
Airbnb's impact on cities - trusche
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/25/from-berlin-to-barcelona-will-airbnb-ruin-our-most-loved-cities
======
geebee
I know this isn't the main point, but airbnb lost me a long time ago with
statements like this:

“If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and
middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that
they would like to share their homes,” Airbnb fumed.

By "share", do they mean a quid pro quo exchange of goods and services for
money?

It's nuts to call this "sharing", and I don't think this is quibbling about
words when people at pro airbnb rallies chant "sharing is caring". Of course
they're trying to grab the emotional connotations of "sharing" that exist
outside the commerce world, which include friendship, generosity, and a wish
to help others. I don't expect airbnb to stop this bit of manipulation, but I
do think the mainstream media should certainly stop referring to the contract
"you may stay in my house on the condition that you pay me the price I have
specified" as "sharing". An argument by ambiguity uses the fact that words
have more than one meaning, but honestly, I'm not sure how "sharing" even
applies at all to such a clear cut unambiguous example of commerce.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)

There they go again, claiming that governments are regulating or fining
"sharing". No, they are regulating _commerce_. They are threatening fines on
businesses that fail to properly comply with regulations on commerce.

Airbnb's corporate-speak is pretty brazen.

~~~
skewart
I'm generally in favor of letting companies like AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, and Turo
operate in cities. But I completely agree with you that it's infuriating to
see the word "sharing" being used to describe them. They're platforms that
make it easy for people to operate various kinds of small businesses - or
sometimes maybe micro businesses.

I suppose they think it's good for PR to peddle the warm and fuzzy concept of
"sharing" but in most people's eyes it just makes them seem more deceptive and
untrustworthy. I'm generally a fan of what these companies are doing, and I
worry that pushing a false description of themselves only sets them up for
stronger backlash.

A much better term than the "sharing economy" for these kinds of two-sided
marketplace platforms is the "access economy". The fundamentally new thing
they provide is much easier access to both buyers and sellers. As a traveler,
AirBnB gives me access to lots of vacation rental listings, many of the them
reviewed and to some extent vetted by the crowd. As someone looking to rent
out my home, AirBnB gives me access to millions of potential customers, who
are, to varying degrees, vetted by other hosts.

~~~
geebee
Interestingly, I'd agree with you if you'd left airbnb out of that list.

I see something more menacing in airbnb, probably because I've witnessed
families getting outbid for single family homes by owners who turn around and
airbnb out the "spare" rooms - in a city where I grew up and where the
percentage of children has plummeted from about 22% to below 14% in my
lifetime (yes, I'm talking about San Francisco).

Airbnb and related services do convert the housing used for children, who
don't pay rent and cost a bundle, into short term rentals for tourists. This
isn't the only harm it does, but it's the one that worries me the most.

If this isn't true, by all means I'd love to see the data, provided airbnb
doesn't scrub it of all evidence first, ahem.

BTW, I like airbnb style rentals fine if they are regulated properly. 75-90
days is a lot of time to get to rent out a house that is zoned for long term
residence. If I go off on vacation for a couple of weeks, and I rent my place
out, I don't see much harm there. But if a former kid's room is converted into
a revolving door for tourists, one more kid is displaced from SF? There is
tremendous harm if San Francisco ceases to be a place where people are _from_.

The problem is that airbnb is lobbying fiercely against meaningful regulation.
I'm personally not against zoning to ensure a proper mix of housing in a city.
I don't think that these regulations are obsolete just because someone wrote a
rails program that allows you to type in your address and click the "Create
Hotel Here" button.

~~~
passthefist
Sounds similar to the problem of ticket prices and scalping. It absolutely
sucks that families are getting displaced, but at the same time it's a
correction in the market.

I'd be curious to know why family residences are more valuable as short-term
rentals. My guess would be that there's just more people that want to stay in
SF than there are hotels available at prices people want to pay. The tight
housing market isn't helping that either. People are getting evicted and
replaced by renters willing to pay more, regardless of Airbnb. There's premium
on space, short or long term.

Airbnb's not helping, but I think it's more of a symptom of the bay's broken
housing market than anything else. I'd wonder if regulating Airbnb rentals
wouldn't have a negative effect similar to rent control. My understanding is
that most economists agree that price ceilings on real estate only exacerbate
the supply problem that places like SF are facing, and the best solution is to
build.

On the other hand, why risk the capital to build a hotel, when you can just
use the existing housing instead?

~~~
superuser2
>more people that want to stay in SF than there are hotels available at prices
people want to pay

The price discrepancy is _enormous_. Last time I looked, I could generally
find a room on Airbnb in the neighborhood of $90-100/night. The shittiest
national chain at the airport (I'm deliberately excluding the Tenderloin) was
going to be at least $200/night.

"Hotel taxes" is an intellectually lazy explanation. If you actually price out
a hotel stay in SF, you'll see "taxes and fees" are around 10%.

------
trusche
Here in Dublin, Ireland, rents are exploding, mostly because of a severe
shortage in apartments, and it's a fair question to ask if AirBnB is partially
to blame. From [1]:

> The average rental value of a two-bed apartment in the city centre at €2,000
> per month, less a management fee, would equate to the apartment being
> occupied for just 120 nights of the year through Airbnb.

> Investors have confirmed that if correctly managed, the income can be double
> that of a long-term rental.

(AirBnB disagrees [2])

As much as I like the idea of AirBnB, their impact on the housing market in
any given city needs to be considered. Unfortunately the article doesn't
mention that at all, focussing solely on tourism.

[1] [http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-
finance/property...](http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-
finance/property-mortgages/booming-airbnb-adding-to-dublins-rent-
squeeze-34715683.html) [2] [http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-
affairs/airbnb-insists...](http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-
affairs/airbnb-insists-home-hosting-is-not-taking-housing-off-
market-1.2584950)

~~~
yummyfajitas
The obvious solution to a severe shortage in apartments is to build more. Why
doesn't Ireland do this?

Pigeonhole principle: if K people want to be in Ireland at any one time, and
there are N < K apartments, K - N people will have a problem. All the folks
criticizing AirBnB want to do is make sure they aren't the ones who face the
problem.

~~~
matthewmacleod
Not quite - Airbnb shifts demand from traditional tourist accommodation like
hotels and guest houses into standard domestic units.

I'm not arguing that this is necessarily bad, but it's really interesting to
look at the reasons why this is happening and the negative effects it can
have. Increasing domestic prices because of underutilisation is one.

~~~
yummyfajitas
As I said: _All the folks criticizing AirBnB want to do is make sure they aren
't the ones who face the problem._

Tourists are people too, and need a place to live. The folks in Barcelona just
want to make sure it's the tourists, rather than them, who suffer from the
housing shortage.

~~~
Symbiote
Tourists before AirBnB would simply not visit somewhere if the hotel price was
beyond what they could afford.

Is there any justification at all that could prioritise tourists over
residents for living space?

~~~
YokoZar
Tourists are seen as a way to generate revenue for a city while not incurring
the sorts of costs in services that residents do. Similar motivations cause
cities to build office buildings without corresponding homes.

Empirically it seems like cities value tourists over residents -- if cities
actually wanted residents, they'd approve construction of housing for them.

~~~
makomk
Tourism still incurs some costs, and a common solution to this is hotel taxes
to pay for those costs. AirBNB dodges those taxes. Also, since AirBNB converts
housing constructed for residents into tourist housing regardless of legality,
it doesn't matter much which cities value more.

~~~
colinbartlett
I can't help but think this whole thing could be solved by charging hotel
taxes on AirBNB room nights. Can someone explain why it's not that simple?

~~~
Xylakant
AirBnB does not share who's renting rooms. A significant share of the hosts
use that to dodge taxes. Now AirBnB could collect and forward those taxes but
well, they have no incentive to.

------
joelrunyon
I'm staying longer term in BCN for a month and a half and accidentally ended
up at an outdoor concert last night before realizing that it was protesting
tourists. "Tourism kills the city" was the slogan on the signs around the
area. In 2 weeks, I've seen at least 2 demonstrations like this and it seems
to be picking up from previous years that I've been here. Things are a little
more crowded and I feel like every day there's a bachelor / bachelorette party
running around - the density of which reminds me of vegas.

I like to think that I blend in more than most tourists - the ones you see in
groups of 8 with 2-3 roller bags each fumbling for the keys and trying to make
sure they find the right building - but I'm probably biased.

I'm not sure what BCN's solution will be. Tourism is 12-15% of their economy
in Catalonia, so it's not a small chunk for a country with 20% unemployment
rate. The hotel options aren't _great_ for what you pay for. AirBnB is
definitely cheaper (and usually roomier), but it's a difference when you
notice that all your neighbors in "old town" are german / british tourists
that pop in for a weekend and then leave. Barcelona does have an ordinance
that you can only rent rooms for longer than 30 days - so they have people
that come around on occasion to check - but I think it's sort of hit & miss
enforcement.

I'm not sure I have answers as much as questions - and it's interesting being
on the ground zero and seeing this take place.

~~~
hyperbovine
Take it with a grain of salt: the Catalans will find any excuse to protest.
I've lived all over the world and nothing even comes close to the number of
street demonstrations I witnessed during my time in Barcelona.

~~~
RobertoG
Maybe it was the time you choose to be in Barcelona what was different, not
the Catalan people?

~~~
hyperbovine
Potser.

------
personlurking
It's not only Airbnb in Europe, but also Erasmus (twice a year they make
finding housing very difficult), Uniplaces (like Airbnb but for EU students),
local classifieds sites (which now just double as Airbnb and Uniplaces
listings) and being known as an affordable city (like here, in Lisbon, which
is being called "the new Berlin" as well as the new "startup capital city").

Over the past 3 years, rental prices here have increased 30%, pushing locals
out of the city center. A quick look on Airbnb for Lisbon, one sees the
average monthly price at around 700 euro (for a room) while some listings go
well above 1,000 euro. Three years ago, the norm for a room - no matter how
you found it - was 180 to 220 euro per month, now the minimum is 300 and
increasing. People are mad, and rightly so since minimum wage here is 530
euro.

If anyone wishes to see all the stats well laid out, this article below (in
Portuguese) has been circulating locally. I suggest running it through an
online translator. It's titled "Who is going to be able to live in Lisbon?"
[http://www.buala.org/pt/cidade/quem-vai-poder-morar-em-
lisbo...](http://www.buala.org/pt/cidade/quem-vai-poder-morar-em-lisboa)?

One of the images from the article is this
([http://i.imgur.com/FFDVm0M.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/FFDVm0M.jpg)) showing
local Airbnb saturation, where 75% of listings are entire homes/apts. Airbnb's
regional head says in 2015 there were 12K homes listed in the Greater Lisbon
area, a 60% jump from 2014 numbers. We're a small city but data shows there
are 174 hostels and 184 hotels here, with many more in the pipeline.

It's out of hand and the govt hasn't done much of anything to stop it. By the
way, that local listing at over 1K euro per month? It had lots of reviews,
meaning there have been plenty of takers.

~~~
icebraining
As someone who rents out rooms in Lisbon (not on AirBnB), I can assure you the
minimum is not 300/month, nor are those rare. A five minute search finds
multiple available rooms for <250€ - often with expenses included.

I do agree there is cause for concern, but the knee-jerk attacks on AirBnB is
silly. For example, there's not a single word in that article regarding the
concerns of landlords in making long term rentals. When it takes _two years_ ,
hundreds of euros and many lost working days to evict a non-paying tenant, is
it any wonder that people prefer short term rentals? When you have a building
falling to pieces after decades of rent-controlled tenants paying ridiculously
low amounts (I know people paying 30€/m for a three bedroom apartment) and you
can't afford to fix it, is it any wonder that you'll sell to foreign investors
who can?

~~~
Lucadg
same in Italy. Nobody wants to rent long term anymore and lose the apartment
to someone who can't pay but can stay for a year or two. I personally met
owners who had to pay gas, electricity and water to a tenant who didn't pay
rent for 3 years. As soon as she left they went on Airbnb and didn't look
back. Managing an Airbnb is not simple many people would prefer a long term
tenant but it's just too risky.

------
Techowl
Surely the projections cited in this article aren't accurate.

> Already operating in 191 countries and 34,000 cities, analysts at financial
> services company Cowen & Co predict that, by 2020, Airbnb hosts will be
> taking 500 million bookings a night, rising to a staggering one billion by
> 2025.

If the population of the world is about 8.2 billion in 2025, which is the UN's
expectation [0], that'd mean one Airbnb booking a night per eight humans on
Earth. Perhaps they mean yearly, not nightly?

[0] [http://www.unfpa.org/news/world-population-increase-one-
bill...](http://www.unfpa.org/news/world-population-increase-one-billion-2025)

~~~
awesomepantsm
I just assume that Cowen & Co must be bad at predictions.

~~~
colinbartlett
They got to 191 countries in 8 years. By 2024 AirBNB will be in 382 countries!

------
vemv
It'd be awesome if Airbnb integrated each city's regulation into its software.
e.g. it ensures that you can't host more than X nights a year.

It could even extract the taxes from each host's incomes and pay them directly
to each city council.

Prediction: if Airbnb doesn't do it, someone else will and councils will rule
out competitors as illegal.

------
frequent
Isn't the "ruining" of cities more due to general lack of affordable space in
light of increased urbanization and tourism?

Granted, Airbnb will add its share to the overall shortage, but if I'd take
all Airbnb apartments off of any market, would this put rents back to an
affordable level or curtail tourism?

Airbnb reminds me a bit of eBay - good idea led to an influx of professional
sellers, which at some point had to be regulated (register as business,
taxable income) and in growing up, the platform lost most of its appeal and
discoverability of the things it once was created for. Still fills a large
enough demand to be around.

I'll call the same for Airbnb: There's demand for staying at a place which
does not feel like a hotel and I found the Berlin ruling made for Airbnb to be
going in a good direction (Zwecksentfremdungsverbot - use Airbnb if you rent
out part of your place, but if you rent on as a business, it must be
registered as such). I'll expect other cities to follow suit, because it also
postpones having to address the underlying issue.

(regular Couchsurfing host and sparse surfer)

------
forrestthewoods
Answer? Probably not. Especially if you don't provide housing stock numbers.

The last AirBnB complaint I read was in Seattle which had a whopping 1000
units on the market. Which is jack shit.

If you want top argue that AirBnB is a problem then you have to list the
number of houses, apartments, hotel rooms, and AirBnB units. I'm not convinced
it's s talk problem in any city in the world.

Now regulations that inhibit new construction? _That 's_ an issues in more
than a few places!

~~~
trusche
Again, for Dublin only. A quick search of _all_ properties for rent in Dublin
on the market leading website (daft.ie) comes up with 1,437 properties, and
that's without any limitations to the search. A quick search on AirBnB _for
just the next weekend_ (in the middle of tourist season) finds "300+"
listings. That's a very rough snapshot of course (e.g. there might be many
double listings), but it hints at the potentially large portion of properties
that could be off the long-term market thanks to AirBnB (and their
competitors, for what it's worth).

~~~
forrestthewoods
Dublin has a population of 530k/1.1M/1.8M for city/urban/metro. Having a
thousand apartments off the market is irrelevant at that scale. It's is not a
"large portion". Or even close.

~~~
trusche
That's a pretty broad statement that doesn't take into account any of the
pecularities of the local property market. First of all, ownership is quite
high. Secondly, it's about proportion _of available rental properties_ , not
absolute numbers or proportion of population. Thirdly, if there's already a
severe shortage, even absolute numbers matter.

------
Bombthecat
The bigger question is, why should I create new houses and apartments when I
just can raise the rent?

Right, no one would and no one will.

Without the state intervening we will have a lot of new york cities around the
globe.

~~~
quanticle

        The bigger question is, why should I create new houses and apartments when I
        can just raise the rent?
    

It might actually be more profitable for you to have more units of housing at
a lower price, than fewer units of housing at a higher price. Profit follows a
quadratic formula, and it's quite possible to raise profits dramatically by
selling more units at a (slightly) lower price.

------
hackuser
> analysts at financial services company Cowen & Co predict that, by 2020,
> Airbnb hosts will be taking 500 million bookings a night, rising to a
> staggering one billion by 2025.

In a world of 7-8 billion people (and where most people live with and travel
with others, so there are many fewer households and travel groups), these
numbers seem more than a little unlikely.

~~~
reissbaker
The author misread the actual predictions from Cowen & Co, which predict 500
million "room nights" per year — a term that we refer to internally as "nights
booked" per year — which would mean that a total of 500 million nights were
booked across all hosts over the course of a year. A single "booking" may
count as multiple "nights," since often you'll be staying at (and have booked)
a place for more than one night. Here's a better report of the Cowen & Co
analysis: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/one-
wall-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/one-wall-street-
firm-expects-airbnb-to-book-a-billion-nights-a-year-within-a-decade) — it's a
far, far cry from "500 million bookings a night."

You're 100% correct that the size of the total world population makes it
spectacularly unlikely that we'll ever have 500 million bookings per night.

------
f_allwein
I am also becoming wary of using airbnb, for some of the reasons mentioned
here. I did meet some great hosts, but at other times I felt I would have been
better off e.g. in a hostel.

Also, people who care about hosting and getting to know travelers could just
sign up to Couchsurfing or Hospitalityclub, which strangely don't seem to be
booming.

------
bogomipz
"Earlier this month, it released data showing that since it began it has
collected $85m in tax revenue for cities worldwide."

That's not a very impressive figure. That's for a global company with massive
revenue, now in it's eight year?

“If it becomes law, this legislation would threaten thousands of low- and
middle-income New Yorkers with fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing that
they would like to share their homes,” Airbnb fumed.

Uhm no, lower class New Yorkers don't own they rent and this is the point -
the property is not theirs to profit from. Most middle class New Yorkers don't
own their own homes either and if they do its likely a one bedroom or a
studio. A two bedroom in New York is well out of reach of whatever is left of
the middle class there. People that can afford two bedrooms in New York are
generally not the "lets make a few extra dollars from this sharing economy"
types.

I know that in New Orleans the hotel industry has felt the pinch of Airbnb.
Even during big weekend like Jazz Fest, you could still get a room last minute
this year, something that used to be unheard of. While its great that tourist
dollars still enter the local economy, the hotels employ a lot of people. This
is significant in an economy that is almost solely based around hospitality
and tourism.

------
p4wnc6
In the past 6 years, I've traveled significantly in New England, the New York
City region, the Paris and Marseille regions, London, Leeds, Manchester, and
Edinburgh, Iceland, Barcelona, Mallorca, Rome, Geneva, Genoa, Munich, Berlin,
Amsterdam, Antwerp, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Austin, across a
mix of work-related travel to conferences, vacations, and graduate school that
involved time at a foreign program.

I have not ever used Airbnb, never found difficulty in getting good hotel
accommodations for reasonable prices, never found difficult being shown around
the "non-touristy" parts of every place I've visited, either by just asking
locals, getting advice from friends, using travel websites, etc., and have
really, really valued the nicer accommodations in traditional hotels
(especially the extra privacy, standardized cleanliness, and lower variance in
terms of noise and sounds that reduce sleep quality).

I'm not being snarky or critical of Airbnb, many of my good friends love it
and seem to get a lot of value out of it. But I cannot see any aspect of
Airbnb that offers value to me or satisfies my search criteria when looking
for housing.

Given this, it is almost bewildering to me that there is so much demand for
Airbnb-provided short term lodging that landlords would even consider the idea
that renting an apartment solely as an Airbnb rental is more profitable than
traditional rental agreements.

I mean, I can't blame the landlords if that's the case. But I sure do feel
like the mass of travelers who believe they are getting value from Airbnb
simply cannot be correct in their belief that they are actually receiving that
value. I just wonder why they _think_ they are.

~~~
jacalata
I find that Airbnb is most attractive when (a) travelling in a small group,
because it can be cheaper to get a place that fits three adults and a kid on
airbnb than at a hotel, and (b) when visiting people that live somewhere,
since it's frequently hard to find a hotel in the residential suburbs where
they live, but you can often find an airbnb nearby or (c) when I'm staying
somewhere long enough that I want to be able to cook my own food. In specific
cities (like Dublin) it also turned out to be much cheaper than an equivalent
hotel.

~~~
p4wnc6
For me, (c) is not really a pro for Airbnb. I'm vegan and cooking is a passion
of mine, so I almost always want to cook for myself if I can. I'll even pre-
cook meals that can be sealed and go through bag check at the airport just to
avoid dining at restaurants. If it weren't for the social aspect, mostly
appeasing others, I think I would never eat at a restaurant.

But I've always found that even in dense urban areas (and especially in
suburban areas) it's always very easy to find an extended-stay suite sort of
place that has an adequate kitchen. The huge benefit for me is also that I'm
in control of the kitchen, instead of having to deal with someone else's
haphazard stuff, personal ticks, etc.

In terms of (a) I've rented a lot of cabins and houses for small group hiking
vacations, but never used Airbnb for it. I can't say anything about how it
works on Airbnb, but on other travel sites and one-off sites like Craigslist,
I've always had easy, positive experiences and never found the prices to be
anything but reasonable.

Obviously (b) depends on exactly who you're visiting. When I visit my family
in small town southern Ohio, Airbnb is not an option (too few listings, and I
would not trust the safety in that region anyway), so hotels are necessary.
I've never had trouble getting cost-effective and nice hotel rooms in
suburbia, but perhaps some cities are just much worse than others.

------
austinl
I stayed in 4 different Airbnbs in Barcelona around the time when Ada Colau
was pushing to have them all registered [1]. The major concern I heard from my
hosts were about properties used _only for Airbnb_, which were particularly
notorious in Barceloneta.

A few people figured out they could pose as fake tenets in several apartments
at once, then turn a profit by listing them all on Airbnb. This was where
things went from bad to worse — some people were listing 10+ properties at the
same time [2].

With all of that, I'm not surprised there was such a backlash. The type of
subletting that was going on in BCN is clearly not what Airbnb is about. It's
unfortunate that it's led to a much larger/more political movement against
tourism in general.

[1] [http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/barcelona-airbnb-
tour...](http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/barcelona-airbnb-
tourism/421788/) [2]
[http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/01/inenglish/1441115926_651...](http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/01/inenglish/1441115926_651764.html)

------
WalterBright
New businesses and ways of doing business always disrupt the existing
businesses, and the existing ones frequently advocate for regulations to
preserve their niche.

------
edem
In Budapest, Hungary I can see a rise in prices from 250 EUR/month to almost
350 EUR/month for the same flat in the last 2 years thanks to Airbnb. What
happens here is that most property owners realized that they can make more
money by renting their flat (not just a room) instead of underleasing it. This
leads to a LOT of people hopelessly scrambling for flats to rent because there
are not a lot of new flats being built. Basically tourists are taking away
flats from people who are trying to live in the city. This is horrible IMHO. I
hope that the government will assess brutal taxes on Airbnb to make it useless
or otherwise a lot of people will either become homeless or are forced to
return to the countryside.

------
goblin89
Obviously this must be an impact of increased mobility and globalization
forcing previously isolated economies to compete in larger market, with Airbnb
merely riding the wave.

Dwellers of comparatively more well-off cities probably aren’t complaining
about tourists driving them out, in other words. In Seoul, for example,
monthly rate for a studio on Airbnb right now seems close to what a local
would pay for a similar option found via old-school real estate agency[0].

[0] If they could get away without depositing some $xxxxx upfront. Based on
experience of a friend who in 2014–2015 rented a studio found via an agency.

------
khattam
So the argument is that since Airbnb makes travel cheaper, it is ruining the
cities?

Suggesting that hotels were keeping the prices artificially high to limit
tourists and hence conserve the cities?

Try harder next time.

~~~
sammoth
No it's not that hotel prices are artificially high, they are priced in a
completely separate market to residential properties. If there is no
regulation on Airbnb rentals, tourists are now competing more in the
residential market. This can obviously have an effect on cities.

~~~
collyw
I don't see what is artificially high about hotel prices. As someone else
pointed out tourist do incur costs, and that can be added to hotel taxes. So
Airbnb are both reducing taxes as well as making less accommodation available
for residents.

------
EugeneOZ
Airbnb is definitely not the analogy of Uber. It's extremely expensive service
- prices of dirty rooms with old furniture are higher than in 4-stars apart-
hotels. In city I live (Saint Petersburg) price for room in Airbnb is 8-9
times higher than on local sites. And I tried to find room in Rome, Prague,
Barcelona - every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels.

~~~
gruez
>... every time Airbnb was more expensive than good hotels.

Really? I thought the whole point of airbnb was to get accommodation for less.

~~~
sambe
No, I doubt most people find this to be true. I generally find clean private
apartments in good areas, cheaper than hotels, sometimes cheaper than hostels
too. Used to be more availability of single rooms for even cheaper too. Seems
like prices have gone up over the last couple of years, but certainly not a
surfeit of low quality expensive places.

~~~
EugeneOZ
If you want to call me a liar, I can find apart-hotel in Barcelona for you (4
stars, good reviews on Booking), and comparable set of rooms on Airbnb. And
after that you will bring apologizes. Deal?

~~~
dang
Please don't escalate like this. People can (and do, and need to) disagree
without calling each other a liar. One main purpose of discussion here is to
share different experiences.

~~~
EugeneOZ
Answer "I disagree" is one thing, answer "you are wrong" \- is fine also.
Answer "it's not true" \- is calling opponent a liar. It's offensive and I see
nothing wrong in my try to defend myself.

Only thing I regret is typo in previous comment in this branch.

~~~
dang
You appear to have missed the key word in what I posted, which is "escalate".
For example:

> _Answer "it's not true" \- is calling opponent a liar._

That's literally what it's not doing. Equating these two things is escalating,
i.e. substituting one utterance for a more provocative one and replying to
that instead.

You may feel that the train of logic inevitably takes you there down a one-way
deductive track. But there are many opportunities to get off that train, and
good manners and civility demand that we do. If we don't, all disagreement
ends in conflict, which is tedious (for everyone else) and destructive.

I wonder if there may be a crossed cultural channel here, because the gap
between "you are wrong" and "it's not true" strikes me as tiny—not the chasm
that you describe—and if anything, "you are wrong" sounds slightly less polite
since it's more personal. This is the kind of thing that people with different
cultural and language backgrounds routinely hear differently, and the presence
of many different backgrounds on HN is one reason why we all need to be
charitable in our interpretations.

p.s. I've fixed the typo for you.

------
jkot
There is explosion of cheap flight tickets.

------
Lucadg
rencently Airbnb introduced Smart Prices. It's an optional automated system
which allows the host to accept prices suggested by Airbnb's algorithm. They
prices are usually very low and I have the feeling they'll make it less
interesting for many renters to stay on the market. Maybe it will bring some
balance. It's completely counterintiuitive but I'm afraid they are destroying
the market. I already know some people going off Airbnb and moving to other
platforms because it only brings cheap bookings.

------
dang
This article is better than a lot of comparables and the discussion isn't bad,
so we've reduced the downweights (not Airbnb-related) that got automatically
applied to this submission and replaced the baity title with something more
neutral. If anyone wants to suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can
change it again.

~~~
kgwgk
What's wrong with the original title? Would the subtitle "Airbnb has become so
successful that hotels are losing business and tourist sites face being
ruined" be acceptable?

~~~
dang
"Ruin" is hyperbolic and "ruin our most-loved" is over the top.

~~~
kgwgk
Ok, your site, your rules. But I'm surprised to see that that title in another
submission in the top page has been changed from "Reasons not to use Facebook"
(the title of the document in the <h1> sense) to the less neutral and more
hyperbolic "Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook" (which is the
<head><title>).

~~~
dang
We changed that one to the original title of the article. Is it misleading or
linkbait? Those are the conditions under which it should be changed.

Arguably it is, but then the site is Stallman's, which makes the context of
the advocacy unmistakeable. Also the verbal twist of "use, (i.e. be used by)"
is marginally gratifying of curiosity in its own right, and not the same thing
as the usual clickbait. So IMO that title squeaks by as ok.

Obviously different editors would call some of these differently, but that's
not the same thing as arbitrarily changing the rules. The rule is pretty
fixed.

------
tehchromic
Long term the impact I see is better tourists and better cities.

------
luojiebin
I don't think so

------
dang
You've been posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We ban
accounts that do that, so please stop doing that. Instead, please (re)-read
the site guidelines and follow them. That means posting civilly and
substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

Edit: oops, I misread that comment, so have detached this one from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980147)
and marked it off topic.

~~~
khattam
That is exactly what I got from the article. I would suggest you to read it
but that breaks the guidelines.

Even the original title reads "From Berlin to Barcelona; will Airbnb ruin our
most loved cities?". If anything, you should ban the article.

~~~
dang
I'm sorry! I misread you. I thought "Try harder next time" was a swipe at
another user, which it wasn't.

(But
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11979795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11979795)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963888),
the other comments I had in mind, did break the site guidelines, so I still
need to ask you not to do that.)

That title is indeed bad, but I've explained why we haven't banned the article
here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981664).
Also, if we had, people would accuse us of trying to suppress criticism of a
YC-funded startup, which is something we err on the side of not doing.

~~~
khattam
OK, understood. Thank you.

------
yummyfajitas
Tourists are human beings, same as residents. Tourists value the opportunity
to visit for 2 weeks more than residents value the opportunity to live there
for 2 weeks (as evidenced by their willingness to pay more).

Why do you believe tourists deserve fewer rights than residents?

I realize that in terms of blatant power struggles to control the means of
violence, tourists will lose. But lets not pretend that's anything other than
the strong exploiting the weak.

~~~
dang
> _I realize that in terms of blatant power struggles to control the means of
> violence, tourists will lose. But lets not pretend that 's anything other
> than the strong exploiting the weak._

Please don't go off into ideological boilerplate, not to mention flamewar
fodder, like that.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980175)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
yummyfajitas
How is a post claiming residents deserve special privileges not ideological,
but one claiming they don't is?

~~~
dang
It's taking the thread into ideological generalities that I object to. Playing
the monopoly-of-violence card is just upping the ideological ante in a way
that can only polarize the argument, at the same time taking the discussion to
so abstract a level that there is little of substance left to say. That
combination of escalation and generality is one of the worst thing you can do
in discussions like this; it's a kind of trolling whether you mean it to be or
not.

Similarly for taking a trope like "the strong exploiting the weak" and
applying it to tourists (of all people) in a way that's guaranteed to tick off
the readers who go in for that kind of phrase. That's basically just a stunt,
and it's one that seems designed to offend. Why do you go out of your way to
make the people you disagree with uncomfortable? Again, that's trolling
whether you intend it to be or not. (I used to do this myself without
realizing it. It took me a long time to see that.)

The kind of discussion we want here is people trying respectfully to figure
out the truth together. Your comments frequently strike me as conforming to
the letter of that idea while violating its spirit—almost as if you'd
discovered a loophole in the rules of discourse and were gleefully exploiting
it. That's not as bad as violating the letter outright, which is what most
people do who use HN as an ideological battlefield. But it's still dismaying,
and it still leaves one with the feeling of being trolled. As, for that
matter, do your naive-sounding "how is" questions that always seem to leave
the real problem unmentioned.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm attempting to distinguish between a normative claim (residents _should_ be
treated the same as tourists) and a similar positive claim (residents _will_
be treated the same as tourists). People often conflate such claims so I
wanted to preemptively disambiguate. (I do this often, e.g.:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7724652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7724652)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669705)
)

Am I correct in understanding that you are detaching/penalizing my post
because while it's positive claims are correct, and within the letter of the
law, you think folks who disagree with me might have negative emotional
reactions and perhaps behave badly?

That's quite the hecklers veto you are building there.

~~~
dang
No.

