New Host Keeps Spirits High, Expectations Low

This year has been an eventful one for short-term rentals around the world: The boom-bust saga and seeming unending fights about new regulations.

Low-cost Icelandic airline Play is going all out for the end of the year by offering a whopping 50 percent off its already low airfare to Europe.

Airbnb launched its Host Clubs in 2016, in part to help with local campaigns against regulatory clampdowns. Now, it is seeking to expand these clubs.

Start-up airlines like Avelo Airlines don’t get the press coverage that larger ones do. Big airlines make splashy billion dollar deals like the announced $1.9 billion purchase of Hawaiian Airlines by Alaska Air.

You'll be waiting a long time to get into Soho House in some of the world's largest cities.

For most New Yorkers, Times Square is a place to be avoided at all times—especially and unequivocally on New Year’s Eve. The Ball Drop looks fun and exciting when watched from the warmth and privacy of your couch but in real life, it looks like a million people packed between police barricades and squished up against each other in the cold for way too many hours, waiting for a 10-second countdown. And there are no public restrooms.

This is a shot of a tournament game at a basketball court — colloquially known as ‘The Cage’ — in Greenwich Village neighbourhood. It’s a dynamic scene, and one I felt really captured the energy of the game. I showed up around mid-afternoon as I was meeting an art director for a dinner later that evening. It was pure luck a game was happening — I only intended to scout out the location for a little while. But the end-of-day light was great, and the hosts said I could take as many photos as I liked from inside the court. After moving around the back and sides of The Cage for a bit, I decided this was the shot I really wanted: the leading lines from directly behind the hoop were just too good to pass up.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks! I know you’d rather carve a turkey than open your inbox, so we will keep this brief.

Christian Lee joined Mint House as CEO in March, and 100 days into the role and a year after the company’s $35 million fundraise, Lee has his work cut out for him. But the former WeWork CFO isn’t a stranger to a volatile industry. 

While reporting on the short-term rental saturation story last week, I got into some data-digging to find out which markets saw the largest increase in available listings. I was specifically interested in available bookable listings, rather than listings or occupancy, because the former is a factor in market saturation, which impacts home prices.

The ‘Airbnbust’ debacle, which saw one short-term rental data vendor showing plunging host revenue way deeper than its peers, went viral.  However, it does call for some introspection and interrogation (on my part) to understand the data I get from different vendors that often is a bedrock for any story. 

A New York state court judge dismissed an Airbnb lawsuit against New York City, ruling the city had a right to require host registration and licenses, and that it was reasonable to require that Airbnb — and other platforms — verify that listings have licenses, or face penalties.