The Disneyfication of Naples....has it ruined it?

The article shows how tourism is a double edged sword. Every city, region and country in Europe has tourist boards to promote the area and encourage visitors. Tourism is great for economies and Naples is poor. They really need more money coming into the city.

Ideally it would be done in a controlled way, but it’s not always possible to predict when a city will become popular and by the time tourist numbers have risen like they have in Naples it’s almost too late.

AirBnB have ruined cities across the globe. I won't use them.
There are plenty of hotel apt.s to be had in most cities.

After reading the story, Naples if off my bucket list. Sounds terrible. But what I like or don’t like has no bearing on what the citizens of Naples get to choose for themselves.

investors who have brought up property for the sole purpose of renting it out to tourists instead of it going to someone who needs to live there.

Yep, that's what is happening all over the world. Them's thats got $$, are getting more of it. Tourism does not benefit all the folks who live in a town/city, just the folks who have money to invest in buying up all the houses. Happening in my town. Nobody can afford to move here for a low paying job, because they can't find affordable housing.

The housing market has changed a lot in the last few years. Rich investors see it as a good, safe, profitable investment. Wasn't it Spain where there were/are protests against tourism? Same thing.

Don't know what the answer is. One thing I know is that "trickle down" economy does not work nowadays. Don't think it ever did.

Another couple, like Ms Jo, who will not use AirB&B. We always stay in hotels, otherwise it not a vacation for us.

Thirding that.

I won't use AirB&B, period. That business destroys the very character of the places people go to see in the first place.

-- Mike Beebe

I really appreciate all the people here saying they would never stay in an Air BnB. They do ruin cities/communities and indeed we have banned them in our building as none of us fancy the idea of strangers coming in and out constantly. I have never stayed in one either and never would.

I visited Naples once. It scared me.

I stayed in an AirBNB once. On the Rhine River for Rhein in Flammen because all the hotels were taken -- except for the one with multiple bed bug reports. I didn't like doing chores at the end of my stay.

I do use Airbnb from time to time. There are properties on there that are only ever going to be used as holiday accommodation and are run as small businesses. I have rented static caravans and converted outbuildings on farms, for example. I have also booked large rural houses, which in much of Europe are not wanted by anyone for full time accommodation.

Airbnb (or similar platforms like booking.com and Vrbo which tend to have a lot of overlap with Airbnb) can be the only option if you have accessibility needs. Soon I’m travelling with a friend and her adult autistic sons who rarely feel able to go on trips and need a room each to decompress. We also need a kitchen so they can prepare their own meals. We’ve found an apartment at a reasonable price that is going to work well.

Displacement seems to be happening not just in Europe, but all over the world. The US has the same issues in many tourist locations.

We’re in southern Italy right now (Lecce), after a few nights in another Puglian town, and with more nights coming up in a third town. These were all preceded a week-and-a-half ago in Naples, where we stayed at a fabulous hotel, the affordable Hotel Piazza Bellini, which I highly recommend. We’ll be returning to it for one more night before flying out of Italy in a couple of weeks. Ironically, Naples is the only place this trip where we’re staying in a hotel, and not a short-term rental. Naples seems the same as when we visited 13 years ago, lively and colorful, people speaking Italian, fantastic restaurants (full of Italians), and an outstanding archaeological museum, with easy access to Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Frankly, having a washing machine is a real benefit that can come with an Airbnb or Vrbo. A clothes dryer is a bonus. Same with a dishwasher, but a kitchen is the essential thing, and the biggest reason (besides maybe the price) for staying in a short-term rental.

I’m not certain that “Disney” and “Airbnb” share any connotation. Many Airbnb’s where we’ve stayed lately do seem to have very similar furnishings - it’s as if Ikea sells an Airbnb kitchen package, complete with cabinets (including door covers for the fridge/freezer), countertop, sink, stovetop, vent fan over the stove, silverware, plates, cups and glasses, etc. But that doesn’t make the location we’re visiting into a manufactured theme park. Many units have been on the very top floor of an apartment building, with low and/or sloping ceilings, and a long, sometimes awkward climb up a bunch of stairs. We’re not looking for a place that holds 8 or 10 or 12 people, which it seems that a lot of the Airbnb speculators are developing. Sometimes they’re in neighborhoods outside of the old-town center, and sometimes they’re right in the center, which I imagine isn’t the cheapest place where locals might look for a place to live.

Living in a ski community (which reportedly only just got its first substantial snowstorm of the season yesterday, after warm temperatures and a lengthy snow drought), short-term rentals have been present for a couple of decades, with pluses and minuses. They make visiting more affordable for many visitors, and having a kitchen does make a difference. Our towns are investing in affordable employee/resident housing options, so that locals aren’t priced out of living there. There are fewer and fewer hotels/motels available, as developers (including ski areas themselves) are building communities of condos and townhouses, and cabins remain a popular option for families.

Thanks JC for interesting article.

The movement to limit Airbnbs-- and athwart history-- yelling "Stop" seems to be gaining steam.

Happy travels.

I'm not sure ' disneyfication' as used in the article title really describes how Airbnbs are affecting the city but i suppose it is needed to draw people into reading the article.

Cyn, the Ikea comment is right on. Also, the top floor reference. I don’t know about where were when you ended up on the top floor with the sloped ceiling but here, that was old attic space that was sold to investors by the building (Condo organization). The revenue was used to add elevators and repair and upgrade the buildings. Those attic apartments did a lot of good here.

There are places where the short-term rentals may have done more harm than good and places where the opposite is probably. But for me to make that judgment I would have to vested in the community, the culture and the economy. Only the views of the locals who have a firsthand understanding are important and they can express themselves at the ballot box.

So, if it’s legal, rent it. If it isn’t legal, don’t. That way the locals get the opportunity to choose their future. Among the biggest threat to local democracy are biased ideological outside forces.

It's not surprising when you "move fast and break things" that things get broken. And if it's not "your" things...

https://producthabits.com/how-two-designers-created-airbnb-and-turned-it-into-a-30-billion-company/

[snip]
This experiment wasn’t just a win for Airbnb—it’s an excellent example of the company’s culture of testing. Even new hires at Airbnb are encouraged to tweak things, make changes, and generally “move fast and break things.”

"It is no longer confined to people renting out their property for a week or two whilst they go on holiday" - JC, I actually found this to be a problem in the early days of Airbnb, as it was unreliable; I had a couple of cancellations at very short notice. I stopped using Airbnb, not out of any social conscience, but once they started asking for photos and a copy of my passport.

In fairness to Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com don't get half as much stick. Do people who book hotels on Booking.com think about the moral conduct of Booking.com also offering a multitude of rentals in any particular city, not just Naples?

I'm not sure ' disneyfication' as used in the article title really describes how Airbnbs are affecting the city but i suppose it is needed to draw people into reading the article.

The Disneyfication refers to the plethora of souvenir shops, pizza restaurants, Maradona murals etc that has pushed out the traditional stores and the lack of affordable housing is pushing out the locals to the point where you no longer have a living city but rather one that caters primarily to tourists, a theme park almost.

JC, it’s such a complicated situation that simplistic observations might be doing more harm than good. It might not be the short-term housing; it might be the tourist housing. I live in a city where apartment blocks that are 5% short term are being replaced 100% by higher density hotels; but there is no outcry. Maybe the hotels can move in because banning short-term housing drove down the real estate value? So, is the problem short-term rentals or the tourist housing?

But lets say that all the short-term rentals went away tomorrow. Will all the tourist go away too? I doubt it, but someone might want to study that. If the tourists dont go away then all the junk shops and tourist restaurants will stay. Will locals want to live in that environment even if the rentals are 10% less expensive? Another question unanswered.

Because of Short Term rentals, the remaining housing becomes more expensive. But why? Maybe because you can make more renting apartments short-term but that’s not always true. Not true here at least. Maybe it’s because in creating the housing that tourists will rent, the flats that hadn’t been renovated for the first time in 50 years and had tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in them based on anticipated return to make payment on the renovation. Is that bad? Is it bad to have enough electricity for a washer or an a/c? Is it bad to put energy efficient windows and modern kitchens and bathrooms? It does raise the value of the unit, probably the mortgage, and then they will have to rent for more to pay the cost. Or are we saying the 1950's standard of living is good enough for the locals?

Maybe housing has become too expensive for some or maybe the economy needs to be repaired so people earn more. Here the housing is cheap compared to the rest of Europe but expensive as a percentage of income. Wouldn’t it do better to say I am staying away from this city until they pay their workers better? That’s the problem in some locations.

Maybe it’s just a shift in the demographics of the local population, which is pretty much the case here. Don’t assume that everyone in every city is impoverished and needs to be saved by an American or British newspaper. Many are glad to sell and move to the country.

I would guess that where I live the number of units available as long term rentals that even begin to meet the minimum standards of health and safety hasn’t changed much relative to the population size, because of new builds and because it’s a city with a declining population. But "AirBnb Bad" judges it the same as Amsterdam. RS Travelers should know better than those sorts of generalizations.

In Berlin I think I read 16% live in a home owned by one of the occupants, while here it is over 90%. Most of the short-term rentals provide extra income for local citizens. You want to take that away in almost the poorest country in the EU? That needs to be thought through a bit doesn’t it.

The internet ideological chant “AirBnb BAD all over the world!” is sort of mindless as the person chanting it evidently assumes the world is all the same. Short terms are probably bad in a lot of locations but probably very good in many as well. Best way to sort it out is let the local population make the determination, not well-meaning Americans who haven’t got a clue about the forces acting on the market. There are going to be times one will do a lot more harm than good …. But is that okay because one meant well?
What about Naples? I have no idea. I am not going to read one single sided article and draw any conclusions, except to say sounds like they have problems that the voters need to address.

I was last in Naples about 12 years ago and it could use some improvement.

We never use AirBnB since it is only wife and I travel and we can save staying in a Bed and Breakfast closer in the city center.

What a whiplash, maybe it's an age thing, but it seems like Naples went from being too scary and dodgy with graffiti (gasp) to even step foot in to now being overly gentrified and "Disneyfied" in record time!
If Naples made one impression, it is that it is unsinkable. I spend more time worrying about the tiny villages that are crumbling and disappearing.

In fairness to Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com don't get half as much stick. Do people who book hotels on Booking.com think about the moral conduct of Booking.com also offering a multitude of rentals in any particular city, not just Naples?

I get what you're talking about but I do think that Airbnb gets more notoriety because it has the influx of investors who have come in and snatched up dozens of homes to turn them into Airbnb rentals. You don't find that so much on Booking.com and VRBO, although VRBO probably is closer to Airbnb than Booking.com.

I think it's the process as well. Airbnb has made it a lot easier for people to invest in multiple homes and list them, especially in the beginning when there wasn't a whole lot of oversight. I believe that VRBO and Booking.com maintain more control over their properties, although I don't know that for sure.

I think there may even be some contributors to this forum who own short term rental properties.

There might be, we did have two members some years back, but I believe both are out of the business now.

But you dont have to be an owner to consider the complexity of the situation and to understand that all of Europe isnt the same in how it resonds or reacts to outside or internal situation or force. And that talking without real knowledge could hurt decent innocent people. Not that I think short-term rentals are good or bad (personally not for me when I travel ... I like hotels), but that intelligent, educated, world travelers think they know enough about all the factors in all the world to imagine whats happening with short term rentals in Tirana Albania is comparable with what is happening in Amsterdam.

I'm not a AirBnB user, but it seems to me that it's about supply and demand. If cities don't want them, they need to build more hotels, or restrict the number of tourists. Two options that will also have negative consequences.

Interestingly, my city, Kansas City, is one of the host cities for the World Cup in 2026. There is a big campaign to encourage people to make their homes available for short term rentals because the expected number of visitors will exceed the hotel capacity. The city has been giving classes on how to do it, and passed temporary suspensions of ordinances restricting them, to accommodate this event.

I think the short term rental market does hit the cities with old, residential centres quite hard. I'm of the opinion that good governance goes some way to protecting citizens from anarcho-capitalism taking hold. However, it's probably fair to say that a lot of the time there's vested interests in government at local and national level in aggressive property accumulation. The Venn Diagram of the political class and the property owning class may be quite telling in many major cities.

Leaving aside Naples, which I know next to nothing about, London is fairly immune from the the rigours of the short term let market. Very few people live in the areas where tourists are concentrated. If we're to think about maybe Kensington and Chelsea where tourists share the streets with residents in the greatest numbers, much of the property is speculatively owned by the uber-rich anyway and it's difficult to summon up much sympathy for the Russian and Chinese oligarchy or Middle Eastern royalty. They have the resources to go somewhere else if an AirBnB that they don't like pops up next door. Sweeping generalisation on my part, but that's the general gist of it as far as I understand. I'd be interested in hearing more about Cat's experience if it's possible without doxxing.

I had to think about it, but the last time I stayed in a hotel was in 2002, a budget place just off Leidseplein in Amsterdam. Jodie Foster's The Panic Room was playing at the cinema across the street, allowing me to date it. I'd gone through a spell of staying with friends in a squat in De Pijp when I was in Amsterdam, but it got to the point there was a bit too much brown and not enough e for my tastes. I've related the story of my accommodation choices in Barcelona here before, sourcing stays through a friendly and trustworthy web forum, then moving on to AirBnB when it was a new and exciting development. I've often been fortunate to have friends with common interests in European cities, which maybe some coming from North America find harder to come by.

Hotels aren't the be-all and end-all. I'm still bitter that The Foundry, my Shoreditch watering hole of choice for many years and the beating heart of what Shoreditch used to be, suffered eviction about 15 years ago, and the building was subsequently demolished, in favour of what is now artotel by Park Plaza. It's the way of things. Nothing is forever I suppose.

There's a short term rental property that has popped up a few yards from my flat. The big old house that rents out lay derelict for many years, but the new owners who bought it at auction a few years ago must have sunk best part of a hundred grand into getting it squared up. It's now a very pretty frontage, with some admittedly rather cheesy RGB lighting in the rooms. I don't live right next door, so I don't know if the comings and goings of guests have any impact on the neighbours. It certainly looks a lot better than it did lying derelict and forgotten for a decade or more. It's easy to draw a parallel with a new church which just opened last weekend right across the road. It too had lain derelict since closing as a nightclub in 1995. The building is the site of the oldest cinema in London and some local conservationists were up in arms about what the Ethiopian Orthodox Church would do to it. The church dropped the money to buy it, which as an unlisted building, they were free to do what they wanted with it. Such is capitalism. I think they'll be a credit to the community.

Apologies for my rambling.

Gerry, thoughtful rambling.

I believe we all aware that Rick Steves has several times called out the concerns over the rapid growth of Airbnbs, "disneyfincation" or equivalent term, over-toursim, cruise ships dumping thousands and so on. Regulation, tempering the rate of change, taxing and/or even some form of metering on maximums -- all these types of things are in the bag of tricks to deal with the problem. And count me among those that think it's a problem. Personally I won't use Airbnbs. Large capital, foreigners, whatever, buying up city centers and turning them into short terms rentals-- I just personally don't support it. If forum regulars are owners of these or have been, it would be nice if they disclosed that in their posts, especially if they become animated. I would. But then I don't own any nor have I.

JC, again, good article!

Happy travels!

GerryM, Rambling is good. Just your simple recognition of differences in London neighborhoods if extrapolated out to the world as a whole should tell people that this worldwide “Airbnb bad” internet marketed mantra is lacking in any intellectual depth. Doesn’t mean it’s not right in some places. And it does indeed reflect that people care and have good intentions. But like mama always said, the road to heii is paved with good intentions. In other words, the lack of intellectual process will hurt innocent people, maybe as many or more than the Airbnb's have. So I am not getting on either bandwagon. Just step back and respect the people of the community and their decisions. Oh, you expressed concern about who was backing the Airbnb movement. Also consider who is out to condemn the Airbnb movement. When we began discussing banning them here, property values fell and the hotels moved in. They displaced more apartments in 1 year than the AirBnb did in 20 years. A few thousand Hungarian apartment owners cant pool resources for political influence like one of those giant hotel chains.

Every person must make a decision for themselves as to whether or not they feel comfortable supporting short term rental sites such as AirBnb. Many in this thread have said they do not feel comfortable, while my family and I have enjoyed stays in several AirBnb's over the years in places where short term rentals are permitted by local rules. It's very interesting to read various perspectives here.

However, the article's overtourism concerns are much broader than short term rentals. How do you balance the benefits and burdens for places that are beginning to feel the negative impacts (like Naples) and for the places that have already been battered (like Amsterdam)? I struggle with this as a frequent tourist in Europe and I don't have the answers.

I try to be aware and deliberate in the how, when and where our family travels, but I don't love the idea of just telling the world to stay home either.

However, the article's overtourism concerns are much broader than short term rentals

Steve you are 100% correct. I really dont enjoy wall to wall tourists so try and avoid those locations. I fell in love with Eastern Europe and the Balkans for that reason. But, still, everyone needs to see Paris too. I guess, just for me, its the difficult challenge of balance for my enjoyment, not for any social bonus points. I wish I had gone to Naples 15 years ago, but happy I found the Balkans before the crowds.

Gerry, I appreciate your rambling! To add a few more points:

-I live in Zone 2 but certainly not somewhere tourists come to stay (if I saw any around I'd imagine they were quite lost). However, we wanted to ban it more as a preventative measure. I have known people who have stayed in AirBnB's in very much non fancy residential areas like Dalston or some areas south of the river.
-My issues with AirBnB come more from seeing what's happened to Edinburgh, where I used to live, than what I see in London as smaller towns like Edinburgh have less capacity to absorb short term rentals.
-I wish I could vote on banning AirBnB! I've never seen such a measure come up. If it did, I would vote for it. I'm not sure how often locals do get a say in these things which is why am a little wary of assuming that if something is legal somewhere it's because locals want it that way. Plenty of things are legal here that I don't agree with. And for the record I am a UK citizen and taxpayer.
-As a general point about housing, we don't have enough of it here and what's getting built isn't what is needed. A big six story block of flats went up across the street from me three years ago. All the flats were sold prior to even the first shovel going in the ground, but even now most still sit empty. This is because they were bought by property speculators rather than people who actually wanted to live in them. Of course they are all "luxury" flats, despite this not being a luxury area, so no one here can afford them.

Mr E, the percentage of households in NYC that are renters is around 69%. The vacancy rate has been around 1% since the end of World War II, which is why promises about "freezing rents" (sounds like "abolishing the police", doesn't it ... ) were part of the last mayoralty campaign. But you can't draw inferences that you want, from a single statistic like ownership in Berlin. This is also related to the widespread availability of 20-year mortgages in the USA, and their rarity in most European countries. And local attitudes about debt, as well.

Moving Fast and Break Things is closely related to Act Now, Apologize Later. And also, provide false statistics to the government, like Uber did in several cities where they pretended to follow regulations.

As that article I posted said, "...Chesky and Gebbia instead did whatever it took to grow their company"

And whatever can cover quite a bunch of garbage. As is much of modern business. At least the US versions.

But you can't draw inferences that you want, from a single statistic
like ownership in Berlin.

Tim, that's my point. Thats one of hundreds of factors that makes every neighborhood a unique situation. It was just one with a huge variation between two locations. I thought it would demonstrate the impossibility that all of europe is the same. You would have to live there and pay a lot of attention to all the factors to even begin to discuss the situation. But apparently complete strangers think they know better.

I wish I could vote on banning AirBnB! I've never seen such a measure
come up. If it did, I would vote for it

Cat VH they did it in District VI of Budapest a few months ago. The final vote was to ban. Many cities have decided to ban. Some through referendums and others through elected officials. Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna to name a few.

I've booked apartments in five cities for a spring trip on Booking.com. I need a refrigerator and that's hard (impossible?) to find in European hotels. The smaller places I'll be visiting didn't seem to have apartment hotels, and one that advertised such turned out to not even have a kitchenette. A washing machine is a bonus, too, but I wouldn't need that for every city, perhaps every other one.

DISCLAIMER: I own no rental properties.

An article about over tourism always brings about great discussions.

Air BnB does not own the properties that it rents out anymore than Booking.com owns hotels it books. I am not sure why the blame would be placed on Air BnB or VRBO. They are just the facilitator for a fee like Viator or any other third party consolidator.

Literally thousands of individual local residents have invested in buying a property, remodeled it and now rent it as a short term rental unit. That is an investment in their community just like somebody who opens a souvenir shop. It raises tax revenue for the community and probably more so than a trinket store. I think some people get upset because individuals can now become entrepreneurs and competitors to the local small boutique hotel down the street.

In my opinion, these people who complain against short term rentals are a bit anti-capitalism. If a person own an apartment that they can rent annually and make X $ for the year and now discover they can make X+$ by doing short term rentals, why are these local investors considered bad?

I don't know the extent that major corporations have bought huge apartment buildings and turned them into short term rentals. My guess is a high percentage of short term rentals are owned by individuals rather than big corporations. I also agree with the comment that a hotel chain can displace an apartment building just as easy.

I think Mr. E. said in Budapest restrictions were made on the expansion of short term rental units. All these cities should do the same if the want.

My beef is that all these articles make its sound that " over tourism" is to blame when actually it is the locals who must decide between tourism revenue versus full time housing units being available right in the city proper. Tourism is not going to stop and it will just keep coming to places like Naples, Barcelona and Amsterdam and hundreds of other cities, beaches, ski towns and areas with tourist attractions.

These so called "organizations" that "care" just whine and cry, but do absolutely nothing themselves to fix the problem. My response to them is, fundraise, build apartments for locals and stop blaming tourists, governments and local residents who have made an investment just like an owner of a small hotel, restaurant or souvenir shop.

Be part of the solution, we already know the problem because of the multitude of articles written on this subject of "over tourism", whatever that really means.

I believe the point of the article is that "over tourism" is the current condition and the causes of it include things like short term rentals.

Let's replace "over tourism" with "over fishing". "Over fishing" is say the crab fishery's current condition in Alaska and the cause is too many fishermen or boats or fishing techniques or whatever. The solution includes regulation. Indeed without limits, the fishery collapses-- which is bad for capitalism!

Meanwhile, I avoid air bnbs. Sure they are legal. But it's like going to opera. In Hungary, the rules say there is no dress code so sweat pants and t-shirt are fine. But if I have something nice to wear like, oh, I dunno, a real hotel, I use that instead. Am I mixing my metaphors again? Maybe I should have stopped with fishing... my apologies!

Happy travels.

The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) used Berlin in a study from 2021 as an example to demonstrate that every additional Airbnb apartment on the market drives up rents in the immediate vicinity by an average of 13 cents per square meter. The effect is mainly attributable to permanent Airbnb listings that are no longer available as apartments on the regular market. And this in Berlin, a city with millions of people and a base of 358,000 state-owned housing units which are protected from misuse of housing space supported by brokers.

The ban on misuse of housing space has increased supply in the rental housing market, causing rents to fall slightly. Depending on the district, tenants can save up to €38 per month on rent for a 65-square-meter apartment.

Another example is Hanover Linden Süd: in the meantime 300 of 5,000 housing units are used for short-term rentals - mainly driven by the company whose name nobody wants to mention twice (link to report of public TV). This is part of a 45 min TV report which was published today - and I did not see yet.

And yes, Berlin is not Naples but I see no proof that there are no similarities in the basic mechanisms. To a certain degree - exact details can be discussed - the effects for the local people are similar or even the same. Some people call it Social Darwinism because the collaboratively richer tourists displace the single local residents with lower income.

What common will can destroy a different new common will can stop but how likely is that tourists especially from outside Europe care for traveling responsibly?

In Germany nearly all larger towns introduced a ban on misuse of housing space. The EU Commission is working on an EU wide regulation framework.

-I live in Zone 2 but certainly not somewhere tourists come to stay (if I saw any around I'd imagine they were quite lost). However, we wanted to ban it more as a preventative measure. I have known people who have stayed in AirBnB's in very much non fancy residential areas like Dalston or some areas south of the river.

I'm in zone 2 too, not far from Dalston. I don't mind saying I live in Clapton. I wouldn't be so ambivalent about short term rentals if it were somehow to come to dominate the neighbourhood, but that's not going to happen. Edinburgh is definitely a good case in point for regulation to protect the residents.

Threadwear Since you dropped my name.
DISCLAIMER: I own one long-term rental property.
DISCLAIMER: I live in a central tourist district and 5% of the apartments in my building are short-term rental units. 90%+ of the remaining units are (statistically) owned by one of the individuals living in the unit. I am the only non-Hungarian owner in the building (that I am aware of).

You are correct, AirBnb is nothing more than what the classified once were in the NY Times.

Those making the most noise generally have a more socialistic view on life. Where the schism develops is with those that think society has rights on personal property, hence the term “misuse of housing” being applied to how an individual uses the property he owns. If that is the prevailing belief, that’s fine, the government needs to buy or confiscate the housing and distribute it. That was the solution here from 1946 until 1991. You might want to do some research and see how well that worked out.

If you divide the number of AirBnb units by the number of hosts you come out with something less than 2 units per host worldwide. Most hosts have one unit, many hosts are management companies representing individuals that own one unit and so the management company has a large listing of units, and some hosts are multinational real estate holders. But the management companies and the big real estate holders are in the minority. Mostly just mom and pop.

While short term rentals here have often taken 5% of a building in the tourist zones, I have watched entire groups of multiple apartment buildings wiped out and neighborhood populations double thanks to hotels. No out cry.

District VI voted this year to ban short-terms completely. It will be an interesting experiment to watch. Most of who is getting hurt are Hungarian citizens with one or two units, because for the most part, that is who owns the units in this city.

What most people miss about my point (pretty sure its intentional) is that I don’t argue for short-term rentals, could care less in fact, I am suggesting that there is no one size fits all worldwide solution to the tourist inflicted problems. Assuming there is, I suspect, will do as much harm to innocent people as it will good. I think that’s reckless and irresponsible….

Gerry,

If I were king, I’d work to preserve what is good, But I am not king, so I use short term rentals every chance I get so we can over fish and get rid of these pesky gill monsters! Sorry sorry sorry, I am mixing metaphors again.

Point is this: Europe is awesome! The history, the culture, the city centers, the vibe, the food, the art, wow! Let’s visit it respectfully and hopefully no worse for wear.

Happy travels.

P.S. Capitalism is neither good nor bad. It does make markets efficient. Markets, competition, and innovation can enrich us all. However protect the commons!

P.P.S. Thanks Mr E for your post!

AirBnb is nothing more than what the classified once were in the NY Times.

Last time I checked, the NY Times wasn't taking a cut on the rentals in order to advertise more rentals.

-- Mike Beebe

Hehe David...

I deleted my response to you Robert as I know you're a good soul and mean well. I appreciate your attempt to further my political education.

Last time I checked, the NY Times wasn't taking a cut on the rentals
in order to advertise more rentals.

No, they arent taking a cut ot advertise more rentals, they are taking a cut to become personally more wealthy. Cutting their fees would increase the number of rentals they could advertise.

I have watched entire groups of multiple apartment buildings wiped out
and neighborhood populations double thanks to hotels. No out cry.

That's a good point. I'm not sure if I buy the argument that AirBnB is the villain that is destroying neighbourhoods; it's just a handy punching bag. I've only used AirBnB three times in my lifetime and it served a purpose that wasn't possible with hotels. More often I've used Bed and Breakfasts or hotels that weren't single family homes, but located within apartment complexes. In Sorrento our B and B was in an apartment building and both our stays in Rome were in hotels that also took up a couple of floors in apartment buildings. Why no complaints about those?

Personally I find “what about” arguments to be specious. What about hotels! They’re evil too. Well, could be I suppose. But it’s kinda like taking the last piece of the thanksgiving pie and someone calling you out and you say “what about little Nell? She had a piece too!” And of course Nell is only 3 years old and cute as the dickens and of course she didn’t take the last piece (that was me— what? I was hungry and that was darn good pie! Pecan!!)

But I “what-about-her” real good! So, yeah, I am a little ashamed.

Happy travels