Last week's release of a study by the School of Hospitality Management at Penn State indicates that almost 30% of Airbnb's revenue is generated by “full-time hosts” who book their units at least 360 days per year. In other words, these hosts are not mere participants in the "sharing economy"...they are running full-time businesses.
And, if they are running a full-time lodging business, they should be subject to the same taxes and licensing as other lodging properties.
Of course, Airbnb doesn't see it that way. A spokesperson said, “the overwhelming majority of Airbnb hosts are middle-class people who occasionally share only the home in which they live and while Airbnb hosts keep 97% of the price they charge for their listings, hotels take most of the money they earn out of the community.”
Which is true.
That's not what the Penn State study said. But, anymore, those that report the news rarely hold their sources to any standard of responding to the charge being leveled.
In this case, Airbnb masterfully manipulated a study that indicates a third of their revenue is coming from people breaking the law into a sound byte that demonizes hotel companies for extracting revenue out of a community.
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