Airbnb is collaborating with municipal governments who have long asked for direct access to information about listings to identify those violating local regulations.
Airbnb is rolling out City Portal, a new dashboard that will let participating local governments and tourism organizations view listing activity data such as average earnings and where guests are traveling from. They can also take action on specific listings, including directly blocking them if they are not in compliance.
In our work together and as post-pandemic planning begins, government leaders have been clear about what they want from Airbnb: real-time, actionable insights to better understand the Airbnb landscape in their communities, centralized technical support and resources to leverage tourism to rebuild their communities’ tourism economy, and tools for regulatory compliance.
Airbnb
The company is testing the portal with 15 cities and tourism organizations in its first phase. Pilot cities include Buffalo, Calgary, unincorporated Miami-Dade, New Orleans, Palm Springs, Raleigh, Sacramento, Seattle, San Francisco, and Vancouver. Tourism partners include Visit Tampa Bay, Visit Denmark, the City of Krakow, Sao Paulo State Secretary of Tourism, Visit Scotland, Visit Tuscany, and Wesgro (Western Cape of South Africa).
The pandemic has caused a big drop in Airbnb urban bookings and cities are feeling the impact of declining revenues from tourism and taxes from short term rentals. Now, more cities are willing to work with Airbnb.
The initial reactions from the municipalities have been favorable. Jeff Cretan, communications director for San Francisco Mayor London Breed, tells Axios, “Right now the way we share information with Airbnb to identify these bad actors is really slow and laborious,” he says of the current method of sending spreadsheets back and forth between the city and the company. “It’ll be much more efficient.”
According to Airbnb, 72% of their U.S. bookings – almost three in every four reservations – are already paying occupancy tax.
Airbnb has not specify a timeframe for the full City Portal roll out.
photo credit: airbnb
