Don’t blame us: Airbnb

AIRBNB denies it is responsible for the rental crisis gripping Tasmania.

The homesharing service yesterday fired back at submissions to a short-stay accommodation inquiry that claim Airbnb is hurting hotels and housing affordability.

The company also branded as “unfair” attempts by the Tourism Industry Council Tasmania to paint the State Government’s reforms to deregulate short-term visitor accommodation a failure, and said tourism had “boomed” since the laws came into effect.

Airbnb said the TICT’s business confidence index of 101.5 points for April 2018 was higher than any point in 2017 when the legislation changed.

The stance comes after the Legislative Council Select Committee’s inquiry into short-stay accommodation released more than 190 submissions to the public.

In its submission, Airbnb said it was not a significant player in the local housing market and the number of entire home listings on the site booked for more than 180 days in 2017 was only 0.22 per cent of dwellings in Greater Hobart.

“Holding a fifth of one per cent of the housing market responsible for Hobart’s housing crisis just isn’t credible and distracts from focusing on the real causes and solutions for the crisis,” Airbnb Australia and New Zealand Head of Public Policy Brent Thomas said.

He said 8800 of private homes sat empty in 2016, which represents 9.3 per cent of Hobart’s housing stock. Airbnb has about 1485 active entire home listings in Hobart.

The University of Tasmania's submission said while new housing supply had met increased demand from population growth, it had fallen “well short of replacing housing stock lost to the short-stay sector”.

The report estimated 599 properties had been lost to short-stay accommodation from 2016-18.

“We believe the short-stay accommodation sector should be subject to greater regulation until conditions in the residential rental market improve,” the report said..

But Mr Thomas said these claims were “baseless” and there was no reliable way of knowing if an Airbnb listing was previously available on the long-term rental market.

“The housing crisis began long before Airbnb arrived on the scene and is a wickedly complex problem,” he said.

Mr Thomas also said the Airbnb community was growing alongside, not hindering, traditional tourism operators.

“Hotels continue to enjoy strong occupancy rates and there are now more than 4000 new hotel rooms being built,” Mr Thomas said.

“Since the new rules were introduced a year ago confidence within the tourism industry has actually increased.”

Airbnb said latest research showed their guests who stayed in Tasmania in the past 12 months spent $86 million, supported 599 jobs and contributed $55 million to gross state product.