In several European countries, a battle has been waged to control tourist rentals

More than the governments, it is the cities that are fighting against their “airbnbisation”, that is to say the changeover of thousands of accommodations into tourist accommodation. A phenomenon that crowds out permanent residents by exploding the prices of real estate.

As early as December 2020, Murray Cox, founder of the Insideairbnb.com site, described this mechanism in his study on “Platform Failures”, which highlighted a lack of cooperation with cities and the need for regulation. A study published in May 2021 by urban planners Claire Colomb and Tatiana Moreira de Souza, of University College London, made a similar finding.

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Of 200 cities in the world observed by Murray Cox, 140 have adopted local regulations. In Europe, however, the battle is also taking place before the European Commission. The platform lobbies and the host associations they promote (Airbnb Host Clubs, for example) oppose the hotel lobbies, who have just created their association, ReformBnB, and the alliance of 24 cities including Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Florence, Barcelona…

Vienna, Amsterdam, Berlin…

The debate today concerns the development of a new directive on digital services, the Digital Service Act. Hoteliers would like tourist rental to be excluded from this system and subject to specific regulation. Elected officials want to have free rein to draw up their municipal regulations, which vary from one city to another.

In Vienna, Austria, social housing dominates (45% of housing, 60% of inhabitants) and any tourist rental is prohibited there. But some tenants ignore it and Airbnb – whose strategy is to invoke superior law, for example European law, to launch appeals and not to apply the rules it is contesting until it has been convicted, this which can take years – refused to remove these illegal ads from its site. In the private park, the consent of all the co-owners of the building is required and short-term rental is strictly prohibited in certain residential areas, including the historic center.

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Amsterdam has implemented compulsory registration of all rented accommodation and has restricted the number of annual nights authorized to thirty. Short-term rental has even been banned in three districts of the old town, but this last provision, attacked by the platforms, was declared illegal, as contrary to property rights, by an Amsterdam court on 12 March 2021.

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