A conference being held Monday in New York City is billing itself as the “first international conference on illegal short-term rentals.”
The one-day “ReformBNB” is hosted by the Hotel Association of New York City and gathers industry representatives, city government officials, academics and advocacy groups to collect information and “build consensus toward a coordinated global effort for more proactive and data-driven enforcement and regulatory regimes” for Airbnb and the home-sharing industry, according to the conference. It’s intended to break down the siloes of independent, grass-roots efforts to curtail home-sharing happening around the world.
The event is the brainchild of Vijay Dandapani, head of the Hotel Association of New York City and a longtime opponent of home-sharing sites (it’s not his first go-round with Airbnb).
The home-sharing giant announced on Sunday evening that it would be organizing a rally of Airbnb hosts outside the host hotel, the InterContinental Barclay, at noon.
Scheduled attendees of the conference include representatives of companies such as Hilton and Marriott International, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and hotel associations from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Japan, Colombia, Canada and Australia, among other countries, according to conference materials.
Dandapani, who said fewer than 50 people are expected at the conference, said another one is in the works for early next year, probably in Barcelona, which has also cracked down on home-sharing.
“This is not just about Airbnb. Our conference is entitled ReformBNB, so it’s all about the short-term rental market – but let’s take Airbnb, because they almost always seem to be spoiling for a fight rather than the low-key approach that Booking.com or Homeaway or many of the other players take,” Dandapani said. “Airbnb would like you to think that it’s a problem that’s particular to San Francisco, to Chicago, to L.A., to New York and so on. While, yes, the political response is always local – as we say, all politics is local – but the problem is identical everywhere.”
New York City, which maintains that home-sharing has aggravated a housing shortage by making short-term rentals more profitable than longer-term leases to residents, is attempting to address the situation locally: Starting in February, a city law requires online rental services to provide the names and addresses of home-sharing hosts to the city and note the type of rental, such as an apartment or a single room.
Dandapani said a collective effort and approach to the issue is necessary – and more effective in the long run.
“It’s an around-the-world problem, and we found that a surprising commonality of outcomes occur in all these big cities,” he said. In New York, while occupancy is high, “we still have not recovered RevPAR, and our other costs have also gone up.” Home-sharing has contributed to that.
Dandapani said he isn’t opposed to home-sharing sites in principal. “It’s illegal to have homes that are not allowed to be converted into hotels to be listed on Airbnb. That is the very issue at heart,” he said, adding: “I think there is an interest in keeping this (type of conference) going simply because there is a commonality of issues that affect all these cities.”
Airbnb and other home-sharing sites were not invited to attend the conference.
“Big hotels writing short-term rental policy is like big tobacco writing health policy – it’s just a bad idea and is ultimately bad for regular people,” an Airbnb representative said in response to a request by HOTELS for a statement; the San Francisco-based company also released a short video featuring New York hosts (see below) ahead of the conference.
Airbnb expects more than 1 million people to stay in Airbnb listings in the U.S. over the coming Thanksgiving weekend – a record, it claimed – and hosts to earn an estimated US$270 million during November 18-27. Another record: Q3 2018, in which it earned US$1 billion in revenue.
UPDATE: On Monday morning, Airbnb’s head of Northeast policy, Josh Meltzer, released a statement noting the conference and the rally, points out that “home sharing isn’t going anywhere,” and that reads, in part:
“After years of fighting, the reality is that we both remain in this same position, with the big hotels on one side and our host community on the other. And the consequences of that stalemate are far greater than just wins and losses tallied in one column or the other… It’s time that we find a path forward.”
The company says it is supporting a bill that provides “strict enforcement against bad actors by limiting home sharing in New York City to only one entire home listing per host,” among other things. “With that bill in hand, we are ready for a hard, honest discussion,” Meltzer said in the statement.