Get the data – POLITICO

How big is Airbnb’s problem for European cities? This is what the EU wants to understand.

Brussels this week unveiled its first set of measures to regulate the operation of short-term rental platforms like Airbnb in cities.

Rather than establishing sweeping new rules, the European Commission’s first step is narrow: it wants platforms to share aggregate data on who uses the platform, where they stay and for how long.

If approved, the rules mean Airbnb and others will have to provide near real-time booking data to national governments – which the EU says can help city authorities tackle nuisance and outbreaks housing prices, some say, caused by short-term vacation rentals.

Airbnb saw it coming.

The company in 2020 launched a portal on its platform to collect tax revenue and share data with governments, co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk told POLITICO last week, before the Commission released its proposed rules. .

“We really needed to engage with our stakeholders, in this case governments, just as seriously as we engage with our guests and hosts,” he said.

Tax

City tax collection was one of the first areas where Airbnb and cities leveraged some of the platform’s data for public purposes.

“We have all the data, don’t we? We know who the hosts are, we know how many nights are booked,” Blecharczyk explained. “We are able to set aside the money and then pay it directly in a lump sum, usually monthly, to the relevant government.” Airbnb boasts of having collected $6 billion in tax revenue.

Tax collection is now integrated into a larger platform, called City Portal, which is already used by 300 local authorities around the world. The online dashboard helps cities solve problems such as collecting tourist tax, obtaining information on tourism, controlling nuisances and connecting law enforcement with Airbnb support teams.

This is a technical approach to a regulatory problem: create a platform and scale it.

“We come at it with a product mindset,” Blecharczyk said, adding that there is a need to address regulatory concerns around the world. “For us, that’s the way we have to approach things because we’re in 100,000 different cities”

Airbnb is also one of four companies involved in a 2020 data-sharing agreement with EU statistics agency Eurostat. In early October, Eurostat reported that in the first half of this year, customers spent around 199 million nights in short-term rental accommodations booked through Airbnb, Expedia, Booking.com or TripAdvisor.

A victory

The Commission now wants to take these voluntary initiatives further — but only by a few steps.

EU officials are clear that it is still up to cities and regions to decide how tourism should be developed in their regions. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has warned against imposing an “excessive or arbitrary burden on hosts”.

The draft rules provide for a common registration procedure for hosts, establishing a basis for what already exists in 22 EU countries. The executive branch of the EU suggests a unique registration number for hosts. The burden for companies is rather light: they will have to design their sites in such a way that the number can be displayed and the authorities can order them to remove those without a valid registration number.

The companies have even pushed for such harmonized registration to replace the “fragmented and disproportionate local rules” that hosts face.

Based on the registry, platforms will have to share data by EU country on the number of nights a unit has been rented and the number of guests per unit. It is unclear whether this goes beyond Airbnb’s City Portal initiative and Eurostat’s pact.

Data sharing is not the problem. Airbnb’s Blecharczyk was more concerned that all short-term rental companies would be treated the same. “[If we’re sharing our data, but other people are not]this puts us at a competitive disadvantage.

This article has been updated.