> At a large enough scale, I agree that there's an impact to locals. But don't tourists also boost the local economy, the travel industry and introduce different cultures themselves? It's not such a clear case that this is all negative.
And tourism is planned into this with the way zoning permits work. But AirBnB skirts those rules. Also the negatives of losing housing in a city far outweigh any financial benefit that could come to it, especially as most won't be reaped by the people that are being forced out...or it will be taken from them in terms of increased rent because the supply is much smaller.
> The lack of regulations is an issue of local governments not catching up to tech companies, as usual, not Airbnb.
Or it's because AirBnB actively lobbies against it and refuses to enforce rules, saying it's up to the individual providers. They facilitate it, and often most things on AirBnB are illegal and against the zoning laws of whatever building they're being used for.
> What if those tourists do eventually become locals after staying at an Airbnb? Are you against migrants as well?
What a ridiculous question. Obviously I'm not against migrants. I'm against tourists thinking they have a right to live like locals.
> The locals do benefit financially from tourism. Markets like Airbnb's simply accelerate this, which of course introduces issues, but governments should carry more of the blame for this than a company that disrupts the hotel industry.
> The locals do benefit financially from tourism. Markets like Airbnb's simply accelerate this, which of course introduces issues, but governments should carry more of the blame for this than a company that disrupts the hotel industry.
The locals benefit nothing from AirBnB. The landlords do, sure, but the actual residents and regular workers do not. If anything, it makes matters worse as rents are driven up, or they have to move further away from work. In the worst case scenarios, the town just becomes tourist-oriented and there's no other jobs left. That's a horrible thing as if the tourism ever dries up, the town is left up the creek.
But also tell the locals they benefit financially when their local bar closed down because the landlord thought it'd be better to make it a shop that caters towards tourists; or when all their neighbors move out because of the rambunctious drunken tourists coming in at 2 every night of the week; or when
their landlord decides to evict them/up their rent because the landlord knows they can make more on AirBnB than renting to residences.
It's a wholly negative impact to everyone except those people who own the AirBnBs, who are often skirting multiple regulations, facilitated by AirBnB itself. It is a net negative for the city, and I know personally that housing crisis in at least one country (Ireland) has been facilitated by it, as the amount of houses on the market in Dublin doubled during the pandemic when tourism was shut down.