According to the latest statement issued by the international lettings and hosting website Airbnb, the company distances itself from the controversial short lets management advertisement posted by a management company recently online.
The advertisement was submitted by a company by the name Hostmaker that describes itself as “the world’s largest management company for Airbnb and more”. The company was heavily criticised last month when a series of advertisements on Transport for London appeared to pressure long-term landlords to switch to short lets booked through Airbnb and other similar platforms instead of the conventional AST-tenants.
In the result of the controversial advertisements, both the Labour Party and the Residential Landlords Association addressed the issue to the London Mayor Sadiq Khan and asked for an immediate removing of the advertisements. In addition, there was also a petition signed against the ads and the petition campaign was raised by the campaign group Generation Rent.
Since the controversial ad campaign ended last weekend, people are wondering if this was due to a scheduled close of the campaign or in the response to the heavy criticism.
Since then, the company Hostmaker issued a defiant statement, explaining that the tone of the advertisements may have been “misguiding” and taken as an urge, but still, the service did not reduce the capital’s stock of affordable homes or affected it in any way, neither attempted to find a way of evading London’s existing rule that limits short lets in any property to a total of 90 nights annually.
Issuing a statement to the Letting Agent Today, Airbnb entered the debate: “Airbnb was not involved with this campaign. The adverts do not reflect the spirit of hosting in London and we are pleased they are being removed. Airbnb has always been the only platform to help London hosts follow the rules by automatically limiting how often they can share their homes."
“We have zero tolerance for attempts to get around our measures and we have backed the Mayor’s proposal for host registration, which would help ensure rules are applied fairly and equally to hosts on all platform.”