Pandemic tames Airbnb in Europe’s tourist hotspots – for now

LISBON (Reuters) – The COVID-19 pandemic has achieved what many mayors across Europe have tried and failed to do: remove tens of thousands of Airbnbs from city centers and thus help reduce the costs of rental for locals, in some places up to 15%.

While European cities have long welcomed tourists, critics say the surge in properties listed on the Airbnb short-term rental site in recent years has driven many residents out of their own housing market, turning historic neighborhoods into spaces without soul.

Property management companies and landlords contacted by Reuters in cities including Lisbon, Barcelona, ​​Prague and Venice said the collapse of tourism in the pandemic meant some hosts had now replaced holidaymakers with mid- and long-term tenants , moved in themselves or abandoned properties altogether.

Data from vacation rental analytics firm AirDNA showed the number of Airbnb listings with at least one night booked or available over the past month in Europe’s 50 biggest cities fell by 21.9 % YoY in 2020.

Airbnb says it has adapted to changing travel habits, with people heading to smaller towns rather than tourist hotspots. “We had more announcements in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the Czech Republic combined at the end of 2020 than at the end of 2019,” spokesman Andreu Castellano told Reuters.

While some hosts in major European urban destinations plan to return to Airbnb when tourists return, others have left the vacation rental industry for good.

“If tourism had come back faster, maybe I wouldn’t have made this decision. But I can’t go another year without having a clear idea when the money is coming in,” said Vanessa Rola, 40, who rented four apartments in Lisbon’s Graça neighborhood on travel platforms including Airbnb. Without tourists, she would not be able to pay her rent and is in the process of terminating her contracts.

In Venice, where AirDNA data showed year-on-year bookings for Airbnb and rival Vrbo combined were down 67% in January, resident activists are urging the government to seize the opportunity help residents, for example by capping rental days and converting empty space into social housing.

“Before the pandemic, renting in Venice had become almost impossible for normal people,” Marco Gasparinetti of residents’ rights group Gruppo 25 Aprile told Reuters, blaming short-term rentals for driving up prices. The city of only 60,000 inhabitants is normally visited by 20 million tourists a year.

“There are 30,000 people who travel to Venice every day but cannot afford to live here. Now that could change and help ensure that Venice isn’t just an outdoor theme park for tourists.

Chart: Market down –

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Last month, Airbnb reported better-than-expected bookings in its first earnings release since its IPO, buoyed by country getaways and a rebound in demand in North America. Business was weakest in Europe, the Middle East and Africa due to COVID-19 related lockdowns and travel restrictions.

For years, European mayors have struggled to curb the proliferation of vacation properties in city centres, lacking data to enforce limits on rental days or the number of properties in a building used for rentals. vacation.

Airbnb, Expedia, Tripadvisor and Booking.com agreed last March to share data with the European Union statistics agency on the number of nights and guests booked, and 2020 figures are expected in the second half of the year. of this year, said Eurostat.

Last September, 22 mayors wrote to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager urging her to extend data sharing to city governments, so they can “secure the quality of life in our neighbourhoods”.

“As tourism returns, we need to make it sustainable – by creating a model that is not prohibitively expensive for vacation rentals but has boundaries that ensure this is a city you can visit, but also where you can live and work,” Ricardo Valente, a councilor in Porto – one of the signatory cities – told Reuters.

But COVID-19 closures and restrictions on cross-border travel are doing the job for some city officials — at least for now.

Chart: Listings available on Airbnb –

In Lisbon, which has seen huge Airbnb growth in the historic center, around 5,000 of the city’s roughly 25,000 listings disappeared from the website during the pandemic, according to the Inside Airbnb website.

Rental prices fell 15% between March and December 2020, according to real estate database Confidencial Imobiliario, largely due to the sudden availability of thousands of older vacation rentals.

In Prague, Airbnb listings fell from just over 14,500 to less than 8,000, according to Inside Airbnb. Rents have fallen by around 8%, property developer Trigema reported.

“I was losing $20,000 a month and the regulations made it really complicated,” said Ondrej, a landlord in Prague who sold his two Airbnb apartments and gave up the three he was renting to sublet.

“The Airbnb boom is over.”

Airbnb, however, says it has shown resilience in the face of changing demand. “Customers are moving out of city centers and booking entire homes,” Castellano said. “The Airbnb platform inherently adapts to demand…we adapt to customer needs.”

GONE FOR GOOD?

Not everyone in the inner cities gives up. Data from Portugal shows that while thousands of properties have fallen from Airbnb, only 114 have given up their holiday rental license – a coveted asset in the city’s historic areas, where the local council has banned the issuance of new licenses in 2019.

Programs to lure Airbnb owners into the social housing market through tax incentives and the promise of a five-year contract have so far seen slow uptake: just 34 properties in Lisbon and 12 in Porto, the city councils said.

Instead, some landlords use local rental websites or their own direct booking channels to find longer-term tenants.

Airbnb released three videos last month titled “Made Possible By Hosts,” widely seen as an attempt to win back those who had left the platform.

But for some, the wait is unaffordable. AirDNA data showed forward bookings in Rome, Lisbon and Budapest were 85-90% below last year’s levels at the end of March. In contrast, bookings on vacation rental platforms in the United States were only 2% lower than last year, according to their data.

Eduardo Miranda, head of the Portuguese holiday rental association, expects around 15% of Airbnbs to remain permanently out of the market in Lisbon, even when tourism returns.

“It’s going to be another year of sacrifice,” Miranda said. “The best of this summer will be lost. And if the summer is lost, the year is lost. Those who stay with the business will be the ones who really care.