French cities are working to ruin Airbnb’s summer
Touristic hotspots Nice, Ajaccio and Marseille are
mulling new restrictions on short-term rentals.
Paris has cracked down on Airbnb — and is planning
further restrictions |
BY LAURA
KAYALI
July 1,
2021 7:57 pm
PARIS — As
France heads out for the summer break, its mayors are turning the screw on
short-term rental platforms.
Within only
a few weeks, a string of French cities have imposed new restrictions on
short-term accommodation platforms like Airbnb, Abritel and Booking.com — and
Paris is cooking up more restrictions still.
“We want to
seize the opportunity of COVID to confirm the downward trend in tourist
rentals. We now have evidence that Airbnb does have an impact on housing,” Ian
Brossat, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo's deputy for housing, told POLITICO.
As the
COVID crisis effectively emptied large urban areas of tourists, cities across
Europe are happily contemplating life with less Airbnb.
In France,
the U.S. platform’s second-biggest market, Airbnb is increasingly focusing on
rural areas — where the platform is welcomed with open arms by local mayors —
to limit its reliance on regulation-heavy cities. On Wednesday, the company
said stays in France's rural areas account for 45 percent of bookings for this
summer, compared with 24 percent back in 2019.
After a
string of French cities, including tourist hotspots Nice, Saint-Malo and
Ajaccio, either formally adopted or mulled new restrictions in the last three
weeks, Airbnb's rural strategy now looks more prescient.
On
Thursday, a Paris court ruled that the company must pay an €8 million fine to
the city of Paris for allowing postings without registration numbers on its
platform. The same day, Airbnb announced that all hosts who wish to rent their
apartments in the French capital will need a registration number; otherwise
guests won’t be able to book their accommodation. The requirement will be
rolled out in other French towns by the end of the year.
Airbnb said
that Thursday's ruling will "have no impact" on its Paris business
because the company already implemented mandatory registration of listings.
Still, the company said the court decision was "questionable" and is
considering an appeal. Airbnb declined to comment on the new local rules.
Southern
crack down
In June,
four southern cities adopted or threatened to adopt new restrictions for
tourist rentals to control the amount of housing put on the short-term
market.
After years
of lobbying by the hotel industry, which sees Airbnb as a rival and a threat,
Montpellier voted to limit the rental of second homes to one per household, in
order to prevent people from buying houses only to put them on the short-term
rental market. In the long run, all listings on platforms such as Airbnb will
require a registration number, as is already the case in bigger cities such as
Paris.
Marseille —
France’s second-largest city — agreed to ask the larger metropolitan area to
also limit the number of second home rentals to one, and to make it more
difficult to convert housing into short-term tourist accommodation.
Nice Mayor
Christian Estrosi, a longtime foe of Airbnb, who earlier this year
unsuccessfully tried to crack down on the platform, said his town would limit
authorizations to avoid a massive influx of tourists over the summer. The mayor
of the Corsican capital Ajaccio has also mulled new regulations.
In Brittany
too, the touristic town of Saint-Malo has imposed quotas on tourist
accommodations, and homeowners will be able to convert only one dwelling for
short-rental purposes.
It's
unclear when these efforts will have the desired impact.
Dominique
Debuire, the president of the National Union for the Promotion of Holiday
Rentals, a trade group representing platforms such as Abritel and Airbnb, said
the new push was unlikely to have an impact on this year's summer season, and
that the effect will become clearer in six months to a year.
Municipalities,
he said, are facing “a reasonable choice between tourist attractiveness and the
satisfaction of the residents of city centers, for which it does become difficult
to find accommodation.”
More to
come
French
cities aren't done with Airbnb yet.
Last month,
the government issued a long-awaited executive order that makes it harder for
owners to convert commercial properties like offices and warehouses into
tourist accommodations.
Since 2015,
89,000 square meters of commercial space in Paris has been converted into hotel
accommodation, including short-term rentals and traditional hotels, according
to Le Parisien.
Cities that
have implemented registration-number obligations will effectively be able to
veto such conversions. But first, they will need to define the exact rules for
when properties can be converted, and put them to a vote. In Paris, Brossat
plans a city council vote by the end of the year, for the rules to apply in
2022.
Paris also
wants control over how many days homeowners can rent their main residence, and
to be able to ban tourist rentals in some areas. To that end, the city is
pushing for amendments in a bill that aims to give more power to local
authorities, which is now under discussion in parliament.
Whether
Paris' push will be successful is unclear. Unlike the capital's city council,
neither the French National Assembly nor the Senate has a left-leaning
majority, and the government is not in favor of decreasing the 120-day limit
for renting a main residence.
Not to
mention that Parisians themselves are happy with the current rules.
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