Airbnb says it pumps almost $2 billion into NYC's local economy
After a big win in San Francisco which saw voters shoot down a series of restrictions on the company, Airbnb is opening up about its economic contributions to some of its largest markets.
Singling out Berlin, London, Los Angeles and San Francisco as 4 of its 5 largest markets, the home-sharing company says that its users spent a whopping $5.82 billion last year in those cities. Of that figure, a sizable $1.96 Billion was spent in New York City, the largest market of all.
Airbnb calculated these figures by looking at host earnings and the spending habits of guests as they explore the city outside of their temporary dwellings, and announced them in conjunction with its new Airbnb Community Compact. This pledge to "help the cities our hosts and guests call home" included three main commitments:
- "We are committed to treating every city personally and helping ensure our community pays its fair share of hotel and tourist taxes."
- "We are committed to being transparent with our data and information and we will help cities understand the home sharing activity in their community while simultaneously honoring our commitment to protect our hosts’ and guests’ privacy."
- "In cities where there is a shortage of long-term housing, we are committed to working with our community to prevent short-term rentals from impacting the availability of long-term housing by ensuring hosts agree to a policy of listing only permanent homes on a short-term basis."
It remains to be seen how Airbnb intends to police the third tenet of its compact, but sharing financial data like this is certainly a nice start at making good on points one and two. It is worth noting however that unlike, say, San Francisco, New York City does not currently have any sort of tax in place to collect those hotel and tourist taxes.
Still, the compact's warm and fuzzy tone is a welcome (and swift) pivot from the company's recent ad campaign, which many accused of being in poor taste and attitude.