Airbnb – Why I quit them

You’ve seen the posted public notices on vacant lots, old buildings and shopping centers. “Planning Meeting, Tuesday, August 19.” Have you ever attended one? What does this have to do with Airbnb? Travel?

Zoning matters. Airbnb is simply a zoning hack, it’s the backbone of their entire system. Hotel zoning regulates the development and operation of hotels, motels, and other lodging establishments – but not Airbnbs, they count as residential housing. I am going to give municipal government a lot of credit in this post. Let’s ignore that they have a history of red-lining and using single-family only zoning which has also contributed to our housing crisis. In short, the city decides how many hotels and where they are located – and for good reasons.

So Airbnb exploits a loophole to create hotels EVERYWHERE. In some areas, this is great. But in other areas it is driving up homes prices and pushing locals out. Look at Venice – the city is currently losing about 1,000 residents every year. There are studies that show other bigger factors affecting affordability. There are people in academia that say the overall benefit to the economy is worth it. So why do I hate it?

City governments, elected by the citizens should control tourism, not for-profit corporations. Corporations are actually profiting twice as mom-and-pop hosts are shrinking while mega-host (21+ unit owners) have moved in. Hotel zoning is how cities control how many tourist could stay each night. They think about bed capacity among how many hotels are zoned. They also look at carrying capacity. It’s the maximum number of visitors a destination can accommodate without damaging its environment or negatively impacting the experience of visitors. It’s now broken in many places.

Overtourism is killing places I love. When I first visited Bruges in 2014, Airbnb was still in its early phases. The bed capacity was 7,791 in hotels. Ten years later, hotel beds have only grown by 1,000. Yet, Airbnb now boosts 9,200 beds in Bruges per night. This is a doubling of the number of overnight tourists the city had planned for. So what? If you look at an entire year – Airbnb brings in 3,358,000 more nights than the city planned for, or wanted. Bruges is the third most over touristed places in Europe. The city cannot control it and the locals are fed up.

I’ve had enough, I will not stay in an Airbnb. I want to meet locals when I travel. A destination without locals is Disneyland – is that what we all want?