Catalonia has a system whereby apartments for holiday rental can be openly marketed. It is a system that operates reasonably well, with accommodation subject to classification according to its standard (which has to meet set levels) and which is also transparent in terms of tax liabilities - revenue on the property, IVA (VAT) and tourist tax.
Despite this system, Catalonia still has a problem with accommodation that has not been registered and is therefore marketed illegally. One of the main means for this marketing is a P2P website, and two such websites - Airbnb and HomeAway - have been hit with fines totalling 120,000 euros by the Barcelona city administration because of what it calls the illegal advertising of tourist apartments.
For Airbnb, this is not the first time that it has fallen foul of a Catalonian administration: the government previously fined it 30,000 euros. But the Barcelona sanction is tougher as it also includes a sort of naming and shaming without actually naming. Plaques denoting legal accommodation have been appearing. If there is a property without one that is being rented out to tourists, then neighbours can readily identify it.
HomeAway, for its part, has said that it will take legal action, insisting that the city administration's attitude is contrary to principles of free competition and also criticising the public announcement of sanctions without having been formally notified of them. Airbnb, in total disagreement with the fine, has attacked Barcelona for not supporting private individuals who wish, in the language of the P2P phenomenon, "to share" their homes, and adding that it should follow the example of European capitals and regulate in order that private individuals can share.
What Airbnb is getting at here is that the system should be like it now is in London, where new legislation, effective from May last year, allows anyone to rent out on a short-term basis. The previous restriction under the 1973 Greater London Council Act was considered "outdated" as well as a "bureaucratic headache".
Airbnb, by referring to support for private individuals, is also making a thinly veiled comment on the political ideology at Barcelona council. Ada Colau, who became mayor following the municipal election last spring, was a founder of Guanyem, a political party/movement not dissimilar to Podemos and one, therefore, with much the same advocacy of the rights of the citizens.
Barcelona, and especially its La Barceloneta area, has witnessed a massive increase in the availability of private apartments, and in the case of La Barceloneta, these have attracted a youth tourism of a (now former, perhaps) Magalluf style. It was an issue that demanded attention, but in going after Airbnb and HomeAway, while at the same also having an agenda that is not supportive of hotelier interests, Colau's administration appears to be behaving in a manner that is contrary to the rights of the citizens: a muddled ideology, therefore.
In Mallorca, these rights were once expressed by the former mayor of Santa Margalida, Toni Reus, who is from the Mallorcan socialist wing of Més, just as tourism minister Barceló is. Reus said that it was a human right for anyone to rent out property for whatever reason, and he was thinking of the town's resort, Can Picafort.
But while Barceló seems likely to introduce a more permissive system of regulation, he is also concerned about the sheer numbers of tourists coming into the islands in the summer and who are the result of the massive availability of private accommodation, much of it not registered. Airbnb has over 300 rentals in Mallorca (many of them without photos to avoid detection), but it is only one sharing website: there are many others, in addition to websites which are blatantly offering illegal holiday rentals.
One understands that the Balearic government isn't particularly interested in pursuing owners with single properties, but it is interested in the large-scale operators. In the case of Airbnb and others, it is hard to know which type of owner may be advertising and wishing to share.
The sanctions to be imposed in Barcelona, where there are also major concerns with overcrowding, could well cross the sea to Mallorca if administrations here were minded to adopt that city's example, but the same ideological muddle would follow in their wake. Podemos might be in less of a muddle if it follows the attitude of its counterparts in the Canaries who are opposed to anything that prevents tourist rental when it represents an important source of family income.
Ideologically, there shouldn't be restrictions (with the caveat of earnings being declared), but Barceló also has an eco-agenda to pursue as well as the proposal for rentals to be permitted only in certain parts of resorts or Palma. His new legislation is complicated enough, but it has been made more so because of the sharing economy and the rights of the citizen. Deny such sharing, and a basic right is denied.
Showing posts with label Sharing economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharing economy. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 05, 2016
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Defending Loyalty To Mallorca
April Rinne is a name that probably won't mean anything to you. She is the chief strategy officer for something called Collaborative Lab, "the leading source of expertise for companies and governments that want to embrace the collaborative economy". Among other things, she is a "young global leader" at the World Economic Forum and has been an adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has, says her biog, "illustrated her thought leadership" in various publications. Thought leadership? What on earth is that?
Depending on your perspective, Rinne is either one of those infuriating Americans who come along on a regular basis and appear to invent entire alternative universes of business and marketing replete with jargonese and gurudom or a crystal-clear visionary of a brave new future world. Whatever your perspective, these are universes or worlds remote from the man or woman booking holidays to Mallorca. They appear divorced from everyday realities but sometimes they can be important, and what April Rinne deals in is important.
The notion of the collaborative or sharing economy is simple enough. You have something to share - let's say it's an apartment that you own - and someone wants to take up your offer. This is an economy that has always been with us, but technology has vastly expanded its potential, so much so that - at its most extreme -what you might have to share can be shared with anyone from anywhere. Middlemen cease to exist. All that is needed is a facilitator, a third party which enables the sharer to be in touch with his or her potential market. This is the world of P2P, peer to peer or people to people. This is the world of Airbnb property sharing, Uber car sharing and many others.
Rinne has made an observation which sums up the rise of P2P. It has taken Airbnb, the world's leading internet portal for tourist property rental, just six years to reach a level of users (customers) that Hilton needed over 90 years to attain. It is a stark observation of the battle between hotels and private accommodation that is going on across the globe and so not just in Mallorca, and it is a battle which, despite moves to legislate, appears to be one that the hotels cannot win. Rinne believes that the onslaught from the likes of Airbnb has only just begun.
Confronted with this competition - typically decried by the hoteliers as "unfair" - how can hotels fight back? A clue as to how they can lies with understanding the appeal of P2P and the apparent shifts in consumer thinking and behaviour, in particular those of the so-called Millennial generation. Tourism, according to accepted P2P wisdom, is about personalisation, about "experiences", about contact with local people in destinations. It is the depersonalised nature of hotels which turns the traveller on to a P2P "experience" and which also deters those Millennials who supposedly are also interested principally in experiences.
Of course, much of this sounds and often is marketing gobbledegook, but there is nevertheless a good deal of truth about depersonalisation and especially that which comes with the package holiday. This said, hotels have woken up to the need for greater personalisation and also to the need for "experiences". Many can't help telling potential clients about the experiences that await them or shoehorning them in to brand sloganising. And it is this branding which holds the key for hotels and, more importantly, tour operators.
Experiences and personalisation have become the hotelier and tour operator zeitgeist as has the need for branding and so brand loyalty, but in emphasising the brand, tour operators and indeed some hotel chains shift the focus away from the destination. What is being sold, therefore, is the brand, and where it is located is secondary. A consequence is that loyalty to the destination, be it Mallorca, its individual resorts is potentially loosened. And experiences and personalisation for the P2P traveller can also undermine specific destinations. These travellers place a premium on the social-media aspect of sharing information and recommendations. If they are for somewhere other than Mallorca, then so be it.
The importance of these trends can be over-exaggerated. The traditional package holiday, for instance, and despite repeated reports of its death, is not about to disappear any time soon. But they are trends which cannot be ignored and so make it imperative that Mallorca acts to confirm and reinforce tourist loyalty to it.
There was a statement the other day that the "summer sells itself". Well yes, it does, but to believe, against the background of these trends, that "selling" is not required is wrongheaded. It is needed as never before, and so Mallorca needs its own assault, one it is currently failing to deliver, that of loyalty building through social media. And, moreover, it is an assault that needs to embrace, not deny, the P2P revolution.
Depending on your perspective, Rinne is either one of those infuriating Americans who come along on a regular basis and appear to invent entire alternative universes of business and marketing replete with jargonese and gurudom or a crystal-clear visionary of a brave new future world. Whatever your perspective, these are universes or worlds remote from the man or woman booking holidays to Mallorca. They appear divorced from everyday realities but sometimes they can be important, and what April Rinne deals in is important.
The notion of the collaborative or sharing economy is simple enough. You have something to share - let's say it's an apartment that you own - and someone wants to take up your offer. This is an economy that has always been with us, but technology has vastly expanded its potential, so much so that - at its most extreme -what you might have to share can be shared with anyone from anywhere. Middlemen cease to exist. All that is needed is a facilitator, a third party which enables the sharer to be in touch with his or her potential market. This is the world of P2P, peer to peer or people to people. This is the world of Airbnb property sharing, Uber car sharing and many others.
Rinne has made an observation which sums up the rise of P2P. It has taken Airbnb, the world's leading internet portal for tourist property rental, just six years to reach a level of users (customers) that Hilton needed over 90 years to attain. It is a stark observation of the battle between hotels and private accommodation that is going on across the globe and so not just in Mallorca, and it is a battle which, despite moves to legislate, appears to be one that the hotels cannot win. Rinne believes that the onslaught from the likes of Airbnb has only just begun.
Confronted with this competition - typically decried by the hoteliers as "unfair" - how can hotels fight back? A clue as to how they can lies with understanding the appeal of P2P and the apparent shifts in consumer thinking and behaviour, in particular those of the so-called Millennial generation. Tourism, according to accepted P2P wisdom, is about personalisation, about "experiences", about contact with local people in destinations. It is the depersonalised nature of hotels which turns the traveller on to a P2P "experience" and which also deters those Millennials who supposedly are also interested principally in experiences.
Of course, much of this sounds and often is marketing gobbledegook, but there is nevertheless a good deal of truth about depersonalisation and especially that which comes with the package holiday. This said, hotels have woken up to the need for greater personalisation and also to the need for "experiences". Many can't help telling potential clients about the experiences that await them or shoehorning them in to brand sloganising. And it is this branding which holds the key for hotels and, more importantly, tour operators.
Experiences and personalisation have become the hotelier and tour operator zeitgeist as has the need for branding and so brand loyalty, but in emphasising the brand, tour operators and indeed some hotel chains shift the focus away from the destination. What is being sold, therefore, is the brand, and where it is located is secondary. A consequence is that loyalty to the destination, be it Mallorca, its individual resorts is potentially loosened. And experiences and personalisation for the P2P traveller can also undermine specific destinations. These travellers place a premium on the social-media aspect of sharing information and recommendations. If they are for somewhere other than Mallorca, then so be it.
The importance of these trends can be over-exaggerated. The traditional package holiday, for instance, and despite repeated reports of its death, is not about to disappear any time soon. But they are trends which cannot be ignored and so make it imperative that Mallorca acts to confirm and reinforce tourist loyalty to it.
There was a statement the other day that the "summer sells itself". Well yes, it does, but to believe, against the background of these trends, that "selling" is not required is wrongheaded. It is needed as never before, and so Mallorca needs its own assault, one it is currently failing to deliver, that of loyalty building through social media. And, moreover, it is an assault that needs to embrace, not deny, the P2P revolution.
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