Short-term rental tips

Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, August 29. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

New York City’s Office of Special Enforcement has approved only 257 short-term rental host registrations — out of 3,250 applications — ahead of a September 5 enforcement deadline.

If you follow the short-term rental industry, you would have read or heard Sonder touting itself as “a leading next-generation hospitality company that is redefining the guest experience through technology and design” countless times.

Blueground is seeing its apartments being rented out as safe havens from political upheavals.

Just about everyone has heard of Airbnb. 

A new study on the impact of short-term rentals in Puerto Rico, where the proliferation of Airbnb listings played an outsized role in its tourism recovery following Hurricane Maria, found that a 10 percent increase in short-term rental density in relation to the total number of housing units, led to a 7 percent increase in median rents and a 23 percent jump in housing unit prices.

In an era when travelers see short-term rentals as an ever-more attractive choice, Booking.com’s mix of bookings for these types of accommodations on its platforms in the third quarter ticked up just “slightly” compared with 2019 to around 30 percent, the company said. Isn’t this an historic failure? Shouldn’t Booking.com be gaining more ground?

Airbnb thinks it’s unfair that the European Commission is proposing increased data-sharing requirements on short-term rental providers across the zone, but Google seemingly is escaping the clampdown.

California-based RedAwning announced it acquired channel manager Lexicon Travel Technologies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Short-term accommodation in Spain’s 20 biggest cities is rapidly catching up with the number of rooms managed by hotels, a study [see embed, below] released on Tuesday found, prompting hoteliers to call for better regulation of their upstart rivals.

Hyatt has been active in recent months devising creative ways to market its brands while competing against home rental platforms at the same time. So what’s the main message Hyatt has been conveying to prospective guests?

Due to an increase in demand in the short-term rental sector, Skift is back with our Skift Short-Term Rental Summit on June 7 in New York City. Building upon Skift’s comprehensive coverage of short-term rentals, this summit will focus on the forefront of the impact of technology, platforms, and professionalization on both the urban and traditional vacation rental category.

There is now another subscription service for short-term rentals.

Portugal’s move to end its “Golden Visa” program and curtail new short-term rental licenses will not impact the vacation rental market in the country — not in the short-term anyway. 

Skift, Inc., the most influential media company in global travel, and ShortTermRentalz, a division of the International Hospitality Media portfolio that provides the news and intelligence for the short term rental industry, are announcing a content and media partnership to share fresh ideas and insights at their respective events.

OTA Insight, a London-based startup that helps hotels track competitors’ rates, will now include short-term rentals.

The short-term rental industry can be sustainable, but not without support and structure. As it currently stands, there are few institutional incentives and considerable regulatory obstacles to make sustainability a universal priority.

New York City is in the process of getting all the pieces in place to clamp down on illegal short-term rentals pending a July deadline when fines against both hosts and platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com for any non-compliance would begin.

Exactly a year ago Skift reported private equity chasing investments in short-term rentals and vacation rentals. At the time though, a short-term rental real estate investment trust (REIT) seemed distant. 

Airbnb is removing listings that haven’t received a permit from the government of Quebec following a fatal fire in Montreal in a building that was located in a section of the city where authorities barred short-term rentals.

Finnish short-term rental operator Bob W has acquired Munich-based German competitor Charly Hospitality.