Queenstown locals have backed a bed tax on tourists that includes properties on Airbnb. Photo / File
Queenstown locals have backed a bed tax on tourists that includes properties on Airbnb. Photo / File
COMMENT:
Many Kiwis lucky enough to have holidayed overseas in the past decade will know why Airbnb has become so popular.
The accommodation service purports to let tourists "live like a local" in more than 100,000 cities by renting out private apartments, houses or flats instead of soulless rooms ata motel, hotel or backpackers.
Travellers have flocked to the platform and now spend billions of dollars each year through Airbnb's network.
Visitors to New Zealand are among them and have booked millions of nights in Airbnb accommodation since the service launched here in 2015.
With local wastewater and other services also buckling under the strain, Queenstown ratepayers last year voted in support of a bed tax on tourists to help pay for much-needed infrastructure investment.
The proposed levy would apply to both houses rented via online platforms such as Airbnb or Bookabach as well as traditional accommodation providers, including hotels.
Airbnb has generally supported the tax while hoteliers and moteliers have put up more resistance to the 5 per cent charge, which require a law change due to go through Parliament.
Auckland Council has also slapped on a targeted rate which captures Airbnb stays – and more centres are likely to follow suit unless the country's tourism boom falls off a cliff.
Other regulation is also looming and Christchurch City Council is mulling ways to control the likes of Airbnb.
A flurry of Queenstown properties were listed on Airbnb when the service launched in New Zealand. Photo / Supplied
Officials last year reportedly found that at least 1600 properties across New Zealand's second largest city were being used illegally for Airbnb-style accommodation.
New Zealand has 78 different councils and faced with the prospect of a labyrinthine network of red tape, Airbnb this month went on the front-foot.
Representatives from the online accommodation market met with Local Government NZ's metropolitan mayors group in Wellington last Friday to present a set of broad proposals to consider.
"We need regulation … [but] let's not have 70 iterations of it around the place, and let's have a conversation about how we can have a national approach, with some local differences built in" rather than "a hodgepodge of different regulatory contexts across the country", Airbnb's head of public policy for Australia and New Zealand, Derek Nolan, told the Herald.
Tourists spend billions of dollars each year renting our properties in holiday hotspots in 100,000 cities. Photo / 123rf
Airbnb's proposals also include a code of conduct which would enable hosts who egregiously breach standards to be banned not only from one platform, but from any.
Nolan's suggestion is sensible.
The matter is unlikely to top Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis' to-do list, but Wellington should be taking the lead on behalf of councils.
The private online accommodation market is estimated to be worth more than $500 million a year in this country; it is certainly big enough to warrant central Government attention.
That could include guidelines for rules from Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which councils could choose to adopt.
Surely, council bureaucrats have better things to do than replicating reviews of accommodation regulations and recommending pretty much the same bylaws up and down the country? Or coming up with variations just to justify their positions and confounding accommodation providers?
