From the day they moved into NSW, Airbnb have operated by stealth. Firstly they were telling us that this was a way of owners and tenants making money – and meeting new people – by renting out a spare room to tourists.
Then, when it became apparent that the vast bulk of their business was from people letting whole properties, often displacing residential tenants, it became about the right of owners and investor tenants to make money and the revenue for the tourist industry.
Naive journalists and politicians were flown to their company headquarters in San Franciso to be wined and dined, shown their impressive banks of computer screens and handed a press release that could have been emailed to them.
Academics who were invited to go to their HQ to get the “true picture” were met by junior members of management who told them nothing they didn’t already know.
And all the while they would hide the true figures by saying they were protecting the privacy of their users, and dismiss efforts by organisations like InsideAirbnb.com as inaccurate.
Now that they are fully embedded in our culture, it’s too late. Our politicians have sold us down the river and there is no turning back.
The problem, by the way, isn’t the quirky lodgings in remote areas. It’s the hollowing out of popular tourist areas like Bondi and Byron Bay as former locals are driven out by landlords and head tenants looking for easy money, and the conversion of new apartment blocks in prime city areas, into virtual hotels (only without the moderating services of managers, security and cleaning staff).
InsideAirbnb.com is about as close as you will get to the truth as it monitors the properties for rent and factors in the actual usage. Until Airbnb opens its books, that’s as accurate a suburb by suburb picture as you will get.