Tech-News

Airbnb faces yet another cap on hospitality services in Copenhagen

Airbnb

Hospitality services are providing excellent services to their customers with a variety of amenities and it also offers the users to choose their lodging according to their budget. It reduces the stress faced by the visitors to get an accommodation place in a new area and it also highly useful for the students and tourists to know about the availability of the places without going to the place directly for searching the homes.

Many providers are providing hospitality services to the people worldwide and among all those providers Airbnb is one of the most widely used sites for this service. Airbnb is an online platform and marketplace that links the people who are searching for accommodations with the people wanted to rent their homes. Through this app or site, the host can provide the list of short-term accommodations such as apartment rentals, vacation rentals, hostel rooms or hostel beds, home-stays, and more.

Airbnb does not possess any lodgings and it just acts as a broker for the both host and guest. It also receives commission or service fees from the guests and hosts in concurrence with each booking. The host will set the cost for the lodging and they can list their unused spaces in this community marketplace.

There are more than three million accommodation places are listed on the website and it was operated in 191 countries that consist of sixty-five thousand cities. It is similar to all other hospitality services and in the form of sharing and collaborative consumption.

Airbnb in Berlin

Airbnb opened its Nordic headquarters and its seventh international office in Copenhagen in the year 2012, where the accommodation booking have been raised up to seventy percent in 2011. Housing prices have been rising at higher rates especially at urban areas, where many of the refugees are eager to stay. Rents and prices are increasing in Berlin and it benefits the residential landlords.

In another measure, it was estimated that there is a shortage of the housing because of the increasing population and the Germany already built nearly 270,000 new flats in 2015, but it was inadequate and predicted that the country needs to build 430,000 apartments. The average rental price in Berlin raised approximately twice the previous rents.

Berlin ban on short-term rental agencies

The increase in the demand for housing and rise in the property prices makes the Berlin government ban the short-term rental agencies like Airbnb in its city and it is similar to the ban on rental services in several cities in Europe. This ban insists the people who are providing more than 50 percent of their own residential homes for rental for a short period without getting any permission from the city will result in the fine of one hundred thousand Euros (seventy-eight thousand pounds).

This ban is not for the people who are exchanging their apartments for short period of time like home exchange. The city also builds an exclusive website to inform about the illegal usage of Airbnb and officials also announced that majority of the permit requests will be rejected.

Berlin banned the use of online platforms for rent out their entire flats, but when the legislation came into force, it met with a number of contentions.

New York ban on Airbnb

New York accused Airbnb of aggravating the city’s housing crisis and limits the number of days an unoccupied apartment could be available for rent. This ban is to prevent and maintain the affordable housing by stopping the process of using it as an unregulated hotel.

Similar to New York, Berlin also restricted the rental services provided by the private agencies like Airbnb, 9Flats, Wimdu and other similar platforms. This step occurred because of the rise in land prices about 56 percent and it was nearly ten euros per square meter.

Copenhagen’s view about the Airbnb

The officials of Copenhagen stated that they are interested in following the regulations made by some of the major cities in Europe. It was the limitation period provided to the hosts or house owners to rent their houses on a short-term rental basis through any online platform.

The Mayor of Copenhagen stated that he was supporting Airbnb as it provided the best experience to the tourists who can able to stay in the house instead of staying in the hotel rooms and it also cost effective. But, in some cases, these rooms or flats are being misused by the people and sometimes it has become an illegal hotel. It also creates a problem on housing market where it was already faced many issues.

The government has inspired by the rule of Amsterdam and talked with the rental service Airbnb according to the number of maximum days a person can let their home for rent through the site. It did not support the sixty-day limit where the other cities like New York and Paris have limited the number of days to 30 and 120 respectively.

Limitations in London

The home sharing website announced that nearly twenty-three percent in the total number of listed London homes were rented their house for more than three months in the year 2015. There are about 4,938 number of homes are listed in the Airbnb and one-fourth of them were rented their homes for more than ninety days.

Most of the home sharing sites are making to remove the properties of other landlords from the private rented sectors and also changing them into short-term accommodations. It will create the risk to the future of the London’s housing supply. Airbnb announced that the company would ban the hosts who are renting out their entire homes for above three months in London without any official permission.

The problem was the company allows the people to make some money by renting out their rooms, but it was misused by some landlords who converting their belongings into illegal hotels. It created negative impacts on the existing housing supply and it also affected other local peoples who are irritated by the Airbnb guests.

If the hosts are renting out their homes for a shorter period or providing hotel-style rents without any planning permission for more than 90 days in a year, then it was against the rules and regulations of London.

Amsterdam imposed restrictions

According to the reports, there was a rise in the number of properties advertised through the online mode in Netherlands and it also observed that the rise of thirty-three percent in the year 2016. The city criticized Airbnb for the unplanned short-term rental service, which reduces the availability of the private housing. It also stated that the guests of Airbnb caused noise complaints and there was no any guarantee for the other residents.

In 2014, the city government and Airbnb made an agreement where the government permitted Airbnb until the company follows some of their regulations. The conditions provided by the Amsterdam official was that the company must pay tourist taxes to the government and the hosts should let their homes for rent for the maximum of sixty days in a year. If the hosts break this law, then they must pay hundred thousand euros as a fine amount and as the result of this law, the number of homes in the lists has fallen by forty percent.

The short-term accommodation rentals are illegal in many cities like Barcelona and it the city needs to control the home-sharing company. Airbnb faced criticism after it refused to share its data with the local officials and the company has removed all the unlawful listings from their site.

Comment here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.