The Airbnb Duality

Is Airbnb good or bad for a city? In this episode we talk about: - How Airbnb makes travel easier - The difference between intention and economic effect - The economics of a tourist destination - Gentrification - Bad Airbnb experiences - Our experiences both running and living in Airbnbs 🏠🏢 Detailed Show Notes (0:00) Preamble (2:30) Intro to Airbnb and the topic (3:10) Cleaning fees are ridiculous! (4:45) The Seller Experience (8:00) Benefits and economics & challenges (11:40) Seasonality of the trade (13:00) False hopes, trickery & exploitation (14:45) Short term vs long term impact (15:55) A fringe income stream to finance other purchases (17:20) Externalities and knock-on effects (18:20) Investing and how the pandemic impacted those investors (20:14) How does city culture get impacted? Does it cause gentrification? (22:17) Urbanization, wealth migration and the forces that interact with tourism (23:47) Changes in Bo-kaap (25:31) Movement dynamics in and out of cities and the future directions for Airbnb (27:02) Infrastructure considerations for distributed living, impacts on neighborhoods, towns and sense-of-place. (31:13) Tourism during the pandemic and before, skiing season (33:10) What oversight do we need for Airbnb? Herman has some thoughts (35:04) Jason has some thoughts, income and wealth inequality. (37:35) Distributing new apartments to locals, effect for service economy, what it's like in Aspen.