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Airbnb has blamed the hotel industry in Europe when the US short-term Home rental group represents the criticism of supervisory authorities and residents that his service leads to overcrowding in vacation hotspots.
Theo Yedinsky, Vice President for Public Order at Airbnb, said the Financial Times that the company was victims of “scapegoats” of local authorities, such as in Barcelona, where there were protests against post-pandemic boom in Übersee-Reisen.
“In the end, we have a lot of fault, especially in the city centers (but), but the reality is that upourism is really driven by the hotels,” he said. “It’s completely unfair.”
In recent years, platforms that enable short -term rentals such as Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com Come under the shelling For problems that make living for locals unaffordable to the exhaustion of the water supply.
While the majority of overnight visitors in Europe decide on the stay in hotels-63 percent in 2024, according to EU statistics, the rapid growth in short-term LTS, which seems to worry the residents the most.
Last year, travelers remained in short lets for 715 million nights, an increase of 57 million compared to 2023, with the comparable number for hotels, according to the EU 73 million to 1.9 billion.
In Barcelona, Amsterdam and the Greek island of Santorini, local protests have broken out due to complaints about reduced real estate supply and rising rents.
The authorities answered. Lisbon suspended the issue of new short -term rental licenses. In January of this year, Greece introduced a one -year ban on new short -term rent registrations in Athens.
Barcelona took the most drastic measures, with the Spanish government ordered Airbnb last month to remove almost 66,000 entries from its platform.
“I think the mayor of Barcelona has to look at the construction of hotels, he generally has to look at hotels … and you have to build more living space,” said Yedinsky.
“They sins Airbnb. They attack a fraction of the problem and then wonder why it doesn’t get better,” he said, adding that hotels drive a lot more overnight stays than to have platforms.
Since the end of Lockdowns, tourism has been booming at European locations such as Barcelona and Athens, and this year for another record. From June to the end of August, according to the independent data analysis company Airdna, more than 115 million nights were booked to 13.5 percent compared to the same period last year.
The government’s procedure against short -term rentals are “frustrating,” said Yedinsky, since “politicians have not used data” to “investigate problems that cause upourism” and help short -term rentals to alleviate overcrowding by proving tourism to less traveling goals.
Ilaria Pappalepore, Associate Professor of Tourism at the University of Westminster, said that hotels are in tourist areas, while Airbnb rental are scattered in all of cities, which leads to an increase in loud nightlife, rising real estate prices and overcrowded public transport in residential areas.
The problems caused by short -term lets “have been brewing for a long time, but now it has exploded,” said Pappalepore.
A senior employee on a competing travel platform said that Airbnb’s lobby approach with supervisory authorities and local communities risked. “They were … pretty dirty in their fights,” said the person.
A spokesman for Hotrec, the lobby group of the European hotel industry, said it was time for Airbnb to “play according to the same rules”, and added that the industry is active in strict planning, license and tax framework that matches urban strategies and local tourism capacities.
“The problem is not a tourism itself, it is unbalanced tourism. (Airbnb) is without sufficient control,” it said.
When asked whether Airbnb fears that the state proposals will significantly influence the profit, Yedinsky said that she has “worked with supervisory authorities in the past 10 years. We have succeeded in doing this. This company will continue to be successful”.
Data visualization through Clara Murray
