Pandemic tames Airbnb in Europe’s tourist hotspots – for now

The COVID-19 pandemic has achieved what many mayors across Europe have tried and failed to do: wipe out tens of thousands of Airbnbs from city centres and so help lower rental costs for locals, in some places by as much as 15%.

While Europe’s cities have long welcomed tourists, critics say the surge of properties listed on short-lettings site Airbnb in recent years had priced many locals out of their own housing markets, turning historic neighbourhoods into soulless spaces.

Property management companies and landlords contacted by Reuters in cities including Lisbon, Barcelona, Prague, and Venice said the collapse of tourism in the pandemic meant some hosts had now replaced holidaymakers with mid- to long-term tenants, moved in themselves, or given up properties altogether.

Data from holiday rental analytics firm AirDNA showed the number of Airbnb listings with at least one night booked or available in the past month in Europe’s 50 largest cities plunged 21.9% year-on-year in 2020.

Airbnb says it has adapted to changing travel patterns, with people heading to smaller towns and cities rather than tourist hotspots.

“We had more listings in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the Czech Republic combined at the end of 2020 than the end of 2019,” spokesperson Andreu Castellano told Reuters.

While some hosts in major European city destinations plan to return to Airbnb when tourists come back, others have left the holiday-let business for good.

“If tourism had come back faster, maybe I wouldn’t have taken this decision. But I can’t go another year without a clear sense of when money is coming in,”

said Vanessa Rola, 40, who was renting four apartments in Lisbon’s Graça district on travel platforms including Airbnb. Without tourists, she couldn’t pay her own rent, and is in the process of ending her contracts.

In Venice, where AirDNA data showed year-on-year bookings for Airbnb and rival Vrbo combined were down 67% in January, residents’ activists are urging the government to seize the opportunity to help locals by, for example, capping rental days and converting empty space into low-cost housing.

“Before the pandemic, renting in Venice had become almost impossible for normal people,” Marco Gasparinetti from residents’ rights group Gruppo 25 Aprile told Reuters, blaming short-term lets for pushing up prices. The city of just 60,000 residents is normally visited by 20 million tourists a year.

“There are 30,000 people who commute to Venice every day but can’t afford to live here. Now that could change and help make sure Venice is not just an open-air theme park for tourists.”

DISAPPEARING LISTINGS

Last month, Airbnb reported better-than-expected bookings in its first earnings release since going public, buoyed by countryside getaways and a rebound in demand in North America. Business was weakest in Europe, the Middle East and Africa amid COVID-19 lockdowns and travel curbs.

For years, European mayors have struggled to rein in the proliferation of vacation properties in city centres, lacking the data to enforce limits on rental days or the number of properties in a building used for holiday lets.

Airbnb, Expedia, Tripadvisor and Booking.com agreed last March to share data with the European Union’s statistics agency on the number of nights and guests booked, and 2020 figures are expected in the second half of this year, Eurostat said.