Airbnb canceled booking, saying city rejected license number

I think this is a good example of how playing the hardline, aggressive &quot;disruptor&quot; can backfire.<p>I&#x27;ve talked to the Airbnb founders a few times, and they&#x27;re probably the most passionate founders I&#x27;ve met. It&#x27;s clear that they believe in their vision 100%, even without the money (just look at their history of self-funding for years before they could attract VC interest).<p>But by refusing to cooperate with cities on some legitimate complaints (like a small number of hosts who own a ton of properties, which is even sketchy to me as a guest), they really brought this hardline pushback on themselves.

Airbnb’s policy is to wait until 10 days before checkin, even when they already know they need to cancel. Same is true for the mountain of Japan cancellations this summer. They won’t tell anyone till 10 days before<p>They think they’re being “aggresive”, hoping that the rules change. But they’re screwing up vacations selfishly<p>&gt; Airbnb – the company, not the hosts of the property – pulled the plug on their week’s stay in San Francisco, 10 days before they were due to arrive.

Cities simply cannot continue having living space rented out for tourists, increasing rent for the residents and worse, removing properties entirely from the residential market.<p>I will be SO glad when AirBnB&#x27;ing an entire apartment as a business is shut down: I try and use it exclusively with private rooms and where it is clearly the host&#x27;s usual home, or it&#x27;s a property that is created specifically for tourism. I also find that in areas where city tourist tax is applied, AirBnB apartments aren&#x27;t much cheaper than hotel rooms: at which point I usually look for a hotel instead if I can get better amenities. In a city like Chicago, where weekend hotels go for $250-300 a night on the low&#x2F;mid end in the Loop, you are still looking at about the same with an AirBnB apartment, once you add service and cleaning fees.<p>Can anyone prove to me, that this isn&#x27;t pushing up rents because landlords and tenants can now afford higher monthly rents knowing they can AirBnB a few weekends or more to cover the higher costs?

It actually seems an odd anecdote to build a story around given that some of the facts seem to be in dispute between the host and Airbnb. Also, while I know San Francisco can get pretty booked up at peak times, it&#x27;s at least surprising that the travelers couldn&#x27;t have found something; it&#x27;s not like their Airbnb reservation was super cheap.<p>I get that a lot of cities are cracking down on Airbnb and this is disrupting some travelers. This just doesn&#x27;t seem like a great example.

So...the property owner had the proper permit and the renter was in direct contact with them which leaves a perfect opportunity to cut out the middle-man (err, middle-person?) and not ruin someone&#x27;s holiday plans.<p>A little over a decade ago I was wandering around Europe for a couple months and only stayed in a proper hotel a couple times, once because I needed an address to ship my luggage the airlines lost and the other because I got into town late and there wasn&#x27;t anyone at the train station hunting for tourists -- every other time as soon as I stepped off the train there were people offering up rooms to rent in private houses for some extra cash on the side. All in all it worked out and I saved a few bucks in the process.

Would take legal steps to get two booking.com apartments removed from our little apartments house, but there is nothing we can do. Guests smoke and bang doors (wooden house amplifies these sounds) and we just have to suck it up.

Title should say: &quot;Cities wreck travellers&#x27; holiday plans as battle with AirBnB intensifies&quot;

And once the RIAA sued Napster, nobody pirated music ever again. The End.