How Airbnb is Killing Cities—The Unseen Costs of the Sharing Economy: Data, Voices, and Uncomfortable Realities
Examining the unseen costs of the sharing economy, exploring how Airbnb transforms cities—fueling housing crises, eroding communities, and turning vibrant neighborhoods into commercialized zones for profit.
As cities around the world confront mounting pressures on housing, livability, and identity, it has become essential to examine the forces reshaping urban environments—not just from above, but from within. This article takes a critical look at Airbnb, a platform once celebrated for its promise to democratize travel, and now increasingly associated with housing scarcity, displacement, gentrification, and weakened civic cohesion. By unpacking the unseen costs of the so-called sharing economy, the article explores how short-term rental platforms transform homes into commodities, accelerate urban inequality, and quietly erode the cultural and social fabric that defines great cities. From Lisbon to New York, and from Cape Town to Marseille, the evidence shows that these changes are not isolated—but systemic.
At OHK, we believe that cities are not just physical spaces—they are living systems made up of relationships, memories, and shared responsibilities. Our work in urban regeneration, housing policy, and planning prioritizes equitable, sustainable, and community-driven approaches to growth. We share this article not to vilify technology or tourism, but to provoke a more grounded, honest conversation about urban futures. This piece is part of a broader inquiry by OHK into how digital platforms impact spatial justice and local resilience. It reflects our commitment to supporting cities that serve residents first, where innovation aligns with dignity and place. We hope this piece sparks dialogue among policymakers, planners, and citizens—and helps reframe urban development around fairness, transparency, and long-term belonging.
Reading Time: 15 min.
From Idealistic Beginnings to Investor Takeover: How Airbnb’s Sharing Economy Turned Into a Global Shadow Hotel Network and its Role in Displacement and the Housing Crisis
This striking photo from Marseille’s historic Le Panier district captures raw civic dissent: the message “Airbnb dehors” (“Airbnb out”) boldly spray‑painted on a weathered door. More than decoration, this graffiti is a political intervention—an act of resistance by residents calling for protection of their homes and communities. Marseille’s city government reports that over 10% of housing units in Le Panier have been converted into short‑term rentals, exacerbating rental pressure and sparking protests. The visual power of this image lies in its combination of everyday architecture—old wood panels, cobblestone streets—with an unapologetic stencil of outrage. It illustrates that Airbnb’s impact is not just economic or abstract; it manifests physically in neighborhoods where locals feel displaced and erased. The paint is a public outscream: a demand that cities reconsider who urban space is actually for, locals or tourists. This photograph deeply reinforces our views on community breakdown, civic backlash, and the growing visibility of grassroots protest.
Airbnb launched in 2008 with a compelling promise: to help people rent out unused rooms, foster cultural exchange, and make travel more accessible. Framed as a “sharing economy” success story, the platform quickly gained praise for empowering homeowners and democratizing tourism. But beneath that origin story lies a very different reality—one that has rapidly evolved into a commercial enterprise dominated by professional hosts, investment portfolios, and real estate speculation. Rather than being driven by spare-room hosts or casual renters, the majority of Airbnb’s profits today stem from multi-property operators. This shift has turned a peer-to-peer platform into what many critics now call a “shadow hotel industry”—one that competes with traditional hotels while sidestepping regulation, safety codes, labor protections, and taxes.
The consequences are measurable. In Canada, a landmark 2023 study by McGill University revealed that Airbnb had removed 14,000 homes from the long-term rental market in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. This accounted for over 3% of the total housing stock in those cities and more than 10% of purpose-built rental units in some central neighborhoods. These losses occurred in areas already facing affordability crises—turning Airbnb from a convenience into a catalyst of displacement. In London, short-term rentals (STRs) have absorbed approximately 1.4% of the entire city’s housing supply, with concentrations reaching as high as 20% in certain boroughs. The effect is especially acute in zones with uniform flat typologies, where conversions to STRs are both easy and lucrative. These same neighborhoods are experiencing skyrocketing rents and reduced availability of long-term leases.
New York City faces a similar situation. Research from McGill’s Urban Politics and Governance Lab and data published in 2022 estimate that between 7,000 and 13,500 housing units have been withdrawn from residential use due to Airbnb activity. In some cases, these units are being listed year-round, functionally removing them from the city’s rental inventory. As housing stock tightens, rents increase. In fact, academic modeling has linked STR growth with annual rent increases of $380 to $700 per household in key NYC districts. The core issue is not just volume—it’s velocity. These platforms enable rapid conversion of residential properties into tourism inventory, creating a parallel hospitality economy with no built-in checks or local investment obligations. And as more homes become listings, neighborhoods lose their residents, social networks fracture, and cities become less livable for the very people who sustain them.
When rental supply shrinks, rents go up—and fast. Across diverse geographies, the data reveals a consistent pattern: the unchecked proliferation of short-term rentals damages long-term rental supply, destabilizes housing markets, and undermines local economic resilience. Whether in global cities or small towns, the result is the same—STR growth comes at the expense of sustainable, equitable housing.
Mounting Pressure: How Short-Term Rentals Drive Rents, Protests, and Industry Disruption Across Cities
This photo from Barcelona’s June 2024 protests captures residents in active defiance, confronting the city’s short-term rental crisis with handmade signs and symbolic water pistols—a vivid display of frustration, using satire and symbolism to protest the city’s overwhelming tourist saturation. This captures a growing civic movement to reclaim housing and public life from the pressures of short-term rentals and mass tourism. This moment reflects not just local discontent, but a broader European reckoning with platforms that displace communities under the guise of economic opportunity. Buildings in neighborhoods like El Born and Gràcia feature Airbnb listings that promise “Instagrammable” authenticity—while erasing real local culture. Their interior speaks to a phenomenon where once working-class streets are repurposed as visitor bread-and-breakfast venues. The visual contrast between local texture and curated design underscores how neighborhoods morph into boutique showcases, without the communities that originally brought them to life.
Across global cities and small towns alike, Airbnb and similar STR platforms are being directly linked to spiraling housing costs, rising protest movements, and growing disruption to traditional hospitality industries. Though marketed as a means to empower individuals and diversify accommodation options, the data points to a sharp, systemic distortion in urban housing economics—impacting both residents and industries on a broad scale. Take Barcelona, one of Europe’s most visited cities. According to official municipal data and analysis reported in The Financial Times (2024), rents have surged by 68% over the past decade. City officials, including Mayor Jaume Collboni, have explicitly connected this crisis to the proliferation of STRs—more than 10,000 active listings holding housing stock off the market. This figure represents a significant segment of the city’s livable residential units, particularly in neighborhoods like the Gothic Quarter and El Raval.
The public response has become increasingly visible. In June 2024, a wave of street-level protests made headlines as Barcelona residents marched with banners and even water pistols, symbolically confronting tourists and calling out the platform’s role in pushing housing prices up by 30% or more in the city’s core. That same year, Barcelona welcomed 15.5 million tourists—a number many locals argue the city cannot sustainably support given its housing strain and civic burden. The issue isn’t confined to megacities. In Sedona, Arizona—a small town of under 10,000 residents—lifting restrictions on STRs led to home prices doubling within just a few years. According to reporting by Wired (2023), this shift fueled homelessness, displaced essential workers, and created teacher shortages. Local officials described the economic incentive to convert homes to STRs as “overwhelming,” making long-term rentals virtually nonexistent.
Meanwhile, the broader U.S. hospitality sector is also feeling the squeeze. A national study of 10 hotel markets found that increasing Airbnb supply cut hotel metrics in markets like Austin, Texas—where Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR), Average Daily Rate (ADR), and occupancy all fell by 8–10%. These aren’t just statistical losses; they translate into cutbacks in labor, downward pressure on wages, and eroded standards across the hospitality sector. These numbers—spread across continents and city scales—point to a shared conclusion: the rise of STRs is fundamentally reconfiguring housing markets and urban economies. Whether it’s teacher displacement in Arizona, hotel losses in Austin, or civil unrest in Catalonia, the costs are mounting, and they are no longer invisible.
Leadership, Lawmaking, and Local Resistance: How Cities and Citizens Are Pushing Back Against Airbnb’s Urban Footprint
Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (often called "HoMa") has been one of Montreal’s most active neighborhoods in resisting Airbnb-driven gentrification. Local activists and tenant groups have vocally opposed the arrival of short-term rentals, especially in new developments where units are priced beyond reach for long-time residents. Spray-painted across a newly built window in this Montreal working-class district, the words “PAS D’AIRBNB ICI”—“No Airbnb Here”—express a growing sentiment of local resistance against the platform’s encroachment into residential neighborhoods. Long at the forefront of Canada's housing justice movement, Montrealers have mobilized against the spread of investor-owned STRs that displace tenants, inflate rents, and erode neighborhood cohesion. While municipal and provincial governments have taken steps to regulate short-term rentals—including principal-residence rules and registration requirements—enforcement remains uneven. In this vacuum, residents have turned to direct action and street-level messaging to assert their right to housing and place. This image is emblematic of a wider shift: citizens across global cities are no longer waiting for top-down reform. They are making their voices visible—on glass, on walls, in council chambers, and through collective action. Cities like Montreal are not only sites of disruption—they’re becoming laboratories for democratic reclamation and spatial justice.
As the urban fallout from short-term rentals grows harder to ignore, city leaders, housing advocates, and community organizers are increasingly stepping up to confront Airbnb’s role in fueling housing crises. From elected officials to grassroots movements, a shared message is emerging: the unregulated growth of Airbnb and its investor-dominated model is incompatible with the long-term health of cities The urgency in their tone reflect cities pushed to the brink by over-tourism and housing scarcity.
In New York City, a place facing similar affordability challenges, housing advocates have echoed these concerns. In testimony cited by Inside Airbnb and McGill’s UPGo Lab, Paula Z. Segal, Senior Staff Attorney at the Urban Justice Center, warned: “Airbnb continues to contribute to the exacerbation of New York City’s housing crisis by providing another vehicle for the displacement of long‑term residents… If New York City is serious about preserving affordable housing… it must step up enforcement against Airbnb.” Her comments reflect a broader concern: that platform-based deregulation is accelerating the displacement of working-class tenants, undermining decades of housing justice efforts. Boston has served as a notable battleground in this debate. In 2020, City Councilor Michelle Wu—who later became mayor—championed new legislation to ban investor-owned STR units, require platform registration, and mandate data-sharing with the city. Airbnb launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to derail the reforms, including targeted digital ads and policy pressure. But Wu and her colleagues held firm, enacting some of the country’s most progressive STR laws. The ordinance drew national attention and became a model for other cities seeking to curb commercial short-term rental abuse while still permitting casual hosting. Outside city halls, resistance has gone street-level. In Barcelona, protest groups like the Neighbourhoods Assembly for Tourism Degrowth have vocally opposed the commodification of urban space. Speaking to Business Insider in 2024, spokesperson Daniel Pardo Rivacoba summarized the stakes bluntly: “When they say we have to specialize in tourism, they are basically telling us that you have to get poorer so that other people can get richer.”
These quotes captures the essence of the struggle—between global tourism platforms profiting from urban space, and residents who are losing access to their own cities. What unites these voices—mayors, attorneys, activists—is a belief that cities must be designed for residents, not algorithms. And as housing affordability plummets, these voices are no longer isolated—they’re leading a growing urban coalition for accountability, fairness, and the right to remain.
Airbnb Pushes Back: Defending Its Role Amid Growing Criticism and Urban Housing Turmoil—Scapegoat or Strategist? Defending Its Brand While Quietly Reshaping City Politics
The battle over Airbnb’s place in the urban housing ecosystem has been ongoing for more than a decade—nowhere more visibly than in New York City. Since the early 2010s, lawmakers, residents, and platform advocates have clashed over how short-term rentals affect affordability, housing availability, and neighborhood stability. The 2026 protests, organized by the New York Host Clubs, came just days after the then Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation prohibiting short-term rentals of unoccupied apartments for fewer than 30 days. Framing the law as a threat to the “sharing economy,” about 50 Airbnb hosts rallied outside the governor’s office, delivering more than 80,000 messages of support and calling for a meeting to “distinguish illegal hotel operators from everyday New Yorkers.” Proponents of the law, however, emphasized that the issue was not personal home-sharing but the conversion of permanent housing stock into commercial STR operations. “Airbnb is concerned about tourists, we’re concerned about permanent New Yorkers,” said Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal. The law, she argued, aimed to reclaim housing lost to commercial listings, not punish residents trying to make ends meet. This protest reveals Airbnb’s dual role—not just as a digital platform, but as a political actor capable of organizing grassroots-style mobilization. It also foreshadows the company’s ongoing strategy: to frame regulation as an attack on individual freedom rather than a tool of housing policy. As cities like NYC continue to tighten oversight, this moment stands as an early flashpoint in a larger global reckoning over the commodification of housing—and who gets to define home. In the photo, on the left, housing advocates and tenant groups protest Airbnb’s impact on affordability and displacement. On the right, Airbnb hosts and supporters rally in defense of home-sharing rights. The standoff reflects a deeper tension between platform promises and urban realities—between tech-driven flexibility and the fight for stable, affordable housing in one of the world’s most contested rental markets.
As criticism of Airbnb’s urban impact mounts—from protests in Barcelona to regulatory crackdowns in New York and Boston—the company has stepped forward with a counter-narrative: it is not the cause of the housing crisis, but a scapegoat for larger structural failures. In interviews and public statements, Airbnb executives have repeatedly argued that blaming their platform overlooks the real culprits—namely, inadequate housing production, restrictive zoning, and outdated regulatory frameworks. Speaking to Business Insider and The Guardian in June 2025, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky directly addressed the backlash in Barcelona. He said: “In Barcelona, housing prices rose 60% over the past decade, but Airbnb listings actually decreased. So we can't be the culprits … Airbnb has become a convenient scapegoat for a failed policy and deep, long-standing housing issues.” Chesky’s statement reflects the company’s central talking point: that the housing crisis in major cities is not a result of Airbnb’s presence, but of a failure to build enough new homes to accommodate growing demand. He has emphasized that Airbnb supports “targeted regulations” that distinguish between casual hosts and large-scale investors, arguing that smart oversight can preserve both tourism income and community stability.
Theo Yedinsky, Airbnb’s Global Policy Vice President, reinforced this narrative by noting that hotels still dominate the tourism sector in Europe. In his 2025 remarks, he claimed that “63–80% of guest nights in Europe are still in hotels,” with Airbnb contributing only a fraction. According to Yedinsky, the platform may actually relieve pressure in overburdened tourist hotspots by distributing travelers across residential zones—allegedly supporting local economies outside the city core. While these arguments carry some weight, critics point out that the issue is not volume alone, but location, duration, and commercial conversion of housing stock. The concern isn’t necessarily how many nights Airbnb accounts for—but how many homes have been withdrawn from the long-term market, particularly in neighborhoods already struggling with affordability. Still, Chesky’s framing has resonated with some policymakers, especially in cities facing housing shortages without robust construction pipelines. Whether this marks a pivot in public discourse or a deflection of responsibility remains hotly debated. What is clear, however, is that Airbnb is no longer avoiding the conversation—it is actively shaping it.
Still, Airbnb’s actions behind the scenes tell a more strategic story. In June 2025, Affordable New York—a political action committee affiliated with Airbnb—spent $1 million on a targeted ad campaign during New York City’s mayoral primary. The ads directly attacked Democratic candidates Zohran Mamdani, Scott Stringer, and Brad Lander for supporting stronger short-term rental restrictions, accusing them of opposing “common-sense solutions” to affordability. The campaign coincided with Airbnb’s efforts to regain market access in New York following the implementation of Local Law 18, which resulted in a 90% drop in active listings after it went into effect in September 2023. While Airbnb’s leadership continues to publicly endorse regulation, the company’s political spending—aimed at reshaping electoral outcomes in one of its most heavily restricted markets—suggests a deeper intention: to influence policymaking not just through cooperation, but through electoral leverage.
Regulating the Unruly: How Cities Are Wrestling Control Back from Airbnb’s Political and Economic Reach
As Airbnb’s global footprint expands, cities around the world have scrambled to catch up—often belatedly—with regulation. The result is a patchwork of legal frameworks, resistance from the platform, and an increasingly high-stakes contest over who gets to shape urban space: democratic institutions or private tech platforms. What was once billed as a peer-to-peer sharing tool has, in the eyes of many regulators, become a commercial force with outsized influence over housing markets and policymaking itself. In New York City, the battle between municipal authority and platform power reached a new level in 2023. While New York first passed legislation to curb illegal short-term rentals in 2016, enforcement remained limited. By 2023, the city had moved from symbolic regulation to active platform accountability—through new registration laws and real-time compliance systems. In response, Airbnb escalated its political lobbying, revealing how far it had shifted from a home-sharing startup to a commercial force influencing local governance. Airbnb didn’t back down quietly. According to Politico and other sources, the company launched a $1 million digital ad campaign supporting pro-Airbnb mayoral candidates—part of a $5 million super PAC fund designed to influence public perception and future city leadership. This level of political lobbying, more typical of oil or tobacco giants, raised alarm among housing advocates and transparency groups.
In Barcelona, by contrast, the local government has taken one of the most aggressive stands in Europe. As of 2023, the city ordered the removal of 66,000 illegal Airbnb listings and announced its intention to eliminate all 10,000 licensed short-term rentals by 2028. Mayor Jaume Collboni framed the decision not as anti-tourism, but as pro-housing, insisting that residential stock must prioritize locals, not tourists. The move has drawn both praise and threats of legal pushback from hosts and real estate lobbyists. Boston adopted a more surgical approach. Under the leadership of then-City Councilor (now Mayor), the city enacted a law requiring STRs to be owner-occupied, with strict registration requirements. Airbnb responded with aggressive lobbying, funded ad campaigns, and attempted legal challenges, but the law ultimately held—becoming a precedent for cities seeking to block commercial operators while preserving occasional hosting by residents. In Florence, the historic Italian city took a preservationist stance. In 2023, officials banned all new short-term rental licenses in the UNESCO-protected historic core. The rationale was simple but powerful: protecting architectural and cultural integrity from the churn of tourist turnover and real estate speculation.
Even Canada, often seen as more platform-friendly, began shifting course. By 2022, a combination of provincial and municipal regulations had cut Airbnb listings in half across major cities like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. The Conference Board of Canada reported that STRs contributed to under 1 percentage point of the 30% rental growth between 2016 and 2022—a modest but still measurable effect. What mattered more was how STRs deepened pressure in already-tight neighborhoods and accelerated investor-led conversions of multifamily buildings. Collectively, these battles reveal a deeper story—not just of enforcement, but of control. Cities are not just regulating Airbnb—they are fighting to reassert democratic oversight over urban housing markets, often against the influence of a multibillion-dollar corporation with a vested interest in shaping the rules.
Neighborhoods Without Neighbors: How Airbnb Fuels Community Erosion and Cultural Displacement in Historic Cities
Per Airbtics and AirDNA, as of March 11, 2025, there were 7,952 active Airbnb listings in Venice, with a median occupancy rate of 75% and an estimated €41,000 in average annual revenue per host between February 2024 and January 2025. Airbnb dominates the short-term rental landscape, accounting for approximately 73% of market share out of 11,330 vacation rental listings across the Veneto region. Despite the city’s fragile housing market and overtourism concerns, regulation remains fragmented and enforcement weak. While local authorities have introduced caps and pushed for host registration, loopholes and under-resourced enforcement mechanisms have allowed many commercial operators to continue operating with impunity. This regulatory lag has led to a de facto hotelization of residential units—exacerbating affordability crises and pushing long-term residents out of the historic city. Airbnb’s reach now outstrips that of traditional hotels in both availability and economic impact. With more than 60% of tourist beds, Airbnb is a dominant presence in the lodging market—far beyond its origins as supplementary offerings. Hotel beds are capped: no new hotels have been permitted in Venice’s historic center since 2017 while STR listings continue to grow—often unregulated. As a result, nearly two tourists share a bed in an Airbnb for each hotel bed, indicating how short-term rentals have become the default accommodation, pressuring infrastructure and local housing.
As short-term rentals expand in cities around the world, the consequences extend far beyond housing statistics. What Airbnb changes—often invisibly at first—is the lived experience of the neighborhood. The presence of transience becomes the absence of community. What used to be cohesive, walkable, relationship-based environments begin to unravel into curated sets for revolving visitors. When STRs dominate a block or district, essential services often disappear. Grocery stores are replaced by souvenir stands, laundromats by luggage lockers, corner cafés by Instagram-friendly brunch spots. Businesses that once served residents shift to serve tourists. This transformation might seem innocuous at first—new life, new capital—but its true cost becomes evident over time.
Long-term neighbors vanish. Renters are priced out. Building entryways that once hosted greetings or neighborhood gossip now echo with the sound of rolling suitcases. The constant turnover erodes trust, familiarity, and the fabric of place. Residents don’t just lose homes—they lose relationships, routines, and the grounding sense of continuity that defines city life. The emotional toll is visible in the backlash. Across Europe and beyond, graffiti with slogans like “Tourists go home” or “This is not a hotel” has emerged as a form of street protest. These messages are often mischaracterized as xenophobic or anti-visitor. In truth, they reflect civic exhaustion—a plea for balance, dignity, and spatial justice. They say: this was a home, not a commodity. In cities like Barcelona, Venice, and Lisbon, such public outcry has become a familiar urban feature. Locals are not only priced out but pushed into alienation—watching their communities dissolve as new “residents” arrive every weekend, cameras in hand, unaware of what used to be. This erosion is harder to quantify than rent prices or occupancy taxes, but perhaps more devastating.
When a city loses its sense of belonging, it loses more than shelter—it loses its soul.
Airbnb and the New Digital Landlords: How Platform Capitalism Reinforces Inequality in Urban Neighborhoods
On the surface, Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn (seen in photo below) still carries the hallmarks of its cultural heritage: historic brownstones, street-level commerce, and deep-rooted community. But beneath that surface lies a battleground over housing, equity, and the platform economy. In a neighborhood where 75% of residents rent—and where the median home value now exceeds $1.1 million—the influx of investment capital and platform-driven property management has redrawn the rules of access. As new digital landlords acquire multi-unit buildings through LLCs, short-term rental platforms like Airbnb quietly convert residential housing into tourist infrastructure. For many longtime residents, the struggle isn’t just against rising rents—it’s against the algorithmic logic that favors scale, visibility, and liquidity over rootedness, equity, and community. The disparity is visible at every intersection: where public housing faces neglect across the street from luxuriously renovated STR properties; where rent-burdened families live next door to transient guests they’ll never meet. Bed-Stuy, once a symbol of Black homeownership and urban resilience, now embodies the new tension of digital gentrification—where neighborhoods are reshaped not just by who moves in, but by who profits invisibly from every empty room.
The promise of the sharing economy was simple: open access, equal opportunity, and democratized income. But Airbnb’s operating reality paints a very different picture—one of consolidation, privilege, and algorithmic inequality. As the platform has matured, its rewards have shifted dramatically toward those with the capital and positioning to scale. A significant portion of Airbnb’s revenue is generated by multi-listing hosts, many of whom operate professionally, controlling portfolios of homes across cities. This isn’t informal “spare room” renting—it’s a digital landlord class running mini hotel empires, often beyond the reach of local tenant laws, union labor, or tax parity. The result is a new form of wealth concentration: urban rental profits extracted by a few, while displacement burdens many.
The disparities are especially stark in New York City, where platform equity data lays bare the racialized structure of Airbnb’s impact. According to a 2019 report by Inside Airbnb and Business Insider, in historically Black neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem, 74% of Airbnb hosts were white. Yet white hosts earned 530% more than their proportional share of the local population. In raw numbers, white hosts generated approximately $159.7 million, while Black hosts earned just $48.3 million. The report concluded that Airbnb was effectively transferring income-generating housing stock from local communities of color to outside investors and white hosts with greater digital visibility and financial flexibility. This pattern is not unique to New York. In many cities, high-income hosts dominate search results due to platform design and performance algorithms, while lower-income, minority, or immigrant hosts are algorithmically marginalized. Without transparency, these systems reinforce systemic bias under the guise of neutrality.
Policy analysts and urban economists increasingly agree: Airbnb doesn’t just reflect economic inequality—it amplifies it. By rewarding scale, concealing true ownership, and resisting progressive regulation, the platform accelerates the transformation of housing from a human right into an investment asset.
The Hidden Costs of Airbnb Tourism: Informal Labor, Declining Hotel Standards, and Infrastructure Strain
This image captures two defining symbols of Airbnb’s quiet transformation of urban labor: the wall-mounted key lockbox, and the off-the-books cleaner stepping through an unmarked doorway. Together, they represent the rise of a shadow hospitality economy—one with no front desk, no formal contracts, and minimal oversight. As short-term rentals scale across cities, the infrastructure of access becomes detached from any traditional model of hotel regulation. Entry is granted by code, labor arrives invisibly, and entire apartment cycles turn over without ever touching formal employment systems. The cleaner here is not part of a union, does not report to HR, and likely lacks access to healthcare, job security, or standardized pay. She represents a growing class of informal workers sustaining Airbnb’s daily operations—resetting rooms, laundering sheets, disposing of trash, and maintaining properties owned by distant investors. For many, the convenience of self-check-in masks the externalization of hospitality costs onto an invisible workforce. Behind every “authentic stay” lies a quiet, extractive chain: anonymous hosts, digital platforms, and gig labor filling the gaps once regulated. This is Airbnb’s real disruption—not just where we stay, but who works, under what conditions, and who pays the price.
As short-term rentals have grown into a global phenomenon, their impacts on tourism economies are proving more corrosive than initially anticipated. Airbnb and similar platforms often advertise themselves as "democratizing" travel—offering budget-conscious travelers unique experiences outside the hotel district. But behind the marketing lies a pattern of deep disruption to the formal hospitality industry and the labor force it supports. In cities like Austin, Texas, where tourism is a major driver of the local economy, STR expansion has dramatically undercut hotel pricing power. These declines have had direct consequences on job security and wages for hotel workers.
The competition has not only affected businesses—it has also degraded labor standards. As demand shifts from regulated hotels to informal rentals, the nature of hospitality work becomes more precarious. Cleaners, maintenance workers, and hosts are often hired off-the-books through gig platforms, with little to no access to health insurance, paid leave, or workplace protections. There are no front desks, no HR departments—just phone numbers and flexible contracts that favor owners, not workers. Meanwhile, the cities that host this tourism growth are often left with the bill. Tourist-heavy neighborhoods—many of which were not built to handle high guest turnover—see increased noise complaints, garbage overflow, traffic congestion, and emergency service calls. Yet the public revenue typically generated by the hotel industry—occupancy taxes, safety inspections, tourism levies—is frequently evaded by unlicensed STRs or unregistered hosts. In effect, cities subsidize tourism without the financial tools to manage it.
This is not a new form of hospitality—it is a new form of externalized cost. As Airbnb’s reach expands, urban tourism becomes cheaper for the visitor, but more expensive for the city, the worker, and the neighborhood itself.
Invisible Pressure: How Short-Term Rentals Undermine Urban Infrastructure and Accelerate Environmental Stress
This photo was taken in front of a residential building fully converted by an investor into short-term rental units. Although Airbnb markets itself as an affordable alternative to hotels, many listings—particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods—are not cheaper. In fact, they’re often more expensive per night, with one key difference: they frequently pack in more people per unit. A single apartment might house six or more guests, thanks to bunk beds, pull-out sofas, and flexible group accommodations that hotels rarely permit. The result is an amplified environmental footprint: more showers, more trash, more food packaging, more noise—without any of the service infrastructure hotels are required to provide. Waste like what’s pictured here isn’t caused by local families or long-term tenants, but by high-density, high-turnover use that shifts maintenance costs to the city. Meanwhile, many of these units evade occupancy taxes, skirt recycling rules, and bypass inspections. This isn’t just casual home-sharing—it’s a commercial hospitality system without civic accountability, and the sidewalks are showing it.
While the economic and housing effects of short-term rentals are well-documented, their environmental and infrastructural impacts are less visible—but no less severe. As STRs proliferate across city centers and residential zones, they quietly undermine the systems that keep cities livable, efficient, and sustainable. At the heart of the issue is reduced full-time occupancy. In neighborhoods flooded with tourist listings, residents are displaced or priced out, leaving many buildings either vacant midweek or constantly changing hands. The result is erratic usage patterns that disrupt planning for key services. Public transport routes, utilities, garbage collection schedules, and even school district enrollment become difficult to manage when the actual population fluctuates weekly. Cities are built around predictability—but STRs introduce volatility.
This volatility extends to the streets themselves. Tourist congestion on residential roads increases emissions, traffic, and noise, particularly in neighborhoods never designed for heavy turnover. In places like Paris’ Marais or Rome’s Trastevere, formerly quiet streets have become choked with taxis, luggage wheels, and double-parked vans. Local residents are left with longer commutes, degraded air quality, and a diminished sense of neighborhood privacy. Recognizing this strain, several historic cities have begun to act. In 2023, Florence banned all new STR licenses in its UNESCO-protected historic center, citing overtourism and cultural dilution. Similarly, cities like Dubrovnik, Prague, and Amsterdam have enforced zoning limits or nightly caps on STRs in areas with fragile infrastructure or heritage value. These policies are not anti-tourism—they are pro-balance. They aim to preserve the character, livability, and functionality of cities whose infrastructure is being overwhelmed by unregulated visitor flows.
In the absence of STR regulation, cities lose more than affordable housing—they lose planning coherence, environmental stability, and the ability to serve those who live there year-round.
Policy Pushback and Civic Power: How Cities and Communities Are Reclaiming the Urban Housing Landscape
Protesters took to the streets of Barcelona’s Eixample district in June 2025, staging a symbolic “water-gun eviction” outside Airbnb properties to denounce the city’s ongoing housing crisis and the hollowing out of local life. Armed not with banners alone but with spectacle and symbolism, demonstrators are part of a growing grassroots movement reclaiming the city block by block. This moment captures more than frustration—it signals the rising confidence of communities to challenge the platform economy on their own terms. Backed by new laws, data transparency, and mounting civic resolve, Barcelona is no longer asking Airbnb to adjust—it’s telling it to retreat.
After more than a decade of unregulated growth, cities are starting to fight back. Across the globe, a mix of legal reforms, data transparency, and civic mobilization is beginning to reverse the worst effects of Airbnb-fueled disruption. These fixes aren’t uniform, nor are they complete—but they represent a turning point: an urban reclaiming of housing, heritage, and public oversight. In Barcelona, where tourism saturation and housing pressure sparked some of the earliest mass protests, officials have committed to a bold course of action. As of 2023, the city has already removed 66,000 illegal Airbnb listings and has announced that all short-term rental permits will be phased out by 2028. The message from Mayor Jaume Collboni is clear: the city’s housing must serve residents before visitors.
Boston has followed a more regulatory model. Under the leadership of now-Mayor, the city passed laws restricting STRs to primary residences only and mandated platform registration. Perhaps more importantly, enforcement was scaled up through dedicated compliance units, ensuring that rules weren’t just symbolic, but actionable. Airbnb pushed back with legal threats and lobbying, but Boston held firm, setting a precedent that other U.S. cities have begun to study closely. In Florence, city officials instituted a total freeze on new STR licenses in the UNESCO-protected historic core, citing the erosion of community life and cultural value. Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal have introduced strict caps, principal-residency rules, and taxation models aimed at keeping residential housing off the STR market. These policies, though often hard-won, have led to tangible reductions in listing volume and pressure on the long-term rental market.
Beyond city halls, civic actors are leading the charge. Organizations like Inside Airbnb use public data to map host behavior, ownership concentration, and racial disparities, equipping journalists and policymakers with evidence for reform. Tenant unions, legal aid networks, and city watchdogs amplify these findings through grassroots organizing and legal interventions. In cities like Boston, Barcelona, and New York, the combination of official regulation and sustained civic pressure is starting to shift the narrative—from passive adaptation to active reclamation. These movements show that cities are not powerless. With the right tools, coalitions, and courage, they can shape a future where homes remain homes, and the public good is no longer outsourced to platform logic.
Designing the Post-Airbnb City: A Vision for Equitable, Sustainable, and Resident-Centered Urban Futures
Since 2017, Portland, Maine’s short-term rental (STR) laws have undergone a significant evolution—from loosely regulated registration to a tightly controlled and actively enforced framework aimed at preserving housing affordability and residential integrity. Initially, the city introduced a basic requirement for all STRs to register annually, pay fees, and comply with fire safety standards, but it imposed no limits on the number or type of units. By 2018, in response to growing concerns about rental inflation, voters approved a rent control measure that capped annual rate increases for both long-term and short-term rentals, tying them to inflation and fixing baseline prices to mid-2020 levels. The city soon added a cap on non-owner-occupied STRs on the mainland, limiting them to 400 units, though enforcement lagged and the actual number of listings surged beyond this target. Recognizing the loopholes and rising pressure on the housing market, Portland’s City Council revised the policy again in 2023–2024, lowering the cap to around 270–300 non-owner STR licenses—approximately 1.5% of the city’s rental stock—and freezing new applications until numbers fell below that threshold. At the same time, officials carved out new incentives to stimulate affordable housing construction, such as exempting accessory dwelling units (ADUs) from the cap for five years to encourage more flexible, long-term options. Today, non-owner STRs are strictly limited, owner-occupied units are still permitted with annual registration, and the entire system is governed by mandatory compliance, rent control, and an explicit policy shift away from speculative tourism use. Portland’s approach reflects a city recalibrating in real time—adapting its laws to counter unintended consequences and moving toward a vision of regulated, resident-first urban housing. Portland is a policy success story in STR regulation—not because it “solved” the Airbnb problem outright, but because it demonstrated responsive governance, civic engagement, and a willingness to enforce STR rules in alignment with housing goals. That alone sets it apart from most U.S. cities still stuck in reactive or symbolic approaches.
As cities around the world grapple with the cascading consequences of unregulated short-term rentals, a deeper question emerges: what kind of cities do we want to build—and for whom? The damage caused by Airbnb isn’t just about listings or rent prices—it’s about a long erosion of civic vision, where homes became inventory, neighborhoods became brands, and public policy lagged behind profit. But the future is not fixed. Around the globe, planners, policymakers, residents, and researchers are beginning to articulate a new paradigm: one that reclaims urban life as something more than a commercial asset.
First, cities must limit short-term rentals to primary residences. This single measure would preserve hosting as an occasional side income for residents, while eliminating full-time investor conversions that hollow out communities. Second, platforms like Airbnb must be compelled to share granular data with city governments—including listing addresses, ownership structures, and host behavior—to enable proper enforcement, zoning compliance, and public accountability. Third, STRs must be taxed like hotels. Occupancy taxes should not be optional, and those funds must be redirected into local infrastructure, public transport, sanitation, and affordable housing to offset the burden tourism places on city services. Fourth, cities should prohibit investor-owned units or corporate portfolios operating under the guise of “hosts.” Housing should serve residents, not just returns. Fifth, resident associations and neighborhood councils must be included in the governance of tourism and urban planning. Those who live in cities deserve a say in how they are shaped. Finally, every STR reform must be paired with a robust public housing investment strategy. Without new long-term housing stock, regulation alone will not solve affordability crises.
These proposals aren’t utopian—they’re actionable. And more importantly, they’re necessary. Cities must move beyond reactive governance and start designing futures rooted in fairness, livability, and the fundamental right to remain.
Cities at a Crossroads—Airbnb 2.0 and the Urban Reckoning: Who Governs the Platform City and Reclaiming Housing, Equity, and Belonging in the Age of Platform Capitalism
As Airbnb pivots toward becoming what its CEO Brian Chesky recently called a 'cross-vertical company'—a platform spanning AI, hospitality, and more—the stakes for cities become even greater. While Chesky teases a new AI-driven future, many municipalities are still untangling the housing and civic disruptions from the platform’s first decade. The problem is no longer just one of scale—it’s one of scope. And unless governance catches up, the next wave of disruption will arrive before the first is even resolved. Airbnb’s next chapter isn’t retreat—it’s reinvention. Airbnb intends to become a “cross-vertical lifestyle platform,” citing Amazon and Apple as models. The company is investing in AI tools like Airbnb Concierge—a super-app that will manage travel, roommates, car rentals, and daily services. Airbnb is already preparing to expand across 100+ cities simultaneously. The risk? Urban governance structures may again be left playing catch-up—only this time, across multiple sectors of public life. This image, captured at the 2024 Skift Global Forum, shows the CEO on screen addressing a room full of industry stakeholders. The session, titled “What’s Next for Airbnb”, marked a public inflection point for the company. But the questions remain: who governs this growth, who bears its burdens, and can cities keep pace with a platform that now aims to shape not just where we travel—but how we live?
Airbnb didn’t just transform global travel—it redefined the spatial, economic, and political logic of cities. What began as a peer-to-peer tool for sharing underused space quickly morphed into a powerful infrastructure for commodifying that space. With scale came distortion: homes became revenue streams, neighborhoods became products, and cities were left to manage the fallout. Behind Airbnb’s feel-good language of “connection” and “belonging” lies a data-backed reality—rising rents, deepening displacement, eroded community ties, and escalating regulatory friction. These impacts are no longer anecdotal. They’re mapped, modeled, and cited in housing policy debates from New York to Lisbon, from Florence to Montreal. They are measured in percentage point rent increases, in the evaporation of long-term leases, in the shuttering of neighborhood schools and small businesses displaced by tourist-serving economies. Across the political spectrum, consensus is emerging: the problem is not the concept of short-term rentals, but the unregulated, investor-driven, and platform-accelerated scale of their implementation.
And this scale is not accidental. It’s engineered—by design, through opaque algorithms, platform incentives, and evasive governance strategies. Airbnb’s dominance is not just a market phenomenon; it’s the product of a regulatory vacuum. The platform has grown in the gaps between outdated zoning laws, weak enforcement, and underfunded municipal systems. And as it now pivots into its next phase—AI-driven services, vertically integrated platforms, global coordination at unprecedented speed—the question is no longer just how cities manage homes. It’s how they manage power. Because Airbnb’s impacts are not merely economic—they are political. Every unlicensed unit, every data point withheld, every lobbying dollar spent is a reminder that platform capitalism is not neutral. It redistributes wealth, reconfigures public space, and erodes the sovereignty of local governance. The platform logic rewards scale, masks ownership, and offloads responsibility—while communities absorb the cost.
The way forward is not to eliminate short-term rentals outright. It’s to reassert public authority. That means capping listings, banning corporate portfolios disguised as individual hosts, and mandating granular data-sharing between platforms and city governments. It means taxing STRs like hotels, funding affordable housing, and expanding long-term options. It means empowering tenant unions, neighborhood councils, and civic watchdogs to sit at the table when the future of housing is debated. Ultimately, it’s about reframing the urban question: Who is the city for? If cities are to survive not as entertainment backdrops or profit engines, but as places where people live, build lives, and form communities, then governance must catch up to innovation. Because the right to the city is not a feature to be toggled. It is a collective claim—a political one—and it must be defended. With policy. With planning. And with the courage to say: homes are not commodities, and platforms do not get to write the future alone.
The right to the city cannot be downloaded, outsourced, or monetized. It must be defended—with policy, with planning, and with the courage to choose people over profit.
At OHK, we help reimagine the future of tourism—balancing growth with equity, and visibility with local value. Our work spans the full tourism ecosystem: from national strategies and regional master plans to zoning reforms, digital tourism mapping, and new economy platform integration. We specialize in crafting frameworks that make tourism legible—through spatial analysis, regulatory design, and community-driven tools that define how tourism shows up, where it belongs, and what it displaces. We map the physical, economic, and digital layers of tourism: where supply chains break down, where mobility patterns overload fragile infrastructure. OHK delivers end-to-end support for destinations seeking resilience, clarity, and long-term returns. Whether facilitating sustainable tourism zones in East Africa, modeling STR impacts on housing in Europe, or supporting regulatory reform in heritage districts across the Mediterranean, we design processes that engage stakeholders, surface trade-offs, and chart viable paths forward. Because in the end, tourism isn’t just an economic sector—it’s a spatial force. One that shapes streetscapes, labor markets, and national identities. At OHK, we help destinations and countries manage that force—creatively, fairly, and transparently. From urban edges to rural gateways, we turn complexity into clarity—so that destinations are not just visited, but governed with foresight, shared purpose, and a strong sense of place. Contact us to learn how we can help you realize the transformation of your city’s most valuable tourism assets.