What's the problem with Airbnb?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The number of holiday lets in England rose by 40% between 2018 and 2021. There's been a similar boom across the UK and governments are at varying stages of legislation to regulate the industry and curb the problems associated with these kinds of rentals. Launching England's consultation earlier this year the Secretary of State for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, said too many people were being "pushed out of cherished towns, cities and villages". Meanwhile a second consultation's being led by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, to create a register of these types of property.
So can local tourism and local communities both benefit? And how is this different from second home ownership anywhere?
David Aaronovitch hears from:
Ffion Jon, Documentary maker James Kinnersly, Sales Director and UK market expert at AirDNA Vicky Spratt, Housing Correspondent at the i paper Dr Nancy Holman, Associate Professor of Urban Planning at London School of Economics
Production: Alix Pickles and Kirsteen Knight Production co-ordinator: Debbie Richford Sound: Rod Farquhar Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.5 | The story goes like this. |
| 0:11.2 | It's 2007 in San Francisco and a couple of college friends with no jobs |
| 0:15.6 | are desperately thinking of a way to make some money. |
| 0:19.2 | Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbya have the idea to buy a few |
| 0:22.6 | air mattresses and rent out their living room to people struggling to find accommodation for a |
| 0:27.5 | local conference in the city. To advertise it, they launch a website called Air, Bed and Breakfast. |
| 0:35.0 | Today, Airbnb is worth more than $80 billion. There are now over |
| 0:39.9 | four million renters using the accommodation-sharing platform in more than 100,000 localities |
| 0:45.9 | around the world. Maybe in the last week of summer, you're listening to this from one of them. |
| 0:51.6 | But it's not all happy campers. In some citizen towns, there are now |
| 0:56.1 | campaigns targeting Airbnb owners, destroying the small keyboxes outside their properties, |
| 1:02.9 | and graffiti popping up that says, Airbnb scum. So how has Airbnb grown so big, |
| 1:14.3 | and why might that have become a major problem for some neighbourhoods? |
| 1:17.4 | Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:29.7 | Let's start in a place I used to visit as a boy, Flambaris, a small predominantly Welsh-speaking village in North Wales with just under 2,000 inhabitants and a lot of Airbnbs. |
| 1:36.0 | Local documentary maker Fiongium is taking a look around for us. |
| 1:41.0 | I'm in the village of Llanberis at the foot of the Witherwa, also known as Mount Snowden. |
| 1:47.0 | The highest mountain in Wales, it's a beautiful day during the height of tourist season, the sun is shining and Snowden looms over the village. |
| 1:56.0 | Llandberis is a climbers paradise and a lot of those climbers and other tourists are using Airbnb to stay in, |
| 2:04.1 | including one family who has come up from London. |
| 2:07.1 | Obviously for us it's great with a dog and with the kids, you know. |
... |
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