AT the approach of the summer holidays, the number of rental units and prices soar on the popular Airbnb platform. The owners are already anticipating the Olympic and Paralympic Games, organized in Paris in the summer of 2024, and the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected for the event. Throughout articles and television shows, one question keeps coming back: how to regulate Airbnb? On December 28, 2010, the first time The world mentions the American platform in its columns, the journalist Laure Belot evokes the emergence of a “collaborative consumption”. Airbnb, created in August 2008, in San Francisco, on the west coast of the United States, is nicknamed the “eBay of Hosting” thanks to the possibility of reserving a room with locals in 167 countries, including France.
In the early 2010s, online platforms are synonymous with new opportunities. “Traveling better with the help of social networks”, headlines the newspaper, in November 2011. The article, signed Laure Belot, underlines the ” Very good value for money ” from Airbnb. In the wake of this new application, capitalism is also changing. “Welcome to the world of the collaborative economy, the new Eldorado of the Internet”, announced Anne Rodier in January 2013. Social innovation is described as the ” engine ” of this market, thanks to its flexibility and accessibility.
In just a few years, utopia turns into big money. Airbnb and other apps, like Drivy and Blablacar, appear on the cover of M The magazine of the World under the title “Sharing is winning”. Guillemette Faure details her point in the inside pages: “But behind these start-ups with an eco-solidarity ideal, there are now multi-million dollar companies. » With success comes the professionalization of the Airbnb platform, which has conquered even more customers thanks, in particular, to the sending of photographers to present the accommodation on offer. The American company constantly adapts to the regulations in place. “The whole game therefore consists in using a solidarity-utopian discourse by becoming as big as possible”, precise M.
Professionalization of the offer
Unsurprisingly, as it establishes itself in tourism, the famous start-up mainly benefits the wealthiest. In an article published on March 14, 2015, Audrey Fournier highlights the benefit that the middle classes can derive from this, unlike the working classes, who do not have as many properties to rent. The journalist quotes the American economist Dean Baker, who sees in the Airbnb system a “wrong way to get rich”. For the first time, regulations are judged ” required ” in order to avoid deadlock.
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