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Leaked Documents Reveal the Hotel Lobby's Aggressive Plan To Undermine Airbnb (gizmodo.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the I-smell-sabotage dept.

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.

4 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. So? by Luthair · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why shouldn't someone operating a hotel out of an apartment be expected to operate under the same rules?

    1. Re:So? by barc0001 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because one home/suite/room does not a hotel make? If anything they should be regulated as a B&B:

      http://vancouver.ca/doing-business/bed-and-breakfast-business.aspx

      Require a business license and whatever inspection is needed for the B&B and then let them get on with making a go of it.

      But to say that someone renting their coach house or basement suite out for the weekend should be subject to the same obligations as a 1000 room hotel is kind of insane. It's already perfectly fine to rent a property out for more than 30 days but shorten it to a weekend and suddenly you need to comply with more regulations?

      Sounds to me like cartels don't want competition especially when it's desperately needed.

  2. Re: Good idea, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the dwellings are already deemed illegal by current laws to rent out, you don't need more regulation. You just need to enforce the existing laws.

  3. Everyone's dirty. by wickerprints · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.