Battle lines drawn as Airbnb counters hotel lobby groups
Airbnb is looking at ways to combat a plan by the Australian Hotels Association (WA) to regulate home-sharing websites.
The AHAWA released a plan last week to limit the "free for all" by unregistered accommodation businesses that bypass licensing, taxation and regulatory requirements.
In an effort to counter the move Airbnb is mobilising its community of users and owners on its short-stay accommodation platform telling them the AHA wants "to ban holiday homes, burden hosts with extreme red tape including costly registration and ban stays less than 14 nights".
Airbnb’s Australian head of public policy Brent Thomas said the AHAWA is only concerned by their members “big profits."
"Their plan to ban holiday homes and almost all home sharing in WA is anti-tourism and pro-big-hotels," he said.
"It is a form of legislative protectionism for the big international hotels who receive generous subsidies from taxpayers. Our community is a large, growing political constituency and we will be working closely with them to make sure their voices are heard loud and clear."
AHAWA chief executive Bradley Woods has proposed limiting properties which could be listed on sharing platforms to a host’s primary residence and prohibiting the listing of entire properties for stays under 14 days.
Woods said online booking platforms presented themselves as providers of "shared accommodation" but 61 per cent of properties listed on the platforms were for entire homes or apartments.
"It has become abundantly clear that sharing platforms are simply not what they purport to be and are instead platforms that help some providers bypass the rules and regulations that hotels and B&B’s are expected to abide by," he said.
"The AHA supports genuine shared, hosted accommodation however some online platforms moved away from this business model long ago and now compete directly with hotels."
Sheridan Randall, 25th October 2018
