hand there's entire generations that can't afford to rent let alone buy but there are enough people traveling all over the world affording USD400 a night Airbnb's to price them out. Maybe another symptom of wealth inequality.
- maeil 3y ago
  AirBnB I kind of understand, but house sharing why?
  - andrewstuart 3y ago
    Wrong terminology…. “Short stay home rentals”
paulddraper 3y ago
Popular opinion: I wanna live in a tourist hotspot! Nice weather, beautiful scenery, exciting sites, etc. Unpopular opinion: A lot of other people want to experience that too! Perhaps the best thing is to rent/share those prime locations, so a lot of people can enjoy them. Fighting against people visiting is rent-seeking of a different kind.
- unlikelymordant 3y ago
  tourist hotspots often need a lot of service workers, who have to live somewhere too. Not to mention that higher rents/decreasing total stock in one part of a city can create more competition for other parts, raising prices everywhere to some extent.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    And I truly expect the market to find an equilibrium such that those service workers will exist, whether through transportation, higher wages, people who highly value the location, etc. Certainly without those service workers, it won't be much of a tourist attraction.
    - dorchadas 3y ago
      No, it'll rely on exploitation of workers. That's what's happening in Dublin -- they're exporting the English language students as in Ireland you can work (legally, many work more) 20 hours a week on a student visa and the English schools count. Then they're stuffed into rooms with five others somewhat nearby. It all relies on exploitation on the desperate.
      - paulddraper 3y ago
        Devil's advocate: what is making students so desperate? The 20+ work week and 5 roommates is apparently preferable to their other options.
        3y ago
neilv 3y ago
At what point did anyone at Airbnb what economic effects this would have, before proceeding anyway? Was it in the first hours that the idea was conceived? When it started to take off? Not until they were projecting growth at those levels?
- foogazi 3y ago
  Wasn’t AirBnB glorified couch-surfing initially? It was setup as live with a local who will show you around It came to be because hotel stock sucked for elastic demand: big conferences and festivals
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Yeah, the perversion of the sharing economy into the gig economy was the worst thing happen on the internet.
Kosirich 3y ago
Denmark has limited it to 70 with ability to increase to 100 days for private renters. https://hostminded.com/denmark-new-airbnb-regulations/ https://hostminded.com/denmark-new-airbnb-regulations/
bilekas 3y ago
When I was living in Dublin Ireland, I was paying 1500 EUR a month for a one bedroom appartment, nothing special but expensive, the landlord say he was not going to renew the contract because he was going to change it to an AirBnB. I met him a few months later and he was telling me he was making over 4000 a month. I can't blame the landlords in this case.. It's obviously the better option for them, even as the article suggests, the landlords can afford to have the locations close during the `off-season` because there is so much money to be made. Some regulation around the pricing would be nice, but I have no idea how you would even navigate doing that.
- shever73 3y ago
  The rents here in Dublin are crazy! I honestly don't know how people can afford to rent, which is tragic because we also have an entire generation who cannot afford to buy. In my apartment complex, AirBnB and short-term rentals are technically forbidden, but people still do it if they feel they can get away with it.
- unmole 3y ago
  > Some regulation around the pricing would be nice, Economists of every school and political affiliation will tell you that rent controls are a terrible idea.
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    No need to control rent. Just ban AirBnb and other short term rental schemes in residential buildings. Tourists should stay in buildings designed as such (i.e.: Hotels)
  - em-bee 3y ago
    seems to work in germany. they have rent control nationwide
    - unmole 3y ago
      https://fee.org/articles/berlin-s-disastrous-rent-control-law-gets-scrapped/ https://fee.org/articles/berlin-s-disastrous-rent-control-la...
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
I don't really see why people are entitled to live in the most desirable places just because their parents happened to live there. Why should I be banned from visiting so that some rich lineage gets to continue to expand their portfolio?
- paulddraper 3y ago
  One person's dear family is another person's entitled dynasty.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
sampo 3y ago
Even as these are tourist destinations with natural or historical beauty, the local decision makers should still allow for building new homes. Not necessary right at the historical town center, but within 30 minutes walking or biking distance. When demand is high, you should allow to build more supply.
mikhailkasm 3y ago
[dead]
emadda 3y ago
I recently released https://stay100.app https://stay100.app - an AirBnB search engine for large screens. Let me know what you think.
- sundaeofshock 3y ago
  I think you need to learn how to read the room.
  - emadda 3y ago
    You are right, to be honest I had just assumed most news articles will have an overly negative spin to get clicks.
throwaway6734 3y ago
Why not build more housing?
- deepthunder 3y ago
  Sure, but you have to somehow prevent investors from snapping it all up. Vancouver is a perfect example of what not to do.
  - throwaway6734 3y ago
    Why? Just keep building as long as it's profitable for builders to do so
    - deepthunder 3y ago
      It hasn't solved the problem of affordability. Rent and condo and house prices are some the highest in the world. You end up just building housing for foreign investors to make money off the locals.
908B64B197 3y ago
Honest and simple question: Have they just tried to build more? Who would benefit from people not building more? Who's pushing for regulations against building more supply?
- notaustinpowers 3y ago
  Mainly current homeowners. A constrained supply almost guarantees that your home value will continue to go up, especially if you're in a lucrative area. So homeowners and well-connected people make sure that zoning laws and building regulations are very prohibitive to new construction housing.
  - 908B64B197 3y ago
    I guess it's easier for local politicians to get poor people angry at "evil foreign tech giants" instead of actually solving the issue. That way they get to cash-in on votes from both groups!
Gud 3y ago
Please everyone, not everyone travels as a tourist. I’m always traveling for work and yes, I do prefer living like a normal person in a normal apartment.
johnea 3y ago
I just can't wait until I'm not young anymore, then all my renting troubles will go away!

89 points by dorchadas 3y ago

I just visited Venice. The old city does not really have any economy outside tourism. There is a naval academy at one of the outer islands, but that is it. The rest of the old city is just one big tourist trap, end of story. All everyday activity moved to the mainland (Mestre). What an end to an ancient merchant republic - selling themselves. Maybe this is an unescapable consequence of globalization and specialization. We have grown accustomed to the facts that the best microchips are made in Taiwan and the most influential software corporations reside in Silicon Valley. Perhaps some cities are destined to be tourist traps and nothing else. Many people want to visit Prague, Florence or Mecca; no one wants to go to Gary, Indiana. Remember: the global tourist class is destined to grow. As numerous Asian nations are slowly (or faster) climbing towards the developed status (India, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc.), the # of people who want to travel and have the means to do so will rise enormously. 15 million people visit Rome yearly - now. It might be 50 million in 2050. Edit: this comment attracted at least two downvotes. I am not too salty about it, but I would like to know why you think I am misinformed/wrong. Don't just downvote - argue, please. I don't particularly like human mobs in tiny medieval streets either, but I believe the global trend does not depend on what I like or not.

mantas 3y ago
This fucks over both tourists and locals. The legit stuff is being killed and people come to see outer shell at best. And be ripped off. What's the point of traveling when all you see around is other tourists and it's just a collective ripoff experience? It's sort of like F1. Best experience is at home watching on TV. Or really really really expensive. Going cheap route is just cargo cult for the sake of a worthless picture. Going to a tiny local event is likely to be so much better on many fronts. Aside from bragging rights to other cargoculters.
- atleastoptimal 3y ago
  Doesn't matter, the market still drives towards the brand names, even if they're a shell of their former selves. Lamenting the lost authentic past is for DFW wannabees. The Nouveau Riche masses will flock to the neolib Meccas to christen their legitimacy.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  I had similar thoughts on my way. I tried to compensate by visiting not-so-wellknown locations such as Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome, which is most of the time reasonably empty. And yet, there is something magical about walking around the ruins in Forum Romanum or seeing the Dome of Florence towering over you, all the people notwithstanding. The touch of ancient marble, the smell in the air, the heat of the early May Italian sun, the reverbation of ambient sounds in an ancient amphitheatre, all this cannot really be "tasted" in the virtual space. I am personally torn on this, seeing both the good and the bad things.
  - mantas 3y ago
    I get your point. But, to be honest, what portion of the crowd take it in this way? Instead if taking a selfie and moving on to the next hotspot? Somehow from this crowd I usually hear reviews of restaurants and hotels rather than out-of-body transcendental experiences like yours. I agree such experiences are awesome. But IMO 1) you've to prepare yourself for such trip and get yourself immersed in that context (be it historical or cultural) 2) have a proper setting to get into mood. Which is quite a task in peak season in many hotspots... At the same time, you don't need top-tier hotspots for that. Once you're prepared, there're lots and lots of places off the beaten path that are likely to offer better overall experience than top-tier places. IMO there're the good parts for immersive experiences. But, unfortunately, the crowds seem to apply very consumerist fast travel approach. It just became too cheap (frequently by externalising the costs) and many people don't take it seriously.
- namaria 3y ago
  While I agree with the sentiment, I think herd mentality fits better then cargo cult.
carlob 3y ago
> I just visited Venice. The old city does not really have any economy outside tourism. That's just not true. My brother went to university in Venice a few years ago and the tourists and their traps concentrate in a few hotspots. It's true that some parts have completely been eaten up by tourism, but tourists hardly wander away from the few streets that connect the main sights. > 15 million people visit Rome yearly - now. It might be 50 million in 2050. I think by 2050 we will have to reckon with the true costs of flying, large swaths of the global South will not be livable anymore and a lot of people will be forced to move to cooler climates.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  I wandered quite far from the main connecting streets and I never encountered: a school, a dentist's, a lawyer office etc. Come to think of it, I never saw a local child there, or a mother with a pram. What I encountered, even far from the main thoroughfares, were AirBnBs and restaurants with multilingual menus. The only object that I saw and that was unambiguously not-touristy was a naval academy.
  - carlob 3y ago
    Well a pram would not be very practical in Venice:)
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  >large swaths of the global South will not be livable anymore and a lot of people will be forced to move to cooler climates. The global North is unlivable for most of the year. Winter as a phenomena is a form of natural disaster, making it impossible to grow food and energy intensive for humans to survive.
thinkindie 3y ago
while that's true - you can't increase the number of tourists indefinitely. There are limits to infrastructure (airports, trains, hotels, restaurants). Therefore travelling long distance or to popular destinations will get way more expensive, and people will explore more outside of the popular destination or will travel closer to home.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Absolutely, yes. Medieval cities have an upper limit to them, and that upper limit is fairly close. (Already exceeded in Dubrovnik.) We will see high tourist taxes introduced all over. I wonder if the cities blessed/cursed with an enormous influx of people willing to pay high tourist taxes just to see them will develop something akin to "Dutch disease" = basically stagnation and corruption based on certain income regardless of quality of governance, which disincentizives competition, learning, investment etc. The original concept of Dutch disease is based on resource-rich states, but being touristically attractive is a kind of "natural" resource too. As long as places like Rome can prevent street crime and keep the monuments from falling apart, the crowds will come, even if the local town hall consisted of mediocre politicians. Mafia is also known to prey on tourist establishment. If the main lucrative attribute of your pizzeria is that the guests can see Colosseum from its windows, you cannot move your business and are forced to pay whatever protection money they want from you.
usrusr 3y ago
Venice is particularly difficult because of the lack of any in-between. Rome on the other hand can easily fit those millions into an authentic self, because there's so much local life around the tourist hotspots, with a natural blend in between. And tourism is authentic Rome anyways, it would not be Rome without. In Rome tourism is not even a modern invention, back when it was still called "pilgrimage" English and Welsh kings have made that trip between battling Vikings, it's that old. In smaller Italian towns I have seen AirBnBs that I'd want to grant a "maybe it's not all bad" exception: old town flats that are basically museums to live in. A permanent resident would likely want modernize quite drastically, but tourists interested in the past can be the perfect solution to keep the legacy setup maintained. But that should be easy enough to regulate, plenty of existing cultural heritage protection schemes to tie in with.

mantas 3y ago

Fuck airbnb and all those „startups“ where main goal is to break the law and shrug it off because somethingtech.

namaria 3y ago
It's high time communities start regulating the so-called 'app economy'. Monetizing everything into a global marketplace is great when your income is orders of magnitude greater than the global average. This is exploitation pure and simple.
- farseer 3y ago
  Yet all common folk uses Airbnb for short rentals unless you are rich enough to afford a Hotel. Sure some regulation is required, but would you rather have a few Hotel chains corner the market on short stays and rentals?
  - namaria 3y ago
    Everyone wants to be paid a lot and have lots of cheap options to consume. This is untenable. I'd rather everyone have affordable homes than affordable holidays.
  - tmnvix 3y ago
    Where I am AirBnB is generally around the same cost as a hotel. It used to be cheaper but not anymore.

hermitcrab 3y ago

We stayed in Aviemore (Scotland) last year and the local businesses were really struggling for staff. We were told that there was very little accomodation for seasonal staff, because it was more lucrative to rent it out to tourists. So you can go stay in Aviemore, but good luck finding anywhere to eat your dinner.

substation13 3y ago
I wonder if wages have risen in response to this? You cannot operate a business that doesn't pay staff enough to live for very long.
stewartmcgown 3y ago
St Andrews, where I went to university, suffers from the same issue. When rich tourists can spend hundreds of pounds a night to stay in AirBnBs at the "home of golf", the broke students get forced into paying £2000pcm for a dilapidated council house.
- jwestbury 3y ago
  I honestly don't understand using AirBnBs in most places in the UK -- traditional, proper B&Bs offer a better experience, often at a better price point. I guess if you've got a whole family, children in tow and all, maybe AirBnB begins to make sense, but even then, there are so many good self-catering options that don't eat up the local housing market.
  - iggldiggl 3y ago
    I, too, absolutely love traditional UK B&Bs – but in my experience they typically operate from what rather looks like a converted regular house, so couldn't they, too, be accused of taking away regular housing?
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Sheer availability beats everything. And as the other commentor says, quite a lot of BnBs are just staying in someone's house that isn't intermediated by a global megacorp.

oifjsidjf 3y ago

House and food should be treated completely differently then other non-essential goods like entertainment and electronics. Destroy housing -> destroy people's future and family creation. Air b&b is cancer for people trying to start families as it destroys all local affordable housing.

mantas 3y ago
And neither should focus on just „build more houses“ or „grow more tons of food“. Both must be high quality in terms of (mental) health as well as environment.
- lachstar-x 3y ago
  You must construct additional pylons.
dorchadas 3y ago
Living in a city heavily impacted by it, I couldn't agree more. People love it, because they feel entitled as tourists to live like locals, at the expense of the actual locals. It's literally all about entitlement, while forcing the negative externalities on the community you came to visit! Outta sight, outta mind.
- SwiftyBug 3y ago
  And on top of that there's nothing in renting an AirBnB that provides a "local" experience. It's an ego-based illusion of experiencing the local life at best.
  - joshlemer 3y ago
    If not AirBnB to have a local experience, then what?
    - badpun 3y ago
      Move there and live for a couple of months, or, better yet, a couple of years. You can't have a "local experience" without being a local.

4pkjai 3y ago

Hong Kong is a tourist hotspot, but it hasn't had an effect on our rental market. It's already hell here!

dorchadas 3y ago
It's definitely impacted Dublin, where I live, and the rest of Ireland. There's 10x more rooms on AirBnB than there are long-term rents in Dublin; in other parts of the country it's 100x.
- rtpg 3y ago
  Is that "10x more rooms on AirBnB then there are open rental ads in Dublin"? Surely there aren't literally 10x more rooms on AirBnB then there are renters in Dublin? I am also very frustrated at rental markets in many place, though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots. I am very prepared to lay a lot of blame on Airbnb for high prices, just haven't seen anything conclusive (US-centric stuff I've seen, the fact that building has crawled to a halt feels way more relevant)
  - dorchadas 3y ago
    Yes, 10x more rooms on AirBnB than open rooms to rent in Dublin. At least with single bedrooms; I haven't looked into more rooms as I'm only searching for a new place for myself. > though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots. It very much is happening. Dublin saw this during the pandemic, when the long-term rent market doubled after tourism was shut down. These are houses that are zoned for residents, not people coming in, and landlords see they can easily make more money letting them out to the tourists. See this article from The Irish Times about it: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/pandemic-reveals-impact-of-airbnb-on-irish-rental-market-1.4335784 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/pandemic-reveals... It's only gotten worse now, too, with many going back to AirBnB.
    - 3y ago

matsemann 3y ago

I'm from a small ski resort in Norway. How this has been "solved" here is that it's always been "boplikt", aka "duty to live", in the residential zones. And then there are separate zones for cabins and rental apartments. So the normal houses, someone has to live in, or you will get fined. You can't just buy a normal house and use it as a cabin or for short time rental. This creates two markets with different prices. A similar sized "cabin property" is probably 3-4x as expensive as the same house on a boplikt-property. But this has kept locals from being prized out. (I write "solved", as it's not easy to just move to the small city and find somewhere to live, but that's not really because of airbnb like situations. It's more that no one dares to build housing hoping someone will move here, and possibly have it unsold for ages)

cal85 3y ago
This sounds like a good solution to the problem described in the article. Are there any issues with it?
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  That people rent out non-rentals (basically the business model of Airbnb) Buildings that can’t be sold in a market with high demand for realestate.
- junofan 3y ago
  At scale it just makes lawyers rich.
  - atoav 3y ago
    In the US it would.
- carapace 3y ago
  Not to be snarky but to me it sounds like OP just described 'zoning'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning

spuz 3y ago

From an economic point of view, the situation is very inefficient - holiday homes lie empty while locals struggle to find vacant places to live. Anyone care to propose an "economist's" solution to the problem?

tmnvix 3y ago
Maximum of 2-3 months that a residence can be rented short term in any one year. This allows owners to rent their homes while they are on holiday (and demand for the short term rentals is highest). Anyone wanting to do short term rentals all year must abide by the same regulations that traditional accommodation providers do - paying commercial rates, not running their business in a strictly residential area, etc.
flask_manager 3y ago
An economists point of view would say there is nothing wrong with empty houses; and in fact its a good thing because short-term low-barrier agreements allow the optimal price for housing in an area to be determined. They would then say that the local wages will eventually increase to the point where a worker can live close enough to make the job in the high cost town worth the commute.
bradleyjg 3y ago
Land value tax
wongarsu 3y ago
The classic solution to high prices is to increase supply. But in this instance the supply for long-term dwellings is used up by another sector (vacation stays), and that would happen to most new supply too. Eventually the profits of the two home uses would converge if you increase supply enough, but many tourist hotspots might run out of space to build long before that. I think segmenting the space, as mentioned by matsemann, is a good solution here. If you allocate half the town (including half the areas for future development) to long-term housing and the other to short-term stays, you prevent the markets from sharing a single supply. In the first years it will still be much more profitable to invest and build in the short-term half of town, but as long as there's profit to be made in building in either half of town this will sort itself out.

carabiner 3y ago

OMG I know a girl who went through exactly this. She signed a 1 year lease on an apartment in a ski town, then a few months in out of nowhere, her landlady was kicking her out. Why? Landlord decided to Airbnb the place for a month to make twice the profit. And she had signed a lease! This was a town in France, and so it's affecting places around the world.

ozinenko 3y ago
There are very few reasons for a landlord to prematurely terminate the lease in France, and deciding to lent it for more money is specifically not one of them. In winter, you can't evict anyone at all (making money from ski town rentals likely means this is winter high season). There is unfortunately a lot of abuse, especially if the tenant is young and/or foreign and wouldn't know how to fight back.
slau 3y ago
I used to live in France, and I remember hearing about how it's functionally impossible to evict someone who refuses to move out. There are many horror stories of people squatting places, or just not paying rent anymore. The police won't intervene as it's a civil matter, and you need to get a court order which takes anywhere from 6 months to multiple years. The tennant has 2 months to comply with the court order. If after the two months, the tennant still hasn't complied, you need to get a "commissaire de justice" to execute the eviction (who is typically appointed by the court). In addition to this, there are specific months in the year where you cannot evict people (November-April). Whenever a tennant wants to live somewhere for free, they just use that clemency period as a weapon and make the court proceedings wait from one year to the next. Obviously, "for free" means you still owe the rent after all is said and done. But if you file for bankruptcy and wait 10 years, the debt is forgiven. If a landlord attempts to evict the tennant themselves, they risk a 30k€ fine and 3 years in jail. In other words: your friend was most likely served an illegal eviction (it's also not possible to end a "bail" in France on a whim), and she could've just stayed put. Edit: the reason for the fine/jail time for a landlord is because an individual's home is considered quite sacred. Trespassing is taken very seriously by the law, it's called "violation de domicile" for a landlord to enter a tennant's home without permission.

neilv 3y ago

For a start, I'd like to immediately outlaw short-term rentals (outside of traditional regulated hotels, etc.). Then we need to end institutional and foreign investors ownership of single-family and few-unit homes. (I don't mean this as a "wouldn't it be great if someday, but we're never going to do it", but I think the housing crisis some places warrants state legislative efforts this year, requiring immediate halt to new purchases, and liquidation within 12 months.) We might first have to outlaw campaign contributions.

zephyrus1985 3y ago
Have you considered building more ?
- kieselguhr_kid 3y ago
  Without appropriate regulations you're just building more AirBNBs. A little less flippantly, just adopting this YIMBY line without thinking through regulating the market to ensure houses are for human habitation will not address the underlying issues. It will just line the pockets of real estate developers.
- r00fus 3y ago
  Sure, let's create more supply for foreign owners - that's not going to alleviate anything. All the new building near where I live is high-priced apartments that no one can afford anyway (unless you airbnb them).
paulddraper 3y ago
Why should the owner of 20-story hotel be able to rent, but the owner of a 1-story house not?
- rspoerri 3y ago
  Typically (in all countries i know) the usage of land is defined by the state. Residential vs. commercial usage is clearly differentiated. I have not researched it, but i'd assume that a hotel must be built on commercial ground (all i know are). With airbnb the commercial rental of a residential housing became common and is unregulated up till now.

andrewstuart 3y ago

I wish AirBNB would leave Australia. Even better would be house sharing either banned or severely restricted. It is ruining our society, making renting impossible in some towns, driving up house prices, pushing society towards "houses for the rich, nothing for everyone else". I'd really like to give a big middle finger to AirBNB.

barbazoo 3y ago
The disparity is what I find so sad. On one hand there's entire generations that can't afford to rent let alone buy but there are enough people traveling all over the world affording USD400 a night Airbnb's to price them out. Maybe another symptom of wealth inequality.
maeil 3y ago
AirBnB I kind of understand, but house sharing why?
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  Wrong terminology…. “Short stay home rentals”

paulddraper 3y ago

Popular opinion: I wanna live in a tourist hotspot! Nice weather, beautiful scenery, exciting sites, etc. Unpopular opinion: A lot of other people want to experience that too! Perhaps the best thing is to rent/share those prime locations, so a lot of people can enjoy them. Fighting against people visiting is rent-seeking of a different kind.

unlikelymordant 3y ago
tourist hotspots often need a lot of service workers, who have to live somewhere too. Not to mention that higher rents/decreasing total stock in one part of a city can create more competition for other parts, raising prices everywhere to some extent.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  And I truly expect the market to find an equilibrium such that those service workers will exist, whether through transportation, higher wages, people who highly value the location, etc. Certainly without those service workers, it won't be much of a tourist attraction.
  - dorchadas 3y ago
    No, it'll rely on exploitation of workers. That's what's happening in Dublin -- they're exporting the English language students as in Ireland you can work (legally, many work more) 20 hours a week on a student visa and the English schools count. Then they're stuffed into rooms with five others somewhat nearby. It all relies on exploitation on the desperate.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      Devil's advocate: what is making students so desperate? The 20+ work week and 5 roommates is apparently preferable to their other options.
      - 3y ago

neilv 3y ago

At what point did anyone at Airbnb what economic effects this would have, before proceeding anyway? Was it in the first hours that the idea was conceived? When it started to take off? Not until they were projecting growth at those levels?

foogazi 3y ago
Wasn’t AirBnB glorified couch-surfing initially? It was setup as live with a local who will show you around It came to be because hotel stock sucked for elastic demand: big conferences and festivals
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Yeah, the perversion of the sharing economy into the gig economy was the worst thing happen on the internet.

Kosirich 3y ago

Denmark has limited it to 70 with ability to increase to 100 days for private renters. https://hostminded.com/denmark-new-airbnb-regulations/ https://hostminded.com/denmark-new-airbnb-regulations/

bilekas 3y ago

When I was living in Dublin Ireland, I was paying 1500 EUR a month for a one bedroom appartment, nothing special but expensive, the landlord say he was not going to renew the contract because he was going to change it to an AirBnB. I met him a few months later and he was telling me he was making over 4000 a month. I can't blame the landlords in this case.. It's obviously the better option for them, even as the article suggests, the landlords can afford to have the locations close during the `off-season` because there is so much money to be made. Some regulation around the pricing would be nice, but I have no idea how you would even navigate doing that.

shever73 3y ago
The rents here in Dublin are crazy! I honestly don't know how people can afford to rent, which is tragic because we also have an entire generation who cannot afford to buy. In my apartment complex, AirBnB and short-term rentals are technically forbidden, but people still do it if they feel they can get away with it.
unmole 3y ago
> Some regulation around the pricing would be nice, Economists of every school and political affiliation will tell you that rent controls are a terrible idea.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  No need to control rent. Just ban AirBnb and other short term rental schemes in residential buildings. Tourists should stay in buildings designed as such (i.e.: Hotels)
- em-bee 3y ago
  seems to work in germany. they have rent control nationwide
  - unmole 3y ago
    https://fee.org/articles/berlin-s-disastrous-rent-control-law-gets-scrapped/ https://fee.org/articles/berlin-s-disastrous-rent-control-la...

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

I don't really see why people are entitled to live in the most desirable places just because their parents happened to live there. Why should I be banned from visiting so that some rich lineage gets to continue to expand their portfolio?

paulddraper 3y ago
One person's dear family is another person's entitled dynasty.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

sampo 3y ago

Even as these are tourist destinations with natural or historical beauty, the local decision makers should still allow for building new homes. Not necessary right at the historical town center, but within 30 minutes walking or biking distance. When demand is high, you should allow to build more supply.

mikhailkasm 3y ago

[dead]

emadda 3y ago

I recently released https://stay100.app https://stay100.app - an AirBnB search engine for large screens. Let me know what you think.

sundaeofshock 3y ago
I think you need to learn how to read the room.
- emadda 3y ago
  You are right, to be honest I had just assumed most news articles will have an overly negative spin to get clicks.

throwaway6734 3y ago

Why not build more housing?

deepthunder 3y ago
Sure, but you have to somehow prevent investors from snapping it all up. Vancouver is a perfect example of what not to do.
- throwaway6734 3y ago
  Why? Just keep building as long as it's profitable for builders to do so
  - deepthunder 3y ago
    It hasn't solved the problem of affordability. Rent and condo and house prices are some the highest in the world. You end up just building housing for foreign investors to make money off the locals.

908B64B197 3y ago

Honest and simple question: Have they just tried to build more? Who would benefit from people not building more? Who's pushing for regulations against building more supply?

notaustinpowers 3y ago
Mainly current homeowners. A constrained supply almost guarantees that your home value will continue to go up, especially if you're in a lucrative area. So homeowners and well-connected people make sure that zoning laws and building regulations are very prohibitive to new construction housing.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  I guess it's easier for local politicians to get poor people angry at "evil foreign tech giants" instead of actually solving the issue. That way they get to cash-in on votes from both groups!

Gud 3y ago

Please everyone, not everyone travels as a tourist. I’m always traveling for work and yes, I do prefer living like a normal person in a normal apartment.

johnea 3y ago

I just can't wait until I'm not young anymore, then all my renting troubles will go away!