From a tourist's point of view, AirBnB is the best that has been invented since the launch of the Booking.com-like platforms. For obvious reasons, the service does not like the hotel industry, and more and more often critics are talking about the devaluation of the housing market. Now the Madrid authorities are going to war with AirBnB.
Since its inception in 2009, AirBnB has accumulated over 4 million rental offers in 60,000. cities located in almost 200 countries. The company has permanently inscribed in the tourist reality of the modern world, and its official application is next to Booking.com the absolute basis for planning each trip. Following the example of Uber, along with the growing popularity of AirBnB, the service was targeted at other entities, mainly from the hotel industry.
It's hard to be surprised by hotels. The industry not only has to pay high taxes, but also meet legal standards and have appropriate licenses. The debt of the Polish hospitality industry is constantly growing, despite the simultaneous increase in revenues. Maintenance of a holiday complex with a service and restaurant part is incomparably more expensive than maintaining a flat for a short-term tourist. That is why offering prices at a level similar to AirBnB is for many entities giving up the profit and plunging into debt.
However, it is not the hotel industry, and the housing market is the reason why local governments are going to war with AirBnB.
Along with the growing popularity of services, alarming reports on the housing market appear. It turns out that AirBnB has not only a real and measurable impact on the rising price of a square meter in tourist areas, but also distorts the offer. By AirBnB, residents of large, popular cities have a bigger problem with long-term renting a flat. It is more profitable for owners to delete short-term tourists than to rent two rooms with the kitchen of a young couple.
Nowadays an increasing number of apartments is bought not with the intention of renting or using, but also earning on services like AirBnB. The offer of long-term rental begins to shrink, which is the bane of large agglomerations with high traffic dynamics. Therefore, the authorities of subsequent European capitals are acting against short-term rental. For example, a few months ago, the obligation to register and hold licenses for the lease of AirBnB was introduced in Paris, and since 2018 the French town hall has prevented the tourist rental of new apartments.
Municipalities tightening the AirBnB screw are joined by the Madrid. The capital of Spain will no longer be service-friendly.
In the historical part of the beautiful city, or the Centro District, a ban on short-term rental for tourists is to be in force. In this way, the Spanish authorities want to take back the center of the capital from the hands of short-term visitors and hand them over to the people of Madrid. The Town Hall also wants housing to return to the times before the AirBnB revolution, where rental will be intended mainly for residents, not businessmen with substantial investment capital.
An interesting idea that already applies in some European capitals is the limitation of a tourist window for short-term hiring up to 90 days a year. After this time, apartments from the Centro district will not be possible for tourist commercialization. Thanks to this, at least some of them will come back as a rental offer for residents who want to spend more time in Madrid than just a few warm days a year.
Another way for the authorities of Madrid to restore flats to the classic rental market is the introduction of a special license. The waiting period for the permit for tourist renting is to last up to a year. The town hall counts that the owners will not want to leave the flat for twelve months without tenants and will return with it to the long-term rental market.