Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

Airbnb is on a mission to get legalized and gain more acceptance in cities throughout the U.S. A partnership with one of the nation’s biggest labor unions to encourage hosts to hire cleaners for at least $15 an hour would be the next big step if Airbnb can convince hosts to sign on the usually more expensive unionized labor.

Just as Airbnb has had a transformative impact on the home sharing and vacation rental business, it hopes to do the same by going beyond just offering stays into offering actual travel activities and experiences to its community. It'll be very interesting to see how they do it.

Airbnb is doing all it can to become legalized in cities like New York and Los Angeles by saying it'll pay occupancy taxes, just like hotels do. But if you look at the math and the overall economic impact, is that money really enough to have a positive net impact on those cities?

To say that Newark comes to this fight as the weaker party is an understatement. If the city wants to do more than just collect taxes and begin regulating short-term rentals, however, it might want to take a good look at a recent San Francisco city report that shows just how complicated that endeavor can be.

Does regulating short-term rental platforms like Airbnb really work? Well if Airbnb and its peers would cooperate instead of passing the buck to taxpayers regulation could have a fighting chance.

With its multi-million-dollar investments in Onefinestay, Oasis Collections, and Squarebreak, AccorHotels is taking a smart, strategic approach to battling the encroachment of home-sharing platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway by embracing their direct competitors.

Cracking down on Airbnb "Super Hosts," or those who use the platform on a "professional" full-time basis to operate illegal hotels, is becoming a serious hot button issue. If Airbnb wants to become more widely accepted, it has to assure local and state governments that its platform isn't becoming a front for illegal hotels.

Being able to include Additional Hosts for a single listing makes a lot of sense in many cases, but we wonder if this feature could also make it easier for so-called "professional hosts" or commercial operators to manage their multiple listings on the platform as well.

For travel companies, the key to personalizing the offline travel experience is collecting as much personal information as possible from the customer online.

While it's pretty clear that the hotel industry and Airbnb are at odds with one another, it's still obvious that more transparent data is sorely needed to understand the true impact of Airbnb and other home sharing platforms on cities and communities.