Airbnb clearly has a problem in the state of Florida and they seem to be very silent and nonexistent in helping resolve the problems
Florida Vacation Rental Management Association (VRMA) says that Airbnb is very scarce on dealing with the issues we all face at hand
In Florida, multiple cities have banned Airbnb‘s and those that have not due to state regulations, will often use extremely deceptive methods to prevent hosts from listing their homes on Airbnb. Some of these methods used by code enforcement are illegal but used to intimidate hosts
Major cities like Saint Petersburg ban Airbnb‘s, yet their tourism board promote to them. They claim to be an all-inclusive city yet they exclude guests and hosts who stay in Airbnb‘s. They claim to have pet friendly Airbnb’s yet they are all illegal…. according to the city, sending very mixed messages and its all very confusing.
Saint Pete Beach, which is voted the number one beach in the country, bans Airbnb‘s and also uses extremely deceptive methods to prevent hosts from listing and hosting on Airbnb. I am sure we all know the hotel groups are behind this. Smaller cities are joining together to collaborate to restrict hosts.
If Florida is one of the biggest tourism states in the country, why is Airbnb so silent on the problem. Those cities that have been forced to allowed Airbnb‘s due to state statues are always trying to introduce some legislation to restrict Airbnb‘s because they believe the power should have been given to local authorities. All run by city council members who all who have their own agendas.
In 2019 Airbnb paid over $136.7 million in tax revenue to Florida and local governments on behalf of its hosts up 45% from the year before. Clearly Airbnb has bargaining power but are failing to use it. A few held back payments may wake up the state legislature.
A State bill recently failed again where they tried to regulate through one licensing department as they did with the hotels. Made sense as hosts. This failed to pass again as it has done over the past few years. We have a major problem in the state of Florida and it’s about time hosts banded together and started to become a single voice. This is the only way we can ensure the long-term sustainability of our business.
In 2017 there were an estimated 40,000 hosts in Florida, and I am sure that’s more today. Hosts need to fight back. In a recent conversation it was suggested that if we got half the hosts (20,000) hosts to put in $500-$1000 into an attorney’s trust fund. (That’s 10 million Dollars) we could hire a group of attorneys like the ones that filed a lawsuit against the governor for shutting down Airbnb’s during the lockdown. Have them fight the legal side of things. We could also hire a marketing company and start putting up billboards around the restrictive cities that say “tourists go home the city of Saint Pete doesn’t want you. Noting it refers to STR. We could even show how some guests for religious, health and disability reasons cant stay in hotels. We can do our own multimedia add campaign to fight back This will surely get the Press asking questions and expose some of the deceptive and deceitful methods that local authorities are using to restrict house.
We should not have to do this, but we may have no choice.
Why is Airbnb so silent and where does Airbnb stand in this fight? If they are really so short of hosts, surely making the environment easier to host is the 1st step.
