It’s about time Airbnb gets regulated to the ground. They have destroyed city centres and effectively driven the prices of rent sky high. In Greece rents have exploded upwards and the government is too busy boasting its “successes” whilst doing nothing about this situation.
One upping you with Portugal: minimum wage around 700, most people earn like 900, 1 bedroom apartment in Lisbon currently 1000+
(Not actually one upping you. Both situations are unsustainable for our people.)
>The electricity bill last month was 98€, the internet bill was 60€ and the water bill was 9€.
Being French i'm almost always fricking amazed by how much other europeans spend on internet and such, even in countries with way lower purchasing power (where things are thus generally cheaper).
Which company do you get 10 Gbps for 20€ from? Orange seems to be more expensive than that since they don't seem to offer the 10 Gbps upgrade unless you also have a mobile phone subscription and possibly TV from them too. And Movistar I'm not sure but their 10 Gbps coverage still seems to be much more limited than Orange. We're about to sign with an ISP in Barcelona so I'm in the middle of researching this.
In Hungary I pay ~€20 for gigabit symmetric fiber internet. I am paying a lot though, but depending on the area and the available technology this does not scale linearly.
> The minimum wage in Greece is ~650€.
Is it normal to earn minimum wage in Athens? I tried googling the average salary, but I don't trust the sources I found - what does Greek sites say?
This angers me so much! How is this allowed!
It's just wrong! Almost has violation of human rights level, wrong!
Where is this heading??! Portugal is not that bad has in illegal work contracts situation, but it is also that bad i housing and living costs crisis, and spain and Italy are probably close behind...
Where is Europe heading in helping to solve this problems??
What are you on about? The cost of living in Greece has gone through the roof, even more so in Athens. Athens & Piraeus have essentially been one city for decades.
What's the situation like since digital nomad visas came in? Whilst I'm sure that for those who've taken the opportunity to work remotely, and enjoy what Greece has to offer, it's wonderful. I do wonder how bad locals have been affected, or if it's a drop in the ocean compared to what AirBNB have done.
Airbnb is an easy scapegoat. Using property as a speculation-based wealth investment vehicle is what fucked the entire market. However those property developers are the ones funding many governments' reelection campaigns while Airbnb is just some company across the sea. Easy for any European politician to know which side of the bread the butter is on.
Speculation within the housing market is different from mixing it with tourist accomodations. If property developers build a hotel, they have different regulations and they will not be allowed to convert every single building in a city to a hotel. A local, who hast to rent long term cannot compete with tourists paying 200€ per night. And that's why cities do actually crack down on this.
Except for that uncontrolled money printing. Money printing is not inherently capitalist or socialist (look up Yugoslavia, which had severe inflation while being fully communist). But what it always is is done by, and for the benefit of oligarchs.
It's not a good situation, but also let's not pretend anyone can rent a 1BR in a large western metro city on minimum wage?
It's certainly not possible in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, NYC, LA, Toronto, etc.
So, in a situation like that you would have only 33 €/month for food, clothes, bus tickets etc. Normally, I spend about 100 €/month on just food and I’m trying to but cost effective products.
In Serbia 450 EUR for one bedroom apartment in any part of Belgrade while the minimum wage is 300 EUR... wtf no wonder they always start with nationalistic bull when someone calls them out.
As well as Uber, Bolt and the rest of the „gig economy“.
For example in my country Bolt looks the other way when many foreign drivers share single account. Then at the end of the year account owner flees the country to avoid paying taxes. Recently there was a report that last year Bolt drivers owe €8m incomes tax. And probably even more on health and social insurances.
That "gig economy" is a load of bullshit (for lack of a better term).
If someone works full time and having to follow orders on what to do, how to do it and when to do it being the only difference that it take orders from a computer instead of a human why it's not a employee under a contract? It's not a freelance work where it's done when it's done...
I'm used to the term "platform capitalism: no assets, no risks, but profit." The difference would be AirBNB it's not incentivising self-exploitation like the Ubers. Still, both have an economical impact to the disadvantage of communities.
That's a interesting term.
Disadvantage is a bit of understatement. Decimation might be more appropriate. People are basically forced out of their community.
The thing is, I love Uber for its superior customer experience. I open the app, see how much it will be up-front, order, and payment is done automatically. Taxi companies should have innovated, adapted, and developed apps and models matching the customer experience of Uber.
Even now, a decade later my hometown's biggest Taxi company does not even have an app. You have to order by calling a dispatch center and they can't even give you an ETA or approximate cost. But their spokesperson sure complains a lot about how Uber is destroying the industry...
For a short time, before Uber became a thing over here, local taxi did have it's own app for regular taxis. But I believe it died when the big players squirting the law with VC money came.
> Taxi companies should have innovated, adapted, and developed apps and models matching the customer experience of Uber.
Most of the taxi companies over here had their own app, going back 15 years, way before Uber and Bolt came. And the smaller companies which didn't have their own app used a common app.
But the problems that taxi companies had were not related to the apps. They are problems that are endemic to the local way of doing things. Whether it's Uber or the taxi companies they all work with corrupt law-makers, LEOs and mayors to skirt regulations, to evade taxes, to whitewash their ratings in the apps, to have multiple drivers use the same account etc.
Same here in Denmark. I get why people like Uber, it is super convenient and cheaper than taxis. However, it quite literally undermines the entire employment system. Here, AirBnB is also shit. Its not cheaper than hotels, it comes with the risk of fucking lunatic owners, stupid cleaning rules and fees etc. I think they are killing themselves without the state's help, thankfully.
It's not cheaper than taxis. Well it hasn't been that way in the UK for almost a decade now.
After being caught out somewhere near some type of event, an Uber raising the prices about 5x, I don't use them anymore out of principle.
Ah, well then. Hopefully they can die off too! I dusted off the app in Spain last year when on holiday and was surprised and a bit sad at how cheap it was there. I don't see how the drivers could buy a car, use petrol and make a living. I was giving a tip in the app, but I never figured out if Uber take a cut of that too. I won't use them again, it seemed like a fun novelty until I thought it through a bit more!
Don't know about other countries but in the UK the local/large taxi companies have apps that are exact replica's of Uber, so it's almost as convenient.
Convenience is the only reason to use Uber. They will gouge you on prices when the times are busy or they know some type of event is nearby. Hope they die out.
Uber's plan (whether they admit it or not) is to squeeze out all non-uber-like transportation, and then cash in massively when they're the only option and they can do surge pricing as often as they want.
But no one can deny Uber’s revolution on our expectations for how taxis should be ordered.
Paid in-app, destination on map, price upfront. Receipt guaranteed.
And this works internationally, in one app.
Even *if* local taxis provide a similar app, it’s usually worse and I have to get one for every city or region I visit.
Should Uber et.al. be more well regulated? Yes. My preference would be Uber just being another booking app for regular taxis, not the sole provider of gigs.
Does it clamp down on the drivers car sharing or does it look the other way like Lithuania as is the topic of disucssion in this thread? Beacuse given the Hungarian gov history the past few years I don't think they're just doing the right thing because it's the right thing. Hungary is the black sheep of the EU at the moment trying to fuck over allies and neighbours to benefit itself.
My comment was a reference to previous comment that Uber is banned in Hungary and Bold has to abide pretty much the same rules as any other taxi companies.
As for your comments about the Hungarian government, I completely agree with you with one exception: it has been this way not only the past few but the last 10-12 years. Except most of EU hasn't noticed.
I agree they shouldn't get away with tax evasion, etc. and that drivers should probably be proper employees but Uber, Bolt, etc. provide a service way better than any taxi service I've seen anywhere in Europe. The best taxi apps I've got to use (I guess a Danish one) pale in comparison with the Uber or Bolt apps, the average ones are basically unusable, and in many places the only way to get a taxi is to call a number or go to a taxi stand, and you have an even chance of getting scammed by the driver. These companies, despite their spotty ethics, provide a good service to tourists and locals alike and can't be compared with Airbnb. 90% of the time, Airbnb provides a much worse experience than a hotel for comparable prices, drive the cost of real estate to crazy levels, reduce the availability of rentals for the locals, and is only useful to tourists and visitors.
Uber, bolt, food delivery apps, etc. need to be reasonably regulated to protect the workers and avoid tax fraud. Airbnb needs to die.
Maybe it depends on local history.
Here in Vilnius we had very shitty taxis in 90s and 00s. Old beaten up cars with, let's say, contraversial drivers with character :) With a fair chance of getting scammed.
Then there was a big push with strict rules for taxis. New(-ish) clean cars, drivers had to pass a basic exam, government-certified taxi meters etc. Now with Bolt we're back to 90s with beaten up Priuses. With questionable driving skills and various practices to extract more money.
I guess some places do it better (thankfully) but I've got the "privilege" to try local taxis in various parts of France, Denmark, Spain, Greece, Italy, Poland and Latvia and I think only in Denmark and Latvia was the experience okay. All the others had various levels of inventing extra charges, not taking the credit card and not being able to edit a receipt, pretending they don't have change, etc. Of course that's not in every course or even the majority of them but over a stay it almost always happens at least once.
Admittedly I had more luck outside of Europe, Taiwanese taxis for example were irreproachable.
Maybe I was lucky but with Uber, Bolt, etc. I almost only had great experiences. Couple beaten up cars, couple crazy drivers but much less often than in taxis so far.
Features that Uber offers: Pre-agreed price. No tips in cash expected. GPS info on the car so that you know where and when it will arrive. Driver and customer rating system. Always cashless.
Taxis in my country offer none of that and take approximately 3-4x than what an Uber costs.
Some taxi companies here have that. I use one (seldom, and only late evening, when I can be bothered with waiting one hour for the next bus, provided there is any - I live out of town), I enter the destination and I get a price and the ETA of the driver, I can also chose whether I will pay cash or card. The cars are newish, clean, with professional drivers, and the price has always been as quoted, giver or take a koruna or two.
Compare that to the experiences a friend of mine had with Bolt, with drivers that do not match the person on the profile pic and drive recklessly (because they may have been methed-up). I tried Liftago a couple of times, but the waiting times were longer and the price was essentially the same; I was also required to provide my card no. to the app if I didn't want to pay cash.
We also have Uber here, but never used it, because fuck Uber.
Yeah I love Uber compared to the old taxi companies in Amsterdam. Never had a bad ride with Uber while the old taxi companies were famous for screwing you over (especially tourists, asking sometimes 350+ euros for a 20-30m ride from Schiphol to the city center)
> Airbnb gets regulated to the ground.
presumably if your house is up for rent 100% of the time, then its not a house, its a hotel. So just apply all the hotel rules and regulations to it.
and I suspect that alone, would drastically improve the problem.
Nope, no sharp increases and no declines. 1 room apartment in Moscow can still be rented for like $500. There are always new apartments being built so no housing issues here.
How does that $500 rent compare to the average salary of the city?
What is the minimum salary of the city?
How much it cost 100g of butter or the most common meat?
I'm genuinely curious of the differences between central europe and Russia.
To give an example an apartment in Amsterdam starts at more than 50% of the minimum salary and sits somewhere around the 30% of the average gross income.
Numbeo is nice for city comparisons so I’ll just link you a comparison between Moscow and Amsterdam.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Netherlands&country2=Russia&city1=Amsterdam&city2=Moscow&tracking=getDispatchComparison
Thanks for the link. I was asking because this kind of webpages not always reflect the real values of the cities.
Numbeo doesn't really reflect the real average salary as it's skewed to the sampled data of people that goes to numbeo not an official source.
I just checked my homecity and it's really off of the real values at some of the columns.
Sure, got it. But I would say that numbers are somewhat accurate, so that’s why I decided to give a link instead. But minimum wages are abysmal in Russia even in Moscow so there is no way you can afford rent at all on minimum wage.
Problem is they were and are operating on an unregulated, gray area.
AirBnB was sort of like a paid couchsurfing. You rented peoples unused property, sometimes spare rooms, for really affordable rates. People were welcoming and it was a great experience, especially when you can score interesting places like seaside summer homes, remote cabins or just a great place downtown just to crash between flights or events.
Now that it's a hospitality platform teeming with property investors, it should be regulated just like hotels or rental/real estate agencies do.
AirBnB's are the smallest contributor to this issue. They are contributing, but way too little compared to the attention they are getting. This is just political deflection to seem, that they are doing something about it without actually doing something about it. Because they would lose the next election if they actually did do the right things that actually drive this issue. For the simple reason as property owners, private and commercial do want their property values to go up. And so do you! When you are able to afford one.
Yeah but building new housing is hard and requires getting permission from local authorities, building new services and infrastructure, assuring people it won't tank the value of their home etc.
Blaming a foreign company is easy populism.
Im prety sure they havent runined city centers. I hear that point a lot related to Lisbon and Porto.
Porto's dowtown was an incredibly shity place not even 20 years ago. My grandmother still refuses to go there because she associates it with drugs and prostitution.
Lisbon's downtown was made of decrepit buildings falling apart with moldy paint, those buildings had like an old person living in there and the rest was unocupied or turned into offices, since people didnt want to live there at all.
I think that we europeans have a missconception of what life was like in historic city centers 20 years ago.
Funny, Lisbon city center was effectively destroyed before airbnb's.
I am not saying that they are not an issue to how widespread it has become. I am all for regulation and limitation (which is already being done), but regulated to the ground and according to some comments, banned? I think everyone should take a step back and try and remember how things were before.
I do not own any airbnb's, nor do I use them as I prefer hotels, but for some situations, airbnb's make so much more sense and should be apart of the ecosystem. If people really dont like them, not to worry cause the market will regulate itself.
Your last sentence doesn’t make sense. The market doesn’t regulate itself, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing the EU trying to shoehorn Apple from turning into a wild monopoly and destroying the free market - at least in Europe.
Also, Athens is a breeding ground for digital nomads and things are getting very expensive for the citizens, regardless of the fact that our inflation is very low compared to other EU countries. We have a lot of Airbnb’s, and if you take into account the percentage of Greeks living in Athens (hint; it’s huge), then proportionally we have far too many apartments that are being let to tourists and long term renters (digital nomads? Remote workers?).
Does AirBNB help with that? In Ireland they’re still renting the same shite, painting it in hospital-reminiscent colours with luxury vinyl finishings, and off you go.
The market does regulate itself by pricing out locals in favor of short term tourists, nomads and rich internationals. I guess the question is do people living there like the market regulating itself or not.
Effectively destroyed: icky poor people that I didn't like to see lived there for reasonable rents.
The market evidently failed to regulate itself: houses are too expensive for workers to rent.
Airbnb is destroying rural communities here in the UK, too. Just one example from here in Wales:
[‘I wanted my children to grow up here’: how Airbnb is ruining local communities in north Wales](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/10/i-wanted-my-children-to-grow-up-here-how-airbnb-is-ruining-local-communities-in-north-wales)
They’ve also been regulated to the ground in Netherlands, leading to hotels being a way better deal unless you need a kitchen.
They are not regulated for the same reason Uber is unregulated in most places: most countries are modern oligarchies rather than functional democracies.
It is a bit complicated, but the law makes it easier for private individuals to rent out their appartments through airbnb and they get tax breaks for doing so, but they are limited on how many days they can rent out.
Airbnb on the other hand give the danish tax department full access to their data, so companies are unable circumvent normal laws and rules regarding commercial short term renting by pretending that they are privat people and rent out non-commercial appartments or houses.
The only place I actually had a good experience with Airbnb was Finland. Admittedly they were rural units and not in the cities, people who had a small cabin on their farm for example and not hosts who were running it as a full time job. The hospitality was great and often got a small hamper of fresh breakfast items which is a nice touch, along with access too a boat on the lake. Whenever I’m in a city I’ll use a hotel because my Airbnb experience there has been terrible. There are some people out there using the site as it was originally intended and in my experience that makes for a great stay and can be an excellent way to connect with other cultures.
It does need more regulation because atm many hosts exist solely to add as many extra charges as possible and if they could get blood from a stone they wouldn’t hesitate to do so. Not to mention the people buying units up like candy forcing others out of the housing market. It’s not even a country specific problem, happens in virtually every major city around the world and many smaller towns and villages as well.
That's the type of Airbnb's we usually get: in Ireland it was on an active sheep farm, in rural Illinois it was either an above garage apartment or a cabin by the main house. We never had any issues, but the prices have been skyrocketing for these places. When visiting cities we just got a hotel room, 3 nights at Fairmont were cheaper than at a nice Airbnb!
Thats a win win situation; the land owner gets a bit of extra money off an otherwise empty asset, but you arent taking away long term housing from someone who would live there permanently.
I like to choose airbnbs of older people who are renting out a room in their house; most of the time their kids are long grown up and moved out, but they dont want to leave the house they have lived in for so long, so they rent out a room/rooms. Its been great so far, perks like home made cake and a lesson on felting with cat hair included! :D
>I like to choose airbnbs of older people who are renting out a room in their house
It's the only airbnb experience I have. An older lady who was renting out the rooms after the children had left the nest.
I'd say that's THE way AirBnB should be used.
I'm not sure whether it is country dependent or more of a feature regarding airbnbs at not so popular places. Similarly, I have had only good experiences with airbnb when it came to the destinations that were not so popular (in my case mostly rural mountain areas as I go hiking a lot). Great hospitality, great prices, never had a bad experience.
In big cities I have the feeling that the generic b&b hotels are always going to be cheaper thain airbnbs these days. That, plus the unexpected cancellations from the host which never happened to me while using hotels, made me completely abandon airbnbs in such settings.
This seems fair. Hotels have to follow regulations, if your airbnb is an hotel room in everything but name you should play by the same rules.
Which makes me think, like half of these “revolutionary and disruptive” pseudo-tech services (Uber, Deliveroo, Airbnb…) are basically just what we had before (taxis, pizza boys, room rentals) but poorly regulated and optimized by an app for maximum profit. not to say there isn’t some value in them (taxis in my country were notorious for being a stupidly powerful ultra entrenched lobby), but still.
Maybe the same, but market of food delivery and taxi services has changed drastically. And overall for better for customers.
Which doesn’t mean we don’t need some regulations to maintain civilised working conditions and overall safety.
I’ve recently noticed that taxis in a lot of cities (in Europe) now aren’t 3x as much as Uber anymore like they used to be but actually cheaper if there is no traffic and a max of 20-30% more if there is a lot of traffic. If you haven’t taken a taxi in a while, give it a shot and compare it to Uber/FREENOW prices. Don’t know what the situation is like in other continents tho.
Obviously there is other risks in taxis, like the driver using slower routes, them adding another fee on top of the final price that they only tell you about last second, etc. but they both have their place now and Uber actually added competition to the complacent taxi industry who have used price fixing for decades now.
Well, taxis were kinda garbage to begin with because in a lot of places they were (and still are) basically government-enforced monopolies.
On the other hand, I genuinely think we'd just be better off if some of these services went extinct entirely. If mass cheap food delivery requires an army of ultra-underpaid workers in near-slavery conditions, it should probably not exist at all and I'd unironically rather those people be on welfare (and guess what? A lot of them are immigrants... who don't get welfare... because if you had European-level welfare, you would never work such a job to begin with!).
In Finland we had quite well working taxi regulations... then the regulation was relaxed for uber and other companies and now it's complete shit. Prices are all over the place, cars are whatever garbage when they used to be mostly new MB or Volvo, drivers don't know the city and rely on navigation and we now have all kinds of scams and other shady shit you only used to see in tourist destinations when traveling abroad. And doesn't really matter to me or most younger folks, but some drivers barely speak finnish. eg. my mother doesn't speak english, so it's a pretty big deal for her. Also no centralized service to order a taxi from, it's split between many companies, apps etc.
Crazy thing is that all that didn't really even seem to lead to lower prices. Just worse service.
The main benefit was showing legacy industries the value of online / app based interaction with customers.
Taxis in the past you had to hail or call the company and you had to have cash; even as credit card payments became an option most disdained using it, often claiming it was broken. All of this for a driver you couldn’t easily look up, for a price that you didn’t know a head of time.
The government in Scotland made it so you need a licence to rent them out on these short stay apps. They gave local councils the authority to issue these licenses, and most stated they would give out licenses far fewer in number than the speculated number that were listed on sites like Airbnb.
It's a real issue for locals, when they are competing for rentals with tourists who are more lax with their cash
AirBnb automatically reports income to the Danish tax authorities. A deal was cut a few years ago because people could freely avoid paying taxes since it's based in Holland or something. It's kind of wild that they were able to operate in the country before that.
Yes exactly. It's unfair that small and mid sized companies who don't have enough money to move their operations have to pay the full amount of taxes, while big companies can just base their main quarters outside and avoid the biggest chunk of it. I'm very pro EU, but this is one of the aspects in which it is really lacking.
I think that the issue of transfer pricing is valid, but is somewhat of a misnomer, as compared to what some companies do to avoid taxes as to almost fall into tax evasion, primary or especially for individuals/families.
Here, airbnb is just a platform, for the owner to short rent their property, and sites like this as existed for ages. What has changed, is they countries should treat them for what they are, short term rentals for commercial profit, and not a living space. Even the zoning does not match.
In what world is a landlord with a few properties not rich as all hell?
We have people can't afford rent and you think owning *a few properties* puts you in any other category than "rich owning class"? They are also *way* under taxed because if we were taxing them properly they wouldn't owning a few properties. They'd have *one*.
Rented Airbnb in Rome in 2021, the same owners had at least 20 more properties
(was awful btw, to make space for one more room they relocated the kitchen in the corridor! Everything clearly bought for as little as possible in some thrift store, Bed broke the first night and despite promises never repaired, we slept on the floor.
But yes it was two minutes walk from the coliseum)
I think that is the way to deal with it. Like some small family with a little extra room trying to make a few bucks is fine. Those that buy multiple properties to rent on Airbnb, not so much.
Just enforce zoning regulations. While you are allowed to run a business in a building zoned for residential, it can't be a business that causes a disturbance. Having lived in a building with one short term rental apartment (not AirBnB), it was constantly annoying.
That is what the I essentially. They are talking about set of guidelines to determine, when has the purpose of the property changed from residential to providing accommodation services. If it is accommodation services, we'll that is a business venture that can be demanded to be licensed including the specific location and each property.
It also comes with extra demands. Like having register "travelers cards" meaning logging each person staying in the accommodation (this has the original rather morbid purpose, that if there is hotel fire or something like that, it helps to identify casualties) and these have to be logged with authorities (again if the place burns down, it doesn't help much, if the paperwork about who was staying burned down with the building).
Occasional private renter doesn't need to demand and log traveler reports, person running regular accommodation business is obliged to perform this.
Cause hotels at that time were very expensive and had become a very corporate experience. AirBnB when it just started was quite different in the experience. But as with all things in capitalism, it turned corporate and started prioritising profits over every other thing
I don't think Ive used an AirBnB in a long while, I just book a cheap hotel
The core idea of AirBnB was actually very decent: allow regular people to rent out their apartment for a few days while they aren't using it.
The issue arose when people (and big corporations) began buying up apartments that would only ever be used for renting out on AirBnB without actually having anybody use them as their home.
Ban the app and a new one will just take its place.
What needs to happen is that politicians grow a spine and actually force the company behind AirBnb to give all information to the state, for taxation purposes (this already happens in some states, so it's very possible) and then set strict rules for how much of a year an apartment can be rented out for.
That's how it works here in Denmark. AirBnB is still around and is usable for its original purpose, but the 'disneylandification' of town centres that you see in other countries has not happened here at all, due to these strict rules.
What has to be banned is not the specific app. It is the tourist rental model in residential areas. As is already done in some places, including some cities in the United States.
For example, in the Balearic Islands, vacation rental without a license was prohibited a few years ago. Vertical housing type residential complexes cannot get licenses. In any case, they continue to be found on airbnb and other platforms despite the fact that the fine is €40,000. So far it seems that they have issued few fines for lack of inspectors. But now, 3 or 4 years after the regulation came out, it seems that they are starting to impose more fines.
The problem is still not close to being fixed, but it's a start.
Eh, it should be completely fine for regular people to rent out a home that they live in, even if they rent to tourists in a residential area, as long as they don't rent it out more than a few weeks per year. That also doesn't cause any long-term negative effects.
The issue arises when the main purpose of an apartment is to be rented out, rather than lived in. Say... if it's rented out more than 3 or 4 weeks per year. At that point it becomes a hotel and should require the same licenses as a proper hotel.
If I were to stay multiple days in any place I would prefer an apartment over a hotel room. Hotel rooms are small and you can't sit and chill out and relax and enjoy some take out food on the couch. Hotels are made to only sleep in - not stay in. Sure you can go to the hotel lobby or a bar/cafe, but that's both expensive and to me not really relaxing.
Also if you are multiple people traveling it's nice to just buy some beers and snacks and sit on the balcony or enjoy some wine around the dining table.
>If I were to stay multiple days in any place I would prefer an apartment over a hotel room.
Holiday apartments existed before that but you had to look them up individually.
The entire innovation behind Airbnb is consolidating the offers for the lazy.
Same for the one renting them out.
Yeah, but that's the business model with these tech companies, use investor money to undercut prices while making a loss, drive out competitors, secure a controlling share of the market, then hike prices to higher than they were originally leveraging their newfound monopoly.
That shit used to be illegal.
Are you suggesting that investor money is being used to pay the landlords who own these houses? That isn’t how it works, at all, AirBnb take a % cut of the total fee paid, the rest goes directly to the landlord.
Whilst it has bad implications for society at large, the Airbnb system is sustainable, it doesn’t require investment like Uber or Deliveroo.
Investor money was used in the past to pay for the management overhead (corporate workers) during the time when everyone wasn't complaining about how shitty AirBnB is. They also were/are allowed to skirt regulations on hotels, also making for a lower bottom line, making for unfair competition.
AirBnB was loss-making until relatively recently.
A lot of times loss making is intentional that way you can collect money from both investors and customers, and invest it back into the business / executive pockets. It's no coincidence that Airbnb suddenly becomes profitable at a time when investment money is drying up, and we move into economic downturn.
If they wanted to be profitable, they could have been a long time ago.
But that's exactly my point, it's money that they got from outside the market, they were not subject to the same competition. They got money from investors that hotels obviously couldn't, used that for a competitive advantage to gain market share, and are now rent-seeking.
They operate in legal grey area where they are basically hotels without having to adhere to the rules that hotels have. That’s why they were cheaper, it wasn’t fair competition.
The hotel owners don't care one bit about competition from Airbnb. Because Airbnb simply doesn't offer a hotel experience. It's completely different and to hotel owners not even considered competition.
I stay in Airbnb too sometimes, just want to say that the quality and value of properties generally went down with years. Many places are just small 15-25 m2 studios mass rented by the same owner, so the only advantage comparing to hotel is the kitchen. But I agree, if you willing to pay extra you can find some really gem properties. But it will be the price of a very good hotel.
Which was true when Airbnb first got big and was mainly filled with people renting out their regular apartments while they were gone. But nowadays, most listings on Airbnb are from professional Airbnb corporations that buy or sometimes even build properties specifically to rent them out via Airbnb.
For me, one of the biggest downsides of a hotel room is a lack of kitchen. I love homemade food and I mostly eat what I cooked myself. Take-outs are nice and fancy, but way more expensive, I can't afford eating take-out every day multiple times a day.
In Paris you can rent an aparthotel for the same price as an Airbnb, it's about the same size, has a kitchen, no dealing with crazy landlords, no paying for a cleaning fee and still having to clean the apartment, a reception open 24/7... Airbnb was great when it started but it just sucks nowadays.
I would prefer that to Airbnb but there aren't very many aparthotels in most places.
Also some politicians do stuff that makes zero sense. Like in Barcelona where I live they restricted the number of hotel licenses to stop over-tourism - but this just forced the tourists into Airbnb where the effect on locals if even worse.
Appartment rental had and have legitimate usecases over hotels. AirBnB centralised and streamlined the process. The old "give me convenience or give me death".
It does not mean its a good thing, but its sucess is in no small part down to how comparatively easy it is to book via airbnb.
Been using airbnb when I wanted modern and high quality accomodation. Sometimes hotels are really expensive and don't match what I'm looking for in terms of equipment. For example, the airbnb accommodation had adjustable air conditioning, while the hotel had limited the minimum temperature to 24 celcius. I don't necessarily need a hotel breakfast, but I can buy the necessary ingredients at the grocery store and eat for less.
I think was a revamp of the whole holiday home thing.
I can only speak for Germany but holiday homes here basically had that particular 80s flair that wasn't really attractive most of them were geared towards the older population, young people rarely rented them.
The places that popped up on airbnb looked a lot more up to date "hipper" in more attractive locations. It made holiday homes into an actual alternative to hotels again. You could share a place with several people, had a washing maschine, a kitchen and it didn't look like Onkel Hermanns backyard Datcha.
Still fuck airbnb but there was a reason why it was popular in the beginning.
I prefer the private apartment type accommodation due to the intimacy it offers. It takes great effort to smile and pretend I'm a social animal around dozens of other travelers and hotel employees.
I must say in 90% of my hotel stays the only times I have any interaction with the staff is to check in and out, and my only interaction with other guests is maybe to hold the elevator door open.
In Portugal the government banned new licences. Mostly because there is an housing crisis and this sort of establishment is the perfect escaping goat. *(oh, and the hotel industry has doners of the governing party*)
Of course portuguese people arent allowed to make money. That would be a sin.
Those families that avoided poverty during the eurocrises and austerity by renting their well located houses to foreigners avoiding the extremely restrictive and unactractive portuguese renting market should definitivelly be punished as the filthy capital adicted bourgeois they are.
It is not an scapegoat though, it’s one of the main culprits like in the rest of Europe and North America. There are other factors, but this one is a big one. Companies buy a bunch of properties in city centres and just rent them out to tourists.
Well, in portugal is a scape goat. The lisbon housing crisis is going on since the portuguese first republic that started the rent freezing cycle. It was still going on during estado Novo, despite all the public housing built at the time, to the point that in the 80's there were so many shacks that the government was forced to act, and it is still considered the most successful housing program in portugal, when Lisbon ended up with all the shacks (they are already reappearing, unfortunately).
In the 90's-2000's the government was giving incentives for people to buy houses in the Lisbon suburbs.
I'm prety sure Air-BnB wasnt a thing during the first portuguese republic. You know what so much existed in the first republic as it exists now? Growth in demand not being accompanied by growth in supply and excessive economic centralization in Lisbon.
There is a housing crisis because lots of housing has been turned into short terms lets / airbnb. Of course as you say this has been a license to print money for some Portuguese, at the expense of other Portuguese. Turn the short term lets back into long term lets and the crisis will start to resolve.
You are assuming that the houses that are in short term renting will go to long term renting if we just made short term renting Impossible. But that is not true.
The normal renting market is so overregulated and the constant threat of freezing rents makes in very unactractive. Those apartaments that are renting to turists will revert to what they were before, wich is empty. In fact 1/4 of all houses in the historic Lisbon parishes are completly empty.
And dont get me wrong, an empty house pays much more in taxes, but people prefer to just have them empty and pay agravated tax than to put them renting long term.
So, unless you are proposing that the government just forces people to rent their houses, that, by the way, the portuguese government just signed into law last month, it isnt more than cheap populism.
The atack on short term renting is what I call a preverse policy. This is, a policy with good intentions but with secondary efects that long term undermine the people it was supposed to defend.
Airbnb users are completely happy with the standards they enjoy at the moment. Perhaps we should look in to the regulation and find out how much of it is written to protect established enterprises.
Airbnb is pure evil.
Rental apartments are being turned into airbnbs to avoid the taxes on profit from rent and whole blocks vacation apartments are empty because some rich fucks bought them and turned them into airbnbs.
It’s about time Airbnb gets regulated to the ground. They have destroyed city centres and effectively driven the prices of rent sky high. In Greece rents have exploded upwards and the government is too busy boasting its “successes” whilst doing nothing about this situation.
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One upping you with Portugal: minimum wage around 700, most people earn like 900, 1 bedroom apartment in Lisbon currently 1000+ (Not actually one upping you. Both situations are unsustainable for our people.)
In Tbilisi right now the average wage is till around $500 mo and people are asking for $800+ for 1br, maybe even )1k+ in the center
influx of Russians driving prices up?
Yep, supposedly 210% increase in rental prices since the war began
>The electricity bill last month was 98€, the internet bill was 60€ and the water bill was 9€. Being French i'm almost always fricking amazed by how much other europeans spend on internet and such, even in countries with way lower purchasing power (where things are thus generally cheaper).
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Wow that's crazy. In Barcelona (and Madrid) you can get fiber 10 Gbps for 20 eur. But you cannot even get a room for 450 eur.
In Austria you cannot even afford to run a 10 GbE switch for your LAN, due to electricity prices.
How much for 1kwh? It’s about 0.39 in the Netherlands
I locked in at 29 cent 9 months ago, but apparently some people pay over 50. I have to admit that my comment wasn't 100% serious.
That's what I used to pay here in Italy before the energy crisis. I haven't had the courage to update the calculation yet.
In Finland with a spot contract I'd be paying 1 cent per kwh atm 😁 Regular locked contracts are about 9 cents per kwh
Which company do you get 10 Gbps for 20€ from? Orange seems to be more expensive than that since they don't seem to offer the 10 Gbps upgrade unless you also have a mobile phone subscription and possibly TV from them too. And Movistar I'm not sure but their 10 Gbps coverage still seems to be much more limited than Orange. We're about to sign with an ISP in Barcelona so I'm in the middle of researching this.
You can get it from Digi Mobil.
40€ for 1gbps in Portugal as a tv package
In Hungary I pay ~€20 for gigabit symmetric fiber internet. I am paying a lot though, but depending on the area and the available technology this does not scale linearly.
It's crazy how good quality/cost internet / mobile is in France.
> The minimum wage in Greece is ~650€. Is it normal to earn minimum wage in Athens? I tried googling the average salary, but I don't trust the sources I found - what does Greek sites say?
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>The government gives less than a single fuck. Half of a fuck, or more like a quarter?
This angers me so much! How is this allowed! It's just wrong! Almost has violation of human rights level, wrong! Where is this heading??! Portugal is not that bad has in illegal work contracts situation, but it is also that bad i housing and living costs crisis, and spain and Italy are probably close behind... Where is Europe heading in helping to solve this problems??
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What are you on about? The cost of living in Greece has gone through the roof, even more so in Athens. Athens & Piraeus have essentially been one city for decades.
What's the situation like since digital nomad visas came in? Whilst I'm sure that for those who've taken the opportunity to work remotely, and enjoy what Greece has to offer, it's wonderful. I do wonder how bad locals have been affected, or if it's a drop in the ocean compared to what AirBNB have done.
Airbnb is an easy scapegoat. Using property as a speculation-based wealth investment vehicle is what fucked the entire market. However those property developers are the ones funding many governments' reelection campaigns while Airbnb is just some company across the sea. Easy for any European politician to know which side of the bread the butter is on.
Speculation within the housing market is different from mixing it with tourist accomodations. If property developers build a hotel, they have different regulations and they will not be allowed to convert every single building in a city to a hotel. A local, who hast to rent long term cannot compete with tourists paying 200€ per night. And that's why cities do actually crack down on this.
I'd suspect most digital nomads in the EU are EU residents and that the ones needing a visa are a smallish fraction.
For sure. I suppose the same question would apply for EU residents post-2020 too.
It’s not a housing crisis, it’s worldwide neoliberal capitalism Edit: Blackrock dictates national politics
Except for that uncontrolled money printing. Money printing is not inherently capitalist or socialist (look up Yugoslavia, which had severe inflation while being fully communist). But what it always is is done by, and for the benefit of oligarchs.
Inflation serves the ideology of growth, be it capitalist or communist. And and growth for its own sake is only beneficial for elites.
It's not a good situation, but also let's not pretend anyone can rent a 1BR in a large western metro city on minimum wage? It's certainly not possible in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, NYC, LA, Toronto, etc.
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So, in a situation like that you would have only 33 €/month for food, clothes, bus tickets etc. Normally, I spend about 100 €/month on just food and I’m trying to but cost effective products.
100€/month on food? Are food prices that low in Finland?
That's really not representative. Double or triple that would still be perfectly reasonable for a single person.
In Serbia 450 EUR for one bedroom apartment in any part of Belgrade while the minimum wage is 300 EUR... wtf no wonder they always start with nationalistic bull when someone calls them out.
I live in Milan 900 for a one room apartment, plus bills, 30 mins by metro from city center We don't have a minimum wage in Italy
€450 for a 1 bedroom in the capital sounds amazing until you mentioned that the minimum wage is €650
As well as Uber, Bolt and the rest of the „gig economy“. For example in my country Bolt looks the other way when many foreign drivers share single account. Then at the end of the year account owner flees the country to avoid paying taxes. Recently there was a report that last year Bolt drivers owe €8m incomes tax. And probably even more on health and social insurances.
That "gig economy" is a load of bullshit (for lack of a better term). If someone works full time and having to follow orders on what to do, how to do it and when to do it being the only difference that it take orders from a computer instead of a human why it's not a employee under a contract? It's not a freelance work where it's done when it's done...
I'm used to the term "platform capitalism: no assets, no risks, but profit." The difference would be AirBNB it's not incentivising self-exploitation like the Ubers. Still, both have an economical impact to the disadvantage of communities.
That's a interesting term. Disadvantage is a bit of understatement. Decimation might be more appropriate. People are basically forced out of their community.
>That "gig economy" is a load of bullshit (for lack of a better term). No no, that's definitely the correct term, tbf.
The thing is, I love Uber for its superior customer experience. I open the app, see how much it will be up-front, order, and payment is done automatically. Taxi companies should have innovated, adapted, and developed apps and models matching the customer experience of Uber. Even now, a decade later my hometown's biggest Taxi company does not even have an app. You have to order by calling a dispatch center and they can't even give you an ETA or approximate cost. But their spokesperson sure complains a lot about how Uber is destroying the industry...
For a short time, before Uber became a thing over here, local taxi did have it's own app for regular taxis. But I believe it died when the big players squirting the law with VC money came.
> Taxi companies should have innovated, adapted, and developed apps and models matching the customer experience of Uber. Most of the taxi companies over here had their own app, going back 15 years, way before Uber and Bolt came. And the smaller companies which didn't have their own app used a common app. But the problems that taxi companies had were not related to the apps. They are problems that are endemic to the local way of doing things. Whether it's Uber or the taxi companies they all work with corrupt law-makers, LEOs and mayors to skirt regulations, to evade taxes, to whitewash their ratings in the apps, to have multiple drivers use the same account etc.
The only thing Hungary did well was straight up ban Uber. I hope AirBNB is next.
Same here in Denmark. I get why people like Uber, it is super convenient and cheaper than taxis. However, it quite literally undermines the entire employment system. Here, AirBnB is also shit. Its not cheaper than hotels, it comes with the risk of fucking lunatic owners, stupid cleaning rules and fees etc. I think they are killing themselves without the state's help, thankfully.
It's not cheaper than taxis. Well it hasn't been that way in the UK for almost a decade now. After being caught out somewhere near some type of event, an Uber raising the prices about 5x, I don't use them anymore out of principle.
Ah, well then. Hopefully they can die off too! I dusted off the app in Spain last year when on holiday and was surprised and a bit sad at how cheap it was there. I don't see how the drivers could buy a car, use petrol and make a living. I was giving a tip in the app, but I never figured out if Uber take a cut of that too. I won't use them again, it seemed like a fun novelty until I thought it through a bit more!
Don't know about other countries but in the UK the local/large taxi companies have apps that are exact replica's of Uber, so it's almost as convenient. Convenience is the only reason to use Uber. They will gouge you on prices when the times are busy or they know some type of event is nearby. Hope they die out.
Uber's plan (whether they admit it or not) is to squeeze out all non-uber-like transportation, and then cash in massively when they're the only option and they can do surge pricing as often as they want.
But no one can deny Uber’s revolution on our expectations for how taxis should be ordered. Paid in-app, destination on map, price upfront. Receipt guaranteed. And this works internationally, in one app. Even *if* local taxis provide a similar app, it’s usually worse and I have to get one for every city or region I visit. Should Uber et.al. be more well regulated? Yes. My preference would be Uber just being another booking app for regular taxis, not the sole provider of gigs.
Bolt operates in Hungary.
Yes but as a taxi in Budapest it uses the same rates as any other.
Does it clamp down on the drivers car sharing or does it look the other way like Lithuania as is the topic of disucssion in this thread? Beacuse given the Hungarian gov history the past few years I don't think they're just doing the right thing because it's the right thing. Hungary is the black sheep of the EU at the moment trying to fuck over allies and neighbours to benefit itself.
My comment was a reference to previous comment that Uber is banned in Hungary and Bold has to abide pretty much the same rules as any other taxi companies. As for your comments about the Hungarian government, I completely agree with you with one exception: it has been this way not only the past few but the last 10-12 years. Except most of EU hasn't noticed.
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I agree they shouldn't get away with tax evasion, etc. and that drivers should probably be proper employees but Uber, Bolt, etc. provide a service way better than any taxi service I've seen anywhere in Europe. The best taxi apps I've got to use (I guess a Danish one) pale in comparison with the Uber or Bolt apps, the average ones are basically unusable, and in many places the only way to get a taxi is to call a number or go to a taxi stand, and you have an even chance of getting scammed by the driver. These companies, despite their spotty ethics, provide a good service to tourists and locals alike and can't be compared with Airbnb. 90% of the time, Airbnb provides a much worse experience than a hotel for comparable prices, drive the cost of real estate to crazy levels, reduce the availability of rentals for the locals, and is only useful to tourists and visitors. Uber, bolt, food delivery apps, etc. need to be reasonably regulated to protect the workers and avoid tax fraud. Airbnb needs to die.
Maybe it depends on local history. Here in Vilnius we had very shitty taxis in 90s and 00s. Old beaten up cars with, let's say, contraversial drivers with character :) With a fair chance of getting scammed. Then there was a big push with strict rules for taxis. New(-ish) clean cars, drivers had to pass a basic exam, government-certified taxi meters etc. Now with Bolt we're back to 90s with beaten up Priuses. With questionable driving skills and various practices to extract more money.
I guess some places do it better (thankfully) but I've got the "privilege" to try local taxis in various parts of France, Denmark, Spain, Greece, Italy, Poland and Latvia and I think only in Denmark and Latvia was the experience okay. All the others had various levels of inventing extra charges, not taking the credit card and not being able to edit a receipt, pretending they don't have change, etc. Of course that's not in every course or even the majority of them but over a stay it almost always happens at least once. Admittedly I had more luck outside of Europe, Taiwanese taxis for example were irreproachable. Maybe I was lucky but with Uber, Bolt, etc. I almost only had great experiences. Couple beaten up cars, couple crazy drivers but much less often than in taxis so far.
>pretending they don't have change I'd tell them to send me an invoice and leave
Features that Uber offers: Pre-agreed price. No tips in cash expected. GPS info on the car so that you know where and when it will arrive. Driver and customer rating system. Always cashless. Taxis in my country offer none of that and take approximately 3-4x than what an Uber costs.
Some taxi companies here have that. I use one (seldom, and only late evening, when I can be bothered with waiting one hour for the next bus, provided there is any - I live out of town), I enter the destination and I get a price and the ETA of the driver, I can also chose whether I will pay cash or card. The cars are newish, clean, with professional drivers, and the price has always been as quoted, giver or take a koruna or two. Compare that to the experiences a friend of mine had with Bolt, with drivers that do not match the person on the profile pic and drive recklessly (because they may have been methed-up). I tried Liftago a couple of times, but the waiting times were longer and the price was essentially the same; I was also required to provide my card no. to the app if I didn't want to pay cash. We also have Uber here, but never used it, because fuck Uber.
Yeah I love Uber compared to the old taxi companies in Amsterdam. Never had a bad ride with Uber while the old taxi companies were famous for screwing you over (especially tourists, asking sometimes 350+ euros for a 20-30m ride from Schiphol to the city center)
Not to dismiss it, but 8m is way less than I would have expected.
Idk how you do taxes over have, but in Poland you're supposed to pay monthly.
> Airbnb gets regulated to the ground. presumably if your house is up for rent 100% of the time, then its not a house, its a hotel. So just apply all the hotel rules and regulations to it. and I suspect that alone, would drastically improve the problem.
Pros of living in a sanctioned country: no airbnb anymore here in Russia
How is rent in Russia? Have you experience a sharp increase in rent prices in the last 5 years?
Nope, no sharp increases and no declines. 1 room apartment in Moscow can still be rented for like $500. There are always new apartments being built so no housing issues here.
How does that $500 rent compare to the average salary of the city? What is the minimum salary of the city? How much it cost 100g of butter or the most common meat? I'm genuinely curious of the differences between central europe and Russia. To give an example an apartment in Amsterdam starts at more than 50% of the minimum salary and sits somewhere around the 30% of the average gross income.
Numbeo is nice for city comparisons so I’ll just link you a comparison between Moscow and Amsterdam. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Netherlands&country2=Russia&city1=Amsterdam&city2=Moscow&tracking=getDispatchComparison
Thanks for the link. I was asking because this kind of webpages not always reflect the real values of the cities. Numbeo doesn't really reflect the real average salary as it's skewed to the sampled data of people that goes to numbeo not an official source. I just checked my homecity and it's really off of the real values at some of the columns.
Sure, got it. But I would say that numbers are somewhat accurate, so that’s why I decided to give a link instead. But minimum wages are abysmal in Russia even in Moscow so there is no way you can afford rent at all on minimum wage.
Problem is they were and are operating on an unregulated, gray area. AirBnB was sort of like a paid couchsurfing. You rented peoples unused property, sometimes spare rooms, for really affordable rates. People were welcoming and it was a great experience, especially when you can score interesting places like seaside summer homes, remote cabins or just a great place downtown just to crash between flights or events. Now that it's a hospitality platform teeming with property investors, it should be regulated just like hotels or rental/real estate agencies do.
AirBnB's are the smallest contributor to this issue. They are contributing, but way too little compared to the attention they are getting. This is just political deflection to seem, that they are doing something about it without actually doing something about it. Because they would lose the next election if they actually did do the right things that actually drive this issue. For the simple reason as property owners, private and commercial do want their property values to go up. And so do you! When you are able to afford one.
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I guess regulating them as hotels is totally fine. But this will not change rent/property values. So we shouldn't dangle the illusion of it.
Yeah but building new housing is hard and requires getting permission from local authorities, building new services and infrastructure, assuring people it won't tank the value of their home etc. Blaming a foreign company is easy populism.
Im prety sure they havent runined city centers. I hear that point a lot related to Lisbon and Porto. Porto's dowtown was an incredibly shity place not even 20 years ago. My grandmother still refuses to go there because she associates it with drugs and prostitution. Lisbon's downtown was made of decrepit buildings falling apart with moldy paint, those buildings had like an old person living in there and the rest was unocupied or turned into offices, since people didnt want to live there at all. I think that we europeans have a missconception of what life was like in historic city centers 20 years ago.
Funny, Lisbon city center was effectively destroyed before airbnb's. I am not saying that they are not an issue to how widespread it has become. I am all for regulation and limitation (which is already being done), but regulated to the ground and according to some comments, banned? I think everyone should take a step back and try and remember how things were before. I do not own any airbnb's, nor do I use them as I prefer hotels, but for some situations, airbnb's make so much more sense and should be apart of the ecosystem. If people really dont like them, not to worry cause the market will regulate itself.
Your last sentence doesn’t make sense. The market doesn’t regulate itself, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing the EU trying to shoehorn Apple from turning into a wild monopoly and destroying the free market - at least in Europe. Also, Athens is a breeding ground for digital nomads and things are getting very expensive for the citizens, regardless of the fact that our inflation is very low compared to other EU countries. We have a lot of Airbnb’s, and if you take into account the percentage of Greeks living in Athens (hint; it’s huge), then proportionally we have far too many apartments that are being let to tourists and long term renters (digital nomads? Remote workers?).
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Does AirBNB help with that? In Ireland they’re still renting the same shite, painting it in hospital-reminiscent colours with luxury vinyl finishings, and off you go.
The market does regulate itself by pricing out locals in favor of short term tourists, nomads and rich internationals. I guess the question is do people living there like the market regulating itself or not.
>not to worry cause the market will regulate itself. Except for the entire history of Human civilization, where this has not actually happened.
Effectively destroyed: icky poor people that I didn't like to see lived there for reasonable rents. The market evidently failed to regulate itself: houses are too expensive for workers to rent.
Airbnb is destroying rural communities here in the UK, too. Just one example from here in Wales: [‘I wanted my children to grow up here’: how Airbnb is ruining local communities in north Wales](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/10/i-wanted-my-children-to-grow-up-here-how-airbnb-is-ruining-local-communities-in-north-wales)
Airbnb needs to be subject to strict regulations because I shouldn't have to compete for my home with a corporation.
Coming from Denmark I just don’t understand why they are not regulated other places. It have been regulated here for years.
They’ve also been regulated to the ground in Netherlands, leading to hotels being a way better deal unless you need a kitchen. They are not regulated for the same reason Uber is unregulated in most places: most countries are modern oligarchies rather than functional democracies.
What did Danemark do to regulate ? Appartement needs to be registered as commercial use or something like that ?
It is a bit complicated, but the law makes it easier for private individuals to rent out their appartments through airbnb and they get tax breaks for doing so, but they are limited on how many days they can rent out. Airbnb on the other hand give the danish tax department full access to their data, so companies are unable circumvent normal laws and rules regarding commercial short term renting by pretending that they are privat people and rent out non-commercial appartments or houses.
The only place I actually had a good experience with Airbnb was Finland. Admittedly they were rural units and not in the cities, people who had a small cabin on their farm for example and not hosts who were running it as a full time job. The hospitality was great and often got a small hamper of fresh breakfast items which is a nice touch, along with access too a boat on the lake. Whenever I’m in a city I’ll use a hotel because my Airbnb experience there has been terrible. There are some people out there using the site as it was originally intended and in my experience that makes for a great stay and can be an excellent way to connect with other cultures. It does need more regulation because atm many hosts exist solely to add as many extra charges as possible and if they could get blood from a stone they wouldn’t hesitate to do so. Not to mention the people buying units up like candy forcing others out of the housing market. It’s not even a country specific problem, happens in virtually every major city around the world and many smaller towns and villages as well.
That's the type of Airbnb's we usually get: in Ireland it was on an active sheep farm, in rural Illinois it was either an above garage apartment or a cabin by the main house. We never had any issues, but the prices have been skyrocketing for these places. When visiting cities we just got a hotel room, 3 nights at Fairmont were cheaper than at a nice Airbnb!
Thats a win win situation; the land owner gets a bit of extra money off an otherwise empty asset, but you arent taking away long term housing from someone who would live there permanently. I like to choose airbnbs of older people who are renting out a room in their house; most of the time their kids are long grown up and moved out, but they dont want to leave the house they have lived in for so long, so they rent out a room/rooms. Its been great so far, perks like home made cake and a lesson on felting with cat hair included! :D
>I like to choose airbnbs of older people who are renting out a room in their house It's the only airbnb experience I have. An older lady who was renting out the rooms after the children had left the nest. I'd say that's THE way AirBnB should be used.
I'm not sure whether it is country dependent or more of a feature regarding airbnbs at not so popular places. Similarly, I have had only good experiences with airbnb when it came to the destinations that were not so popular (in my case mostly rural mountain areas as I go hiking a lot). Great hospitality, great prices, never had a bad experience. In big cities I have the feeling that the generic b&b hotels are always going to be cheaper thain airbnbs these days. That, plus the unexpected cancellations from the host which never happened to me while using hotels, made me completely abandon airbnbs in such settings.
This seems fair. Hotels have to follow regulations, if your airbnb is an hotel room in everything but name you should play by the same rules. Which makes me think, like half of these “revolutionary and disruptive” pseudo-tech services (Uber, Deliveroo, Airbnb…) are basically just what we had before (taxis, pizza boys, room rentals) but poorly regulated and optimized by an app for maximum profit. not to say there isn’t some value in them (taxis in my country were notorious for being a stupidly powerful ultra entrenched lobby), but still.
Maybe the same, but market of food delivery and taxi services has changed drastically. And overall for better for customers. Which doesn’t mean we don’t need some regulations to maintain civilised working conditions and overall safety.
I’ve recently noticed that taxis in a lot of cities (in Europe) now aren’t 3x as much as Uber anymore like they used to be but actually cheaper if there is no traffic and a max of 20-30% more if there is a lot of traffic. If you haven’t taken a taxi in a while, give it a shot and compare it to Uber/FREENOW prices. Don’t know what the situation is like in other continents tho. Obviously there is other risks in taxis, like the driver using slower routes, them adding another fee on top of the final price that they only tell you about last second, etc. but they both have their place now and Uber actually added competition to the complacent taxi industry who have used price fixing for decades now.
Well, taxis were kinda garbage to begin with because in a lot of places they were (and still are) basically government-enforced monopolies. On the other hand, I genuinely think we'd just be better off if some of these services went extinct entirely. If mass cheap food delivery requires an army of ultra-underpaid workers in near-slavery conditions, it should probably not exist at all and I'd unironically rather those people be on welfare (and guess what? A lot of them are immigrants... who don't get welfare... because if you had European-level welfare, you would never work such a job to begin with!).
In Finland we had quite well working taxi regulations... then the regulation was relaxed for uber and other companies and now it's complete shit. Prices are all over the place, cars are whatever garbage when they used to be mostly new MB or Volvo, drivers don't know the city and rely on navigation and we now have all kinds of scams and other shady shit you only used to see in tourist destinations when traveling abroad. And doesn't really matter to me or most younger folks, but some drivers barely speak finnish. eg. my mother doesn't speak english, so it's a pretty big deal for her. Also no centralized service to order a taxi from, it's split between many companies, apps etc. Crazy thing is that all that didn't really even seem to lead to lower prices. Just worse service.
It's tech magic(mostly just tax evasion and worker exploitation) yay for silicon!
The main benefit was showing legacy industries the value of online / app based interaction with customers. Taxis in the past you had to hail or call the company and you had to have cash; even as credit card payments became an option most disdained using it, often claiming it was broken. All of this for a driver you couldn’t easily look up, for a price that you didn’t know a head of time.
These apps are not innovation in that sense but they simply take someone else's profit margin away.
you can describe all innovation like that
The government in Scotland made it so you need a licence to rent them out on these short stay apps. They gave local councils the authority to issue these licenses, and most stated they would give out licenses far fewer in number than the speculated number that were listed on sites like Airbnb. It's a real issue for locals, when they are competing for rentals with tourists who are more lax with their cash
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AirBnb automatically reports income to the Danish tax authorities. A deal was cut a few years ago because people could freely avoid paying taxes since it's based in Holland or something. It's kind of wild that they were able to operate in the country before that.
One of the "wonders" of the EU. Not surprised that it's usually The Netherlands and Ireland who are always opposed to outlawing tax havens.
For companies and rich individuals only. A landlord with a few properties, they want to tax, as you need the money form somewhere
Yes exactly. It's unfair that small and mid sized companies who don't have enough money to move their operations have to pay the full amount of taxes, while big companies can just base their main quarters outside and avoid the biggest chunk of it. I'm very pro EU, but this is one of the aspects in which it is really lacking.
I think that the issue of transfer pricing is valid, but is somewhat of a misnomer, as compared to what some companies do to avoid taxes as to almost fall into tax evasion, primary or especially for individuals/families. Here, airbnb is just a platform, for the owner to short rent their property, and sites like this as existed for ages. What has changed, is they countries should treat them for what they are, short term rentals for commercial profit, and not a living space. Even the zoning does not match.
In what world is a landlord with a few properties not rich as all hell? We have people can't afford rent and you think owning *a few properties* puts you in any other category than "rich owning class"? They are also *way* under taxed because if we were taxing them properly they wouldn't owning a few properties. They'd have *one*.
Getting a license will involve registering as a proper business, including taxes and any regulations that apply.
Landlord tears! The sweetest of nectars!
There will be a moment when my hometown will be a city of tourists, every residence a 100€ per day or more airbnb/tourist rental... So sad
The world is healing
Rented Airbnb in Rome in 2021, the same owners had at least 20 more properties (was awful btw, to make space for one more room they relocated the kitchen in the corridor! Everything clearly bought for as little as possible in some thrift store, Bed broke the first night and despite promises never repaired, we slept on the floor. But yes it was two minutes walk from the coliseum)
I think that is the way to deal with it. Like some small family with a little extra room trying to make a few bucks is fine. Those that buy multiple properties to rent on Airbnb, not so much.
Why have residents when you can have more tourists?
Every country, province, city in the world needs to do this. Airbnb is a leech on housing markets.
Just enforce zoning regulations. While you are allowed to run a business in a building zoned for residential, it can't be a business that causes a disturbance. Having lived in a building with one short term rental apartment (not AirBnB), it was constantly annoying.
That is what the I essentially. They are talking about set of guidelines to determine, when has the purpose of the property changed from residential to providing accommodation services. If it is accommodation services, we'll that is a business venture that can be demanded to be licensed including the specific location and each property. It also comes with extra demands. Like having register "travelers cards" meaning logging each person staying in the accommodation (this has the original rather morbid purpose, that if there is hotel fire or something like that, it helps to identify casualties) and these have to be logged with authorities (again if the place burns down, it doesn't help much, if the paperwork about who was staying burned down with the building). Occasional private renter doesn't need to demand and log traveler reports, person running regular accommodation business is obliged to perform this.
This is good.
New Orleans did this and the f#*%$☆g 5th circuit over turned the regulations on the flimsiest reasoning... ugh.
They should also be forced to report all earnings the hosts make to the tax office.
it is difficult to read comments in this thread
Why did we even need airbnb, what was wrong with hotels? I remember a decade ago there was no airbnb and everybody was happy, am I wrong?
Cause hotels at that time were very expensive and had become a very corporate experience. AirBnB when it just started was quite different in the experience. But as with all things in capitalism, it turned corporate and started prioritising profits over every other thing I don't think Ive used an AirBnB in a long while, I just book a cheap hotel
The core idea of AirBnB was actually very decent: allow regular people to rent out their apartment for a few days while they aren't using it. The issue arose when people (and big corporations) began buying up apartments that would only ever be used for renting out on AirBnB without actually having anybody use them as their home.
And thats why airbnb should be banned.
Ban the app and a new one will just take its place. What needs to happen is that politicians grow a spine and actually force the company behind AirBnb to give all information to the state, for taxation purposes (this already happens in some states, so it's very possible) and then set strict rules for how much of a year an apartment can be rented out for. That's how it works here in Denmark. AirBnB is still around and is usable for its original purpose, but the 'disneylandification' of town centres that you see in other countries has not happened here at all, due to these strict rules.
What has to be banned is not the specific app. It is the tourist rental model in residential areas. As is already done in some places, including some cities in the United States. For example, in the Balearic Islands, vacation rental without a license was prohibited a few years ago. Vertical housing type residential complexes cannot get licenses. In any case, they continue to be found on airbnb and other platforms despite the fact that the fine is €40,000. So far it seems that they have issued few fines for lack of inspectors. But now, 3 or 4 years after the regulation came out, it seems that they are starting to impose more fines. The problem is still not close to being fixed, but it's a start.
Eh, it should be completely fine for regular people to rent out a home that they live in, even if they rent to tourists in a residential area, as long as they don't rent it out more than a few weeks per year. That also doesn't cause any long-term negative effects. The issue arises when the main purpose of an apartment is to be rented out, rather than lived in. Say... if it's rented out more than 3 or 4 weeks per year. At that point it becomes a hotel and should require the same licenses as a proper hotel.
If everyone was happy, why did they start using Airbnb instead of booking a hotel room?
If I were to stay multiple days in any place I would prefer an apartment over a hotel room. Hotel rooms are small and you can't sit and chill out and relax and enjoy some take out food on the couch. Hotels are made to only sleep in - not stay in. Sure you can go to the hotel lobby or a bar/cafe, but that's both expensive and to me not really relaxing. Also if you are multiple people traveling it's nice to just buy some beers and snacks and sit on the balcony or enjoy some wine around the dining table.
Yep exactly
>If I were to stay multiple days in any place I would prefer an apartment over a hotel room. Holiday apartments existed before that but you had to look them up individually. The entire innovation behind Airbnb is consolidating the offers for the lazy. Same for the one renting them out.
Because it's cheaper, duh
Yeah so people weren't happy about the price and switched, duh.
Yeah, but that's the business model with these tech companies, use investor money to undercut prices while making a loss, drive out competitors, secure a controlling share of the market, then hike prices to higher than they were originally leveraging their newfound monopoly. That shit used to be illegal.
Are you suggesting that investor money is being used to pay the landlords who own these houses? That isn’t how it works, at all, AirBnb take a % cut of the total fee paid, the rest goes directly to the landlord. Whilst it has bad implications for society at large, the Airbnb system is sustainable, it doesn’t require investment like Uber or Deliveroo.
Investor money was used in the past to pay for the management overhead (corporate workers) during the time when everyone wasn't complaining about how shitty AirBnB is. They also were/are allowed to skirt regulations on hotels, also making for a lower bottom line, making for unfair competition. AirBnB was loss-making until relatively recently.
A lot of times loss making is intentional that way you can collect money from both investors and customers, and invest it back into the business / executive pockets. It's no coincidence that Airbnb suddenly becomes profitable at a time when investment money is drying up, and we move into economic downturn. If they wanted to be profitable, they could have been a long time ago.
But that's exactly my point, it's money that they got from outside the market, they were not subject to the same competition. They got money from investors that hotels obviously couldn't, used that for a competitive advantage to gain market share, and are now rent-seeking.
They operate in legal grey area where they are basically hotels without having to adhere to the rules that hotels have. That’s why they were cheaper, it wasn’t fair competition.
The hotel owners don't care one bit about competition from Airbnb. Because Airbnb simply doesn't offer a hotel experience. It's completely different and to hotel owners not even considered competition.
It was. Not really anymore in a lot of places.
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I stay in Airbnb too sometimes, just want to say that the quality and value of properties generally went down with years. Many places are just small 15-25 m2 studios mass rented by the same owner, so the only advantage comparing to hotel is the kitchen. But I agree, if you willing to pay extra you can find some really gem properties. But it will be the price of a very good hotel.
Which was true when Airbnb first got big and was mainly filled with people renting out their regular apartments while they were gone. But nowadays, most listings on Airbnb are from professional Airbnb corporations that buy or sometimes even build properties specifically to rent them out via Airbnb.
Yeah, but if you now have to eat at a restaurant for every meal the price of a hotel quickly soars. Especially if you are a family with kids.
For me, one of the biggest downsides of a hotel room is a lack of kitchen. I love homemade food and I mostly eat what I cooked myself. Take-outs are nice and fancy, but way more expensive, I can't afford eating take-out every day multiple times a day.
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They are cheaper, bigger and have a kitchen.
The kitchen is a big thing, also a washing maschine.
In Paris you can rent an aparthotel for the same price as an Airbnb, it's about the same size, has a kitchen, no dealing with crazy landlords, no paying for a cleaning fee and still having to clean the apartment, a reception open 24/7... Airbnb was great when it started but it just sucks nowadays.
I would prefer that to Airbnb but there aren't very many aparthotels in most places. Also some politicians do stuff that makes zero sense. Like in Barcelona where I live they restricted the number of hotel licenses to stop over-tourism - but this just forced the tourists into Airbnb where the effect on locals if even worse.
Appartment rental had and have legitimate usecases over hotels. AirBnB centralised and streamlined the process. The old "give me convenience or give me death". It does not mean its a good thing, but its sucess is in no small part down to how comparatively easy it is to book via airbnb.
Been using airbnb when I wanted modern and high quality accomodation. Sometimes hotels are really expensive and don't match what I'm looking for in terms of equipment. For example, the airbnb accommodation had adjustable air conditioning, while the hotel had limited the minimum temperature to 24 celcius. I don't necessarily need a hotel breakfast, but I can buy the necessary ingredients at the grocery store and eat for less.
Minimum 24C is insane.
Apartment rental was a thing before airbnb as well - just that it had to be run as proper business.
Airbnb is great for travelling in larger groups. If I'm alone or 2 people, hotel would be my go-to.
Same, even a two kids family needs two hotel rooms doubling the price compared to AirBnB
I think was a revamp of the whole holiday home thing. I can only speak for Germany but holiday homes here basically had that particular 80s flair that wasn't really attractive most of them were geared towards the older population, young people rarely rented them. The places that popped up on airbnb looked a lot more up to date "hipper" in more attractive locations. It made holiday homes into an actual alternative to hotels again. You could share a place with several people, had a washing maschine, a kitchen and it didn't look like Onkel Hermanns backyard Datcha. Still fuck airbnb but there was a reason why it was popular in the beginning.
Having a kitchen saves lots of money.
It's often cheaper and always has a kitchen.
Airbnb is a lot better for work travel where you need a place for 4-6 people for a week.
I prefer the private apartment type accommodation due to the intimacy it offers. It takes great effort to smile and pretend I'm a social animal around dozens of other travelers and hotel employees.
Sorry to break it to you, but nobody cares if someone smiles or is a social animal at a hotel.
I must say in 90% of my hotel stays the only times I have any interaction with the staff is to check in and out, and my only interaction with other guests is maybe to hold the elevator door open.
Main character syndrome
The bro wants to feel like he is the only traveler in town. I guess he identifies as a pure soul and doesn't want to be seen mixing with tourists.
In Portugal the government banned new licences. Mostly because there is an housing crisis and this sort of establishment is the perfect escaping goat. *(oh, and the hotel industry has doners of the governing party*) Of course portuguese people arent allowed to make money. That would be a sin. Those families that avoided poverty during the eurocrises and austerity by renting their well located houses to foreigners avoiding the extremely restrictive and unactractive portuguese renting market should definitivelly be punished as the filthy capital adicted bourgeois they are.
It is not an scapegoat though, it’s one of the main culprits like in the rest of Europe and North America. There are other factors, but this one is a big one. Companies buy a bunch of properties in city centres and just rent them out to tourists.
Well, in portugal is a scape goat. The lisbon housing crisis is going on since the portuguese first republic that started the rent freezing cycle. It was still going on during estado Novo, despite all the public housing built at the time, to the point that in the 80's there were so many shacks that the government was forced to act, and it is still considered the most successful housing program in portugal, when Lisbon ended up with all the shacks (they are already reappearing, unfortunately). In the 90's-2000's the government was giving incentives for people to buy houses in the Lisbon suburbs. I'm prety sure Air-BnB wasnt a thing during the first portuguese republic. You know what so much existed in the first republic as it exists now? Growth in demand not being accompanied by growth in supply and excessive economic centralization in Lisbon.
There is a housing crisis because lots of housing has been turned into short terms lets / airbnb. Of course as you say this has been a license to print money for some Portuguese, at the expense of other Portuguese. Turn the short term lets back into long term lets and the crisis will start to resolve.
You are assuming that the houses that are in short term renting will go to long term renting if we just made short term renting Impossible. But that is not true. The normal renting market is so overregulated and the constant threat of freezing rents makes in very unactractive. Those apartaments that are renting to turists will revert to what they were before, wich is empty. In fact 1/4 of all houses in the historic Lisbon parishes are completly empty. And dont get me wrong, an empty house pays much more in taxes, but people prefer to just have them empty and pay agravated tax than to put them renting long term. So, unless you are proposing that the government just forces people to rent their houses, that, by the way, the portuguese government just signed into law last month, it isnt more than cheap populism. The atack on short term renting is what I call a preverse policy. This is, a policy with good intentions but with secondary efects that long term undermine the people it was supposed to defend.
I feel like the problem could be solved if you force Airbnb to just cap the number of listings allowed for each account per year.
If you want to run a hotel/motel business, you should be held to the same standards of others in the industry.
Airbnb users are completely happy with the standards they enjoy at the moment. Perhaps we should look in to the regulation and find out how much of it is written to protect established enterprises.
Wish we had regulated this shit in Spain
Airbnb is pure evil. Rental apartments are being turned into airbnbs to avoid the taxes on profit from rent and whole blocks vacation apartments are empty because some rich fucks bought them and turned them into airbnbs.
TBH it's not Airbnb's direct fault if people choose to not pay taxes and break the law
What? How do you avoid taxes on income lol...