AirBnB bookings fall off a cliff
With cities in lockdown, airports closed, borders closed, airlines grounded, bookings dried up, AirBnB hosts are bleating at having to refund bookings.
Sorry, we should not feel.
AirBnB is an unregulated sector, it is destroying cities, people being driven out of cities as apartments are let on AirBnB.
AirBnB is not the myth they would like us to believe, someone letting out a room occasionally, or maybe their home when they go away. It is apartments being bought, often whole apartment blocks, tenants evicted, or forced out by high rents. These are the people complaining, who are losing money, who are now trying to offload their properties onto the market.
AirBnB hosts would be operating illegally (nothing new there). Cyprus is in lockdown, hotels not allowed to open. Athens in lockdown, need a permit to go out, which has to be applied for.
EasyJet and other airlines grounded.
Airlines have to refund within seven days, tour companies within fourteen days. Why do AirBnB think they are the exception? Once again shows this sector must be regulated.
AirBnB greed, greedy hosts.
If AirBnB fails, excellent news. It is destroying cities with unregulated lets, driving tenants out of city centres.
With the country in lockdown, police and politicians and NHS staff are pleading with people to stay home, not visit the countryside, coastal resorts, police roadblocks in place, AirBnB is encouraging flouting of the lockdown by offering lets in the very places encouraged not to visit.
Hywel Williams a North Wales MP has called on AirBnB to “identify and delete” any home owners found advertising properties on their site as “Covid-19 retreats”.
Plaid Cymru’s Hywel Williams claims the online platform was guilty of “inexplicable and reckless inaction” after some holiday homes were offered up as safe bolt holes from the coronavirus outbreak sweeping the UK.
The Arfon MP says a number of properties across Snowdonia are still listed on AirBnB as available to rent ahead of the Easter weekend — and almost two weeks after the Government introduced laws to put the UK into lockdown in a bid to reduce the spread of Covid-19.
There were also reports of homes being let to tourists via AirBnB in Denbighshire and Anglesey.
There should be no bailout of AirBnB properties. Any rescue package would be to make the properties available to homeless, then let as social housing.
AirBnB is a zombie company kept alive on unsustainable debt. It has followed the route of too many zombie companies, hype to artificially inflate the value, vulture capitalists pour in money to inflate still further, then dump on the stock market for unsuspecting mugs to buy shares before the company is found to be worthless. AirBnB has been found out before it could dump on the stock market.
Alec Behrens, co-founder of the rival Booking.com — which initially dealt only with hotels for a much lower commission than travel companies — hits the nail on the head with everything that is rotten with AirBnB,
If you have a house and spend summers camping, and someone stays and lives like a local, what’s wrong with that? It’s fantastic! But now Airbnb is the opposite, it’s about shareholder value, and that’s a different game.
AirBnB is not the sharing economy, anymore than Uber or Deliveroo is the sharing economy, it is good old fashioned exploitation, hosts bear all the capital costs, AirBnb creams off the profit for doing very little, and the neighbourhood bears all the externalised costs.
Contrast with FairBnB, which not only works with the local community, supports projects in the local community.
