Latest / STR Unpacked / Airbnb just told the European Commission to do its job.
Transcript
- Ben: Good morning and welcome to your short term rental bulletin on Tuesday the 5th of May. So 15 days, that is how long Airbnb has just given the European Commission and its 27 member states to quite frankly get their act together on this regulation. So George Mavios, their head of EU Government Affairs came out today and said it plainly, Airbnb is ready, the member states are not. He is asking for three things. care implementation timelines from every country, vague commitments, harmonized technical standards, because nobody wants to build 27 different APIs to share the same data, and proportionality guardrails to stop cities banning short-term rentals where they make up a fraction of housing stock. And here's what's interesting. This is the same Airbnb that got fined 64 million euros in Spain in December. The same Airbnb that's been fighting regulation in court for a year. And now they're publicly asking the commission to enforce the rules harder. Why? Because fragmented enforcement is worse for them than strict enforcement. One pan-European framework they can build for once. 27. different systems they can't. The platforms have shifted from resisting regulation to demanding it works properly. Operators should be paying very close attention to this story. Thank you for watching and I'll see you tomorrow.