5 ms·

Airbnb has absolutely wrecked most of the holiday spots in the UK. Locals can't afford to rent, so it's killing local shops - only the tourist traps remain.

dnissley 3y ago
With so much pent up demand there must be new properties getting built all over these holiday spots, no?
- azornathogron 3y ago
  I hope not. A lot of holiday locations are only attractive places because they don't have a load of cheaply built urban sprawl all around them.
  - dnissley 3y ago
    Sounds like they were built to be expensive then, and never really an option for everyday people
    - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
      They were an option for the regular people of the time, hundreds of years ago, before the population grew an order of magnitude or two.
  - dionidium 3y ago
    Markets solve these problems and that remains true even when you disagree with the results. If people don't want to visit places with tall buildings and sprawl, then it won't get built and where it does it will fail. What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized.
    - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
      I'll bite the bullet and say sometimes "the people" are idiots and what they want is ugly and sucks.
    - azornathogron 3y ago
      > What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized. Yes. It does bother me that the utility function of "the market" does not align with what is good for me, and that therefore it frequently produces results that are worse for me. In fact this applies not just to urban development, but also to many other things.
- gottorf 3y ago
  Real estate has the disadvantage of there only being a fixed amount of land in those spots.
  - krasin 3y ago
    Multi-story luxury condos are a thing. Not a lot of land used, and it's something that many people want to live in. Why are they not being built in these places? Even high-end condos cost less than a low-end house to build, since the land costs are amortized among many units.
    - Tade0 3y ago
      > Why are they not being built in these places? Perhaps because a tall residential building in a tourist spot is an eyesore. People go there to see something scenic, not more of what they have at home, or worse.
      - krasin 3y ago
        > Perhaps because a tall residential building in a tourist spot is an eyesore. If you build it like an eyesore, it will be an eyesore, yes. Here is a multi-story building that I lived as a student in and it housed another 10k: https://www.ruseducation.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/LOMONOSOV-STATE-UNIVERSITY-570x500.webp https://www.ruseducation.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/LOMON... But I agree that building glass+concrete rectangles is a not a great idea for tourist spots (or anywhere, really).
        Tade0 3y ago
        Your example has one thing that those condos don't have: glorious socialist realism waste of space - and I mean it in a good way. When they were young, my grandparents moved into a whole district built from scratch for the purpose of housing workers from a nearby steelmill. Communism notwithstanding, the district is amazingly well planned and - what's dearly missing in modern, hyper-optimized construction - sufficiently spread apart.
- tmpz22 3y ago
  They both suck. A multi-billion dollar corporation that actively strategizes to benefit from no regulation or bad regulation. Likely they also lobby for favorable regulation that will actively harm locals. A local government not properly regulating. I'd compare it to PG&E or Comcast in the United States.
  - Marazan 3y ago
    Edinburgh have attempted to regulate and have been sued by the short term let's association.
- alibarber 3y ago
  The owners of said AirBnBs, who would be eligible to vote for the local councilors (who must approve new developments), have an incentive to ensure that that would not be the case.
  - dnissley 3y ago
    It's really too bad the laws in place put the power to build new housing in politicians hands
- bell-cot 3y ago
  The UK housing market is at least as f'ed up as the US market, in terms of actual construction of housing (no matter how badly needed) being mostly forbidden.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    As far as I understand it, the UK housing market suffers from an additional problem that is rare to non-existent in the US: builders who get planning permission for new housing but then sit on the land because they know with almost 100% certainty that built or not, it will be worth more in the future. There are places in the USA where a builder could take this bet, but it would be much, much riskier.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    The discussion I hear in the US side is that housing is a recent problem - like 5-10 years. The U.K. has had a housing shortage for decades, and solving it becomes harder each year as the backlog increases.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  England is full, there is no room for new holiday spots in the popular areas.
itake 3y ago
I'm curious about hotel capacity in Airbnb locations. If 1,000 people want to visit a city, they need a place to live. If Airbnb didn't exist, would hotels just be fully booked? Or do hotels not have the capacity?
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  If there were more demand for hotels, then more hotels would open - in that part of the town designated for hotels.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Prices would increase, fewer people would visit, and we’d be back to the good old days where only the very wealthy could go on grand tours.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      Tourists with no money are worthless for this town. They just block up the pavement lining up photos of landmarks (and anything else) with their mobile phones, that they could certainly download from Insta and get a better photo. Every square foot of this town has already been snapped a million times.
      - CodeSgt 3y ago
        The implication of your comment is that poor people should just stay at home and look at pictures on the internet instead of occasionally traveling and experiencing things for themselves. If this is your perspective, you’re either incredibly privileged, jaded, or both. I don’t think that poor people are necessarily owed cheap accommodation or transportation in any sense, but I also don’t think that active steps should be taken to remove more affordable options simply because they can’t afford to patronize high-end restaurants and stores or do the more expensive tourist activities.
        3y ago
midasuni 3y ago
In the 80s and early 90s we would alienate book our holiday cottage in Cornwall though a catalog. I’m not entirely sure how it worked, I guess my parents phoned up the company and asked for a given cottage for a given week. How is airbnb and different?

dnissley 3y ago

With so much pent up demand there must be new properties getting built all over these holiday spots, no?

azornathogron 3y ago
I hope not. A lot of holiday locations are only attractive places because they don't have a load of cheaply built urban sprawl all around them.
- dnissley 3y ago
  Sounds like they were built to be expensive then, and never really an option for everyday people
  - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
    They were an option for the regular people of the time, hundreds of years ago, before the population grew an order of magnitude or two.
- dionidium 3y ago
  Markets solve these problems and that remains true even when you disagree with the results. If people don't want to visit places with tall buildings and sprawl, then it won't get built and where it does it will fail. What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized.
  - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
    I'll bite the bullet and say sometimes "the people" are idiots and what they want is ugly and sucks.
  - azornathogron 3y ago
    > What actually bothers you is that this is what people want and it will get built and it will be patronized. Yes. It does bother me that the utility function of "the market" does not align with what is good for me, and that therefore it frequently produces results that are worse for me. In fact this applies not just to urban development, but also to many other things.
gottorf 3y ago
Real estate has the disadvantage of there only being a fixed amount of land in those spots.
- krasin 3y ago
  Multi-story luxury condos are a thing. Not a lot of land used, and it's something that many people want to live in. Why are they not being built in these places? Even high-end condos cost less than a low-end house to build, since the land costs are amortized among many units.
  - Tade0 3y ago
    > Why are they not being built in these places? Perhaps because a tall residential building in a tourist spot is an eyesore. People go there to see something scenic, not more of what they have at home, or worse.
    - krasin 3y ago
      > Perhaps because a tall residential building in a tourist spot is an eyesore. If you build it like an eyesore, it will be an eyesore, yes. Here is a multi-story building that I lived as a student in and it housed another 10k: https://www.ruseducation.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/LOMONOSOV-STATE-UNIVERSITY-570x500.webp https://www.ruseducation.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/LOMON... But I agree that building glass+concrete rectangles is a not a great idea for tourist spots (or anywhere, really).
      - Tade0 3y ago
        Your example has one thing that those condos don't have: glorious socialist realism waste of space - and I mean it in a good way. When they were young, my grandparents moved into a whole district built from scratch for the purpose of housing workers from a nearby steelmill. Communism notwithstanding, the district is amazingly well planned and - what's dearly missing in modern, hyper-optimized construction - sufficiently spread apart.
tmpz22 3y ago
They both suck. A multi-billion dollar corporation that actively strategizes to benefit from no regulation or bad regulation. Likely they also lobby for favorable regulation that will actively harm locals. A local government not properly regulating. I'd compare it to PG&E or Comcast in the United States.
- Marazan 3y ago
  Edinburgh have attempted to regulate and have been sued by the short term let's association.
alibarber 3y ago
The owners of said AirBnBs, who would be eligible to vote for the local councilors (who must approve new developments), have an incentive to ensure that that would not be the case.
- dnissley 3y ago
  It's really too bad the laws in place put the power to build new housing in politicians hands
bell-cot 3y ago
The UK housing market is at least as f'ed up as the US market, in terms of actual construction of housing (no matter how badly needed) being mostly forbidden.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  As far as I understand it, the UK housing market suffers from an additional problem that is rare to non-existent in the US: builders who get planning permission for new housing but then sit on the land because they know with almost 100% certainty that built or not, it will be worth more in the future. There are places in the USA where a builder could take this bet, but it would be much, much riskier.
- midasuni 3y ago
  The discussion I hear in the US side is that housing is a recent problem - like 5-10 years. The U.K. has had a housing shortage for decades, and solving it becomes harder each year as the backlog increases.
monkeynotes 3y ago
England is full, there is no room for new holiday spots in the popular areas.

itake 3y ago

I'm curious about hotel capacity in Airbnb locations. If 1,000 people want to visit a city, they need a place to live. If Airbnb didn't exist, would hotels just be fully booked? Or do hotels not have the capacity?

denton-scratch 3y ago
If there were more demand for hotels, then more hotels would open - in that part of the town designated for hotels.
- midasuni 3y ago
  Prices would increase, fewer people would visit, and we’d be back to the good old days where only the very wealthy could go on grand tours.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Tourists with no money are worthless for this town. They just block up the pavement lining up photos of landmarks (and anything else) with their mobile phones, that they could certainly download from Insta and get a better photo. Every square foot of this town has already been snapped a million times.
    - CodeSgt 3y ago
      The implication of your comment is that poor people should just stay at home and look at pictures on the internet instead of occasionally traveling and experiencing things for themselves. If this is your perspective, you’re either incredibly privileged, jaded, or both. I don’t think that poor people are necessarily owed cheap accommodation or transportation in any sense, but I also don’t think that active steps should be taken to remove more affordable options simply because they can’t afford to patronize high-end restaurants and stores or do the more expensive tourist activities.
      - 3y ago

midasuni 3y ago

In the 80s and early 90s we would alienate book our holiday cottage in Cornwall though a catalog. I’m not entirely sure how it worked, I guess my parents phoned up the company and asked for a given cottage for a given week. How is airbnb and different?