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Airbnb pledges to work with cities and pay 'fair share' of taxes

 
This billboard was part of the campaign against Proposition F, which would have limited Airbnb in San Francisco.
This billboard was part of the campaign against Proposition F, which would have limited Airbnb in San Francisco.
Published Nov. 13, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO — Earlier this month, Airbnb fired off a warning shot to cities that it would fight back if municipal officials proposed rules that might curtail its home-sharing service.

"There is going to be more people doing home-sharing tomorrow than there are today; there is going to be more the day after that," Chris Lehane, Airbnb's head of global policy and public affairs, said at the time to underline how the company is unstoppable. "This is now a movement."

Last week, Airbnb dialed back its rhetoric.

The startup, based in San Francisco, on Wednesday introduced a lengthy treatise pledging a renewed spirit of cooperation with local governments. Called the Airbnb Community Compact, the document outlines several ways that the popular company plans to work with municipalities, including sharing anonymous data on the hosts and guests who use the service, preventing illegal hotel landlords from operating on the platform and promising to pay its "fair share" of hotel and tourist taxes in cities that have them.

"Given the size of the Airbnb community, this just seems like the right time for us to be very specific about the types of commitments we're willing to make," Lehane said. "Cities are looking to do the right thing, and they need the right information to do so."

The shifts in Airbnb's messaging show the tightrope the company is walking as it tries to expand its business in a tricky regulatory environment. Many towns do not have rules in place to deal with an online service for people to rent out their rooms or homes on a short-term basis. The 7-year-old company has not waited for permission to operate in many locales. In some cases, Airbnb has avoided city-mandated hotel taxes or strict safety regulations that apply to hotels and regulated bed-and-breakfasts.

Airbnb has had plenty of momentum, now with upward of 2 million listings across more than 34,000 cities, and with private investors valuing the company at more than $24 billion. That has allowed Airbnb to flex some of its muscles with local regulators — but too much flexing can backfire.

Airbnb found this out recently after dueling in the runup to a San Francisco election over a ballot initiative that would have cut the supply of short-term rentals, affecting the company's business in its hometown. Airbnb spent more than $8 million fighting the measure, called Proposition F, and the company came under intense criticism for its series of anti-Prop F billboards and ads in the city.

Airbnb worked to help defeat Prop F, but then held a news conference in which the company said it could mobilize its users to vote down proposed rules that were aimed against it in other cities. The language was not well received by some policymakers, including Aaron Peskin, who was just elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors. He said at the time that the Airbnb issue would not go away.

"If Airbnb is not at least somewhat flexible on their part, cities will just dig in their heels," said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, referring to the company's changing tone with municipalities.

Many of Airbnb's messaging changes lately originated with Lehane, who, after performing consulting work for the company for years, officially joined Airbnb full time in August. Lehane, a longtime political operative, brings to the job a reputation for hands-on, bare-knuckle sparring with Washington insiders.

Lehane said Airbnb's messages were not inconsistent. The mobilization of voters was meant to fight against the hotel industry, which has not been receptive to home sharing, he said.

"We have always said we want to partner with cities," Lehane said. "As Prop F in San Francisco made clear, our community will fight and win if the hotel interests are threatening the economic lifeline of home sharing, but on the natural we would prefer to be lovers of cities and not fighting with the hotel industry."