Belgium (Brussels Morning Newspaper) The European Commission wants Airbnb and other companies offering short-term home rental to share their booking data with EU authorities in the future, the Commission announced on Monday.
The proposal is aimed at easing concerns of popular European tourist destinations, such as Paris, Amsterdam or Barcelona that the short-term renting in their cities is creating an unsustainable pressure on the real estate prices, pushing both citizens and businesses out of the city centre and into the suburbs.
On the other hand, smaller tourist destinations hope short-term home rental companies could boost their tourism revenues and increase the visitors’ interest in staying in their cities. According to the Commission, the new proposal is envisioned to take both interests into account.
Airbnb and its competitors currently account for about a quarter of all available tourist accommodation in the European Union countries. The regulative proposal aims to harmonise the currently disparate regulations across the EU managing the short-term rental markets.
Data sharing
“The new proposed rules will help to improve transparency on the identification and activity of short-term accommodation hosts, and on the rules they have to comply with, and will facilitate the registration of hosts,” the Commission said on Monday. “They will also tackle the current fragmentation in how online platforms share data and, ultimately, help prevent illegal listings.”
Under the proposed legislation, the short-term home rental companies will share data on the numbers of people using their services, as well as their time of stay. This data would be stored at a single digital entry point, while all country-specific data would be further shared with the national authorities of the country in question.
In a statement given to Reuters last week, Airbnb spokesman said the company wants to be “a part of the solution to challenges facing cities,” emphasising that AIrbnb has “consistently championed” the Union’s efforts to update rules regulating technology companies.
Sustainable tourism
“Airbnb put forward proposals for more clear, simple and harmonised EU rules that would unlock the benefits of hosting for everyday Europeans and give governments the tools they need to tackle speculators and overtourism,” the company said.
The latest EC proposal is similar in form to a data sharing agreement Airbnb has previously reached with the EU statistics authority, Eurostat, which already allows government authorities to access data published on a quarterly basis, which includes the number of people using the Airbnb platform and the number of overnights.
The authorities will now be able to monitor data of both Airbnb and its competitors, and will have access to more regularly published data. This would open the doors for country and local government authorities to put further limits on short-term renting in place and monitor for compliance. “Overall, this will contribute to a more sustainable tourism ecosystem and support its digital transition,” the Commission said.
