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Leaked Documents Reveal the Hotel Lobby's Aggressive Plan To Undermine Airbnb (gizmodo.com)
The New York Times has obtained a document revealing the hotel lobby's aggressive plan to undermine Airbnb's business "by pushing for bills to regulate the company at every level of government," reports Gizmodo. From the report: According to documents from the American Hotel and Lodging Association -- a trade group that includes the country's biggest hotel chains, including Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, the Four Seasons and Starwood Hotels -- the organization is planning a multi-pronged attack at local, state, and federal levels to prevent Airbnb from spreading to new cities across the country. Part of the strategy includes "aggressively countering" Airbnb's claim that it's just helping the middle class make ends meet "with a wave of personal testimonials of consumer harm." The document essentially serves as opposition research and gives its members talking points about Airbnb's alleged racism and taxation issues. According to the document, the association will focus its efforts on Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, and Miami, where Airbnb has yet to establish a strong footing.
The Internet keeps leaking documents, somebody should fix those pipes!
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Why shouldn't someone operating a hotel out of an apartment be expected to operate under the same rules?
I think they're taking the wrong approach here. They should be promoting their services as being of constant quality in a business setting, unlike the competition which are just a bunch of people sort-of renting places in their own homes.
Would I stay in a stranger's home? Not even if you paid me.
#DeleteFacebook
Lobbyist in the hotel lobby.
If you are letting a friend sleep on your couch and he buys a pizza, that is not a business and is not tax to report. ..... you can be cheaper.
If you own a couple houses, you are renting them out by the day/week that is a hotel business.
Do you remove ALL the rules for the Hotel industry? or Do you make the "NEW and IMPROVED" business model abide by the rules built up over the years?
You either let them all run free, or make them all abide by the rules. You can't have it both ways. Here in Florida, a lot of things are based on tourist taxes.
So, if you don't pay hotel taxes, you can be a lot cheaper. If you don't have all the safety equipment hotels have, you can be cheaper.
If you
Is that really fair?
Move along
Just love how protecting us from ourselves always seems to protect large interests from anyone else making money in their racket.
So those anti-regulation Republicans will shun this, right?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
i have come to you out of respect. now let me make you an offer
They came for AirBNB but I did not speak up, because I only rented whole homes through VRBO.
Then they came for VRBO and there was no-one left to speak for me.
P.S. most of these regulations they are putting in place ALSO cover whole home rentals.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"the organization is planning a multi-pronged attack at local, state, and federal levels..."
The word you're looking for is 'conspiracy'.
AirBnB takes a "cut", if they didn't, then things would be different.
Really what we need is fewer regulations on hotels and motels.
The same applies to taxi services. They need fewer regulations so they can compete with the Lyft/Uber options.
There is just too much socialism and barriers to entry in the USA marketplace across most industries.
Is that big corporations want a free market so they can 'run roughshod' over the people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Big corporations want Big Government regulators that they can influence and control with their money and political connections. This gives them an unfair advantage in the marketplace. Some refer to this as 'regulatory capture' as if it sometimes happens by accident, when in reality these bureaucracies are designed from the very beginning to be 'captured'
Big corporations are scared shitless of the Free Market. The Free Market is what allowed a small upstart company like netflix to destroy a juggernaut fortune-500 company that was blockbuster. The free market was what (almost) put kodak out of business. They refused to invest in the burgeoning digital camera market, trying to prevent it from happening and doubling down on film cameras. Thats not what the market wanted and they got put in their place.
If you fear the immense corporate power that exists in the world, do the one smart thing. Advocate for the abolishment of as many national regulations as possible, and try to remember there is a difference between a regulatory LAW - written, debated, and passed by your elected representatives and signed by an elected executive, and "regulator agencies" run by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats which get to write their own "laws" (regulatory codes), enforce them, and sometimes even adjudicate them.
The hotels are dirty: they pay extremely low wages to cleaning staff, while charging exorbitant prices for rooms, and AirBnB is of course a threat to that business model, so their solution is to force them to compete under the same regulatory environment.
AirBnB is dirty: the company doesn't give a shit about party houses popping up in desirable neighborhoods that regularly violate noise ordinances. In their view, that's a local law enforcement problem. That's the next door neighbor's problem. They profess to care, but only pay lip service. AirBnB turns a blind eye to developers and landlords (who are already insanely wealthy) turning their properties into unofficial hotels, causing rents to skyrocket for people who actually live in the area. And let's not forget: AirBnB lobbied--HARD--against initiatives to prevent this kind of abuse of the housing market. And they won.
Local government is dirty: politicians lie, cheat, and do backroom deals to get on whatever side of an issue that brings them the most campaign money. In San Diego, the city is proposing yet another "transient occupancy tax" hike to finance all kinds of projects that they should be financing by taxing the entities that stand to gain most from those projects. But they won't because it's political suicide, so they always pick the easy target: out-of-city tourists. Comic-Con is a huge draw and the city milks the attendees for everything they can. Hotel costs are out of control, and that just pushes more people to use AirBnB. Why rent a $400/night hotel room when you can get a whole house for less than half that rate?
The landlords are dirty: they only care that they can rent out their properties with AirBnB at over twice the prevailing monthly rent in the area. They don't give a fuck about noise complaints. Not their problem as long as the city keeps saying they have no enforcement power. They just see the money rolling in because it's completely unregulated.
And as always, who suffers? Regular property owners and renters. Middle class people who are priced out of the rental market because $2500 or more per month for a 1 bedroom apartment is obscene.
Fuck all of you: hotels, AirBnB, greedy landlords, the city.
The wife and I seldom use the pool, never the gym, never the masseuse. We want a place to stay while we either spend the night, or spend a couple days exploring the area.
You want to charge a fee, charge it when I go into the pool. Or when I go into the gym. Or when I go wherever. But charge me for shit I don't use? Fuck that.
If you can't innovate, legislate. It seems to be a reoccurring theme in society, old business models preferring to force customers to utilize their products/services or nothing at all, rather than improving/restructuring their own services to fit customers new habits.
It is very likely that other industries have followed this map. I think the auto-sales monopoly and the last-mile "ISP" folks are already riding that train.
It might be good to use it as a reverse roadmap to detect and counter these industries that are engineering the government to allow them to maintain their monopoly. It might even be a decent indicator of monopoly-hood if they fit the roadmap; a variation on "if it quacks like a duck...".
Why shouldn't someone operating a hotel out of an apartment be expected to operate under the same rules?
I can counter with an equally valid, 'Why should they?'
They are not a hotel. If I rent let my neighbor do their laundry in my washing machine once in a while, am I a Laundromat chain? If I drive a friend to the airport and hit them up for some gas money, am I a taxi service?
Now, you might counter with some concerns that they need to be regulated in order that AirB&B suites are safe and follow rules governing proper business practices, and that is a fair request. In the next century, everything is going to become micro-transactional, and there needs to be a whole new set of laws and regulations that govern these businesses that are separate from traditional business regulations.
That does not mean that we should treat them like traditional businesses because it is convenient. The real story here is that existing vested interests are trying to use monopolistic practices to keep a rival with a possibly better business plan down.
If these Dumb fucks running big hotel chains were at all smart, they would just open their own AirB&B service to compete. If AirB&B is truly a threat, they should just adapt, and start stealing market share from Hotel chains that don't.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Everyone knows it's way way more pleasant to stay in the average Airbnb than in the average hotel. That's why the hotel capitalists are trying so hard to make legal apparatus suffocate Airbnb. Obviously if it were put up to a popular vote Airbnb would win by a landslide.
Interesting article on the BBC...'My Airbnb flat was turned into a pop-up brothel'
Quote: "I found used condom wrappers under the bed, I found the bin was overflowing with tissues and condoms. And basically what I had to do was pick all that up with my hands."
With people like this renting stuff, I'm not sure I want to try Airbnb anytime soon...
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
then screw fairness, use government to criminalize your competition.
Here are a few regulations that should be implemented for AirBnB (or any other similar site):
1.It should be illegal for a tenant to list the property they are renting on AirBnB without explicit permission from the landlord. Landlords should have the power to evict tenants who list properties without permission. (this stops the problem with tenants who list the property on AirBnB without permission from the landlord in order to make some money).
2.It should be illegal to list any property that is covered by any kind of rent control, affordable housing, housing subsidy or similar scheme on AirBnB with strong penalties. (this stops the problem where the subsidized or controlled properties are listed on AirBnB by landlords looking to get more money than they would get via a long term rental)
3.Apartment building owners committees (or however things like that work in different jurisdictions) should (if they choose to do so) be allowed to add terms to the rules of the apartment building that restrict/limit/ban AirBnB with strong penalties for owners/tenants who break those rules. (this stops the problem where most owners in the building dont want AirBnB guests but a few owners are using their properties for AirBnB and causing problems)
4.All listings on AirBnB have to pay accomodation taxes. (avoids the complaint that AirBnB listings aren't paying the same taxes as hotels do)
5.It should be illegal to list properties that dont meet building codes or occupancy rules on AirBnB. (avoids the problem of properties that aren't fit to be lived in or properties that are being occupied by more people than is allowed by law being listed on AirBnB).
6.AirBnB should be required to collect and retain a full set of personal details from people wanting to list on their site and there should be penalties for anyone who supplies any kind of false information (helps avoid fraudsters using fake or stolen identities on the site)
6.There should be a limit on how many properties an individual (either properties owned by that individual or properties listed by that individual) can have on AirBnB. (this stops the people who buy half a building and stick it all on AirBnB from doing so but you could still rent out 7 bedrooms in a 7-bedroom house since that's a single property)
7.Any property that would in any way be illegal to offer as a long term rental for whatever reason would also be illegal to list on AirBnB. (including properties where they can only be legally rented out to certain types of individuals e.g. students or old people)
I have no idea if these regulations exist or not (and if they exist, which jurisdictions have them), they are just some sensible measures to stop some of the problems AirBnB is causing.
And I see nothing in there that would be difficult for AirBnB or landlords to comply with.
Well I'm glad the actual rooms aren't in on it as well!
It's not that simple. Accommodation requires regulation, otherwise guests are endangered in ways the free market will not solve. I speak from experience here.
I live in one city, and work in another. This situation is sort of by choice (nobody's holding a gun to my head) but in practice it's a necessity*. I'm simply not making enough to afford an apartment/hotel in my work city while supporting my family in my home city, so I take the cheapest accommodation available: shared rooms.
Currently, I'm using an AirBnB. It is clearly an illegal hostel: an apartment with 5 beds per room, no security, obviously dangerous wiring and poor sanitation. There is a constant stream of workers and students in and out. They do not collect the local accommodation tax. It will be closed as soon as the police, fire department or other authorities get wind of it. I stay there because shared rooms are the only thing I can afford, but five years ago I used to be able to pay a similar price for a bed in a properly regulated hostel. I'd gladly pay more for a properly regulated hostel, but since AirBnB's can get away with skirting regulations, market forces have simply driven them out of business.
So yeah, it's not so simple. While I don't think AirBnB requires new laws or regulations, I support measures that allow governments to enforce existing ones on this network... because I need it.
*: Working close to home or simply moving house is not an option. The sector I work in just kind of dried up in my home city. To provide my family with a modest, middle class lifestyle I need to work elsewhere. However, we are an ethnic minority and moving them to where I work would seriously disadvantage my children in school and future career (not everywhere is as egalitarian as the US).
If I buy a nice house in a nice area, I don't want noisy vacationers and partiers in and out several times a month. Properties frequently rented on Airbnb should be treated as commercial.
If people want to run a bed and breakfast out of their homes, Airbnb should require them to file the local zoning or permits before listing their properties.
Oh, and regarding:
Airbnb's claim that it's just helping the middle class make ends meet
If you can't afford your house without Airbnb, then you can't afford your house. Make better financial decisions next time.
Maybe we need basic financial planning classes in high school if we have a population of adults who cannot plan or budget effectively.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.