Seven years since it was founded, policymakers at home and around the world are getting serious about regulating Airbnb. But understanding the impact the company has on cities, let alone controlling it, won’t be easy.
Airbnb / Via airbnb.com
When decades-old restrictions that prevented Americans from visiting Cuba were lifted earlier this year, savvy travelers started making plans to visit the island before an influx of tourists changed the nature of the country forever. Once upon a time, observers might have watched to see how long it took the first Starbucks or McDonald's to open on the island. But news from Cuba suggests that, in 2015, the first American cultural export to reach Cuban shores might not have been the Frappuccino or the Big Mac — but the sharing economy, in the form of Airbnb.
Just two months since launching in Cuba, Airbnb has seen the number of Cuban hosts grow by 100%, from 1,000 accounts in April to a total of 2,000 listings as of late May. Rapid uptake in Cuba, where home-sharing is a tradition, isn't necessarily a surprise, but it is an indication that Airbnb isn't just a fad among yuppies, or a phenomenon particular to tech-forward metropolises like San Francisco and New York, but a growing part of global culture. Airbnb is now active in 186 countries and valued at $20 billion; according to founder Brian Chesky, the platform could soon see a million stays per night.
But meanwhile, at home, hostility toward the company is mounting — especially in San Francisco, the very city where Airbnb was founded, and the one cities around the world will undoubtedly look to for precedent when it comes time for them to regulate the fast-growing, global company. But in San Francisco and around the world, the challenges to regulating Airbnb, and the so-called sharing economy in general, are going to be a major difficulty for cash-strapped and technologically inept city governments to overcome.
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