The Airbnb rental scammers

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the holiday lettings platform prepares for an IPO, what is Airbnb doing to clamp down on bogus, unregulated and unsafe property listings?

Ed Butler speaks to Wired magazine journalist James Temperton, who uncovered one complex London-based scam involving fake listings, sham reviews and a block of grubby apartments that was in flagrant breach of the city's property rules. London councillor Heather Acton tells us she is horrified by the findings.

So is Airbnb allowing professional landlords to profit by side-stepping property regulations and taxes? According to Murray Cox of the campaigning website Inside Airbnb, it is hard to gauge the true scale of the problem worldwide, because the online platform has been so cagey about releasing data.

(Picture: Young man in despair sat on a dockside with his baggage; Credit: pankration/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. Today, the new
0:07.2	research revealing holiday rental scams in the UK's capital. I was pretty horrified. It confirmed that
0:15.2	short-term letting is out of control and occurring right across our city.
0:22.3	Dodgy landlords, broken laws and almost no regulation.
0:26.2	What does the world's Premier Letting's website say to its accusers?
0:30.5	Our commitment is to make sure that Airbnb does have a positive impact on communities.
0:35.1	There'll never be a perfect situation.
0:37.1	But these are things that we care about
0:38.4	and these are things that we want to make positive progress on and be held accountable.
0:43.0	Yes, Airbnb, good guy or villain, are themed today in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:52.3	All the things are very big settled.
0:56.2	Do you need to keep your luggage? Anything we can do for you?
0:59.2	No, thank you so much.
1:01.7	The sound of a reception area of a serviced apartment block in London.
1:06.7	More and more, it seems, the holiday rental industry these days is trending towards places just like this.
1:13.2	Well, in London anyway, apart hotels, they call themselves.
1:16.6	Not hotels, quite, because there isn't any room service, but pretty much everything else that you'd expect, including a gym.
1:23.9	All of it readily bookable on the world's favourite holiday rental platform.
1:28.3	Since its founding in 2008, the online marketplace for arranging or offering lodgings,
1:33.3	Airbnb has spiraled to become a worldwide titan.
1:37.6	It is a portal where property owners simply list and travellers book,
1:41.6	and there is often very little or no accountability, according
	...

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