‘In a cost-of-living crisis, the freedom to host can be a lifeline for families’

SPONSORED POST

Across the UK, families are struggling with the increasing cost of living. Inflation remains high, and the price of everyday essentials is rising. Many have dealt with these challenges by cutting back, but some have tried to find ways to boost their incomes by picking up second jobs or using other imaginative ways to earn.

Others have been able to offer a space in their homes by hosting on Airbnb, turning their greatest expense into an opportunity to help them manage soaring energy and mortgage costs.

Hosts on Airbnb are ordinary people, and we’re proud to play a small part in helping them to face these economic challenges. We launched our Sustainable Hosting Plan last year to help Hosts reduce costs, with a £1m fund for energy efficiency improvements that cut carbon emissions and bills.

We’re focusing on opening up these opportunities to everyone – and called on banks and building societies earlier in 2023 to update mortgage policies that prevent homeowners from occasionally sharing a space in their home to help boost their income amidst increasing mortgage costs.

Airbnb Superhost Tim lives alone and was looking for an easy way to share his space, so he decided to list a private room on Airbnb. “The best thing about hosting is that I get to meet interesting people from all over the world and show off my community to them.”

Hosting not only allows Tim to afford day-to-day expenses, but the flexibility means he can manage his health and time in a way that works for him. “Losing the extra earnings from Airbnb would be catastrophic, as it’s a third of my income. I’m unable to work full-time because of illness, and without the earnings, I would have to be claiming government support.”

As more people turn to hosting on Airbnb to help them through this crisis, we understand that the current rules aren’t working. We’ve been long-time advocates of reform for short-term lets regulations, carrying out research in 2021 alongside BritainThinks and Professor Marina Novelli to design a Host register to give communities the information they need to properly regulate home-sharing.

We welcomed government proposals for a register in 2022, and in 2023, we set out our vision for a robust system built on occupancy data sharing by booking intermediaries and operators. It’s so important that we seize this opportunity now to modernise the rules for our sector.

In crafting rules that work, it’s important to also reflect on the significant benefits that STLs bring to communities. Travel on Airbnb generates millions for England’s economy. In 2019 alone, research by Oxford Economics estimated that spending by Airbnb guests supported 22,500 jobs in London, 1,000 in Bristol and Brighton and 5,000 across the south west in Devon and Cornwall.

Significantly, the money spent by guests in the communities they visit creates real economic benefits for local people. Airbnb has also long encouraged guests to explore lesser trodden paths to mitigate against the challenges of overtourism and drive the dispersal of tourism revenues – like our collaboration with Visit Scotland last year to highlight the Scottish Lowlands as a must-visit destination.

In addition to the clear economic benefits of driving tourism to local communities, home-sharing has also helped cities cope with the influx of visitors for major events. Vast numbers of international travellers flocked to Glasgow for COP26 and Birmingham for the Commonwealth Games – and the Host community stepped up, opening their homes so that many more were able to visit and make the most of these important occasions.

We were proud to partner with Glasgow and Birmingham City Councils, and we did the same for Eurovision in Liverpool earlier this year, allowing more people to experience the events and helping to boost the income of local Hosts and businesses.

As well as being a critical time for the British economy, this is also a critical moment of reform for the tourism industry – and it’s important to get it right. New rules should focus on proportionate regulation of STLs, whilst preserving the vital benefits that this type of activity brings to Hosts, their guests and the communities they visit, all of whom depend on it amidst a challenging economic period.

For more information, visit www.airbnb.com/simpletruths.