Airbnb has announced that it has teamed up with three hosting agencies in the UK in a bid to make the short-let process easier for owners who want to list their properties.
Airbnb says it will “share hosting best practices, provide additional platform support and enable direct integration” to the three companies - Air Agents, Pass the Keys and BnB Buddy.
The platform says the companies will help owners communicate with guests, will undertake cleaning and co-ordinate check-ins and key exchange. The firms will also offer marketing advice.
“This is the next step in our journey to make hosting easier, offering more benefits and creating a platform for everyone. By continuing to make hosting easier, we hope more hosts and guests will benefit from magical travel experiences, powered by people” says James McClure, general manager of Airbnb in Northern Europe.
Over the coming months, Airbnb will include details of the companies on its website.
The platform emphasises that listings overseen by the companies in London “will remain subject to automated hosting limits and be blocked from sharing homes for more than 90 nights a year, unless hosts have the permits required to share their space more frequently.”
There has been a spate of short let management companies springing up in recent years.
Air Agents is a London-based operator founded in October 2015 by friends Fran Milsom and Mark Hudson after both had travelled South America, staying in holiday rentals and noticing a lack of consistency and quality in the accommodation. The firm manages 200 properties throughout London with plans to increase this to 1,500 by the end of 2018.
BNBbuddy is Scotland’s first established Airbnb management company and one of the first to serve hosts professionally throughout the UK, while London-based Pass The Keys started life in 2015.
Airbnb says that it had 5.9m guests in the UK in 2017 with 168,000 UK homes listed.
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I’m not in anyway an “expert” in short-term lets or Airbnb but I have experience in helping landlords recover possession when a tenant has illegally sublet using Airbnb etc.
To me, there are a few key areas that really should be addressed:
Property Ownership – Airbnb don’t, in my opinion, take any responsibility to ensure that the “hosts” are the owner or have permission from the owner to rent the property; other than a line in their terms and conditions to say you must have permission. A simple Land registry check along with verified ID check’s would surely be sensible.
Smoke Alarm Checks – From what I understand it is very rare for the Hosts to meet the tenants and so how do they comply with the smoke alarm regulations to ensure the alarms have been checked at the “start” of the tenancy? I get those hosting companies might be able to solve this – but the average host probably keeps no record and it is only one fire away from serious consequences.
90 Limits- Once “hosts” hit 90 days they simply move to another platform, surely the info should be passed to the local authority so they can enforce/monitor this.
Great article!
I wonder if this cooperation will highly affect the competition between Airbnb property management company in the UK. The competition for the companies who do not benefit from this collaboration will very harsh.
Nonetheless, for the homeowners and guests, it is surely a great news as the services will be improved from the Airbnb property management companies if they want to survive.
Maxime from MadeComfy.
(https://madecomfy.com.au/melbourne/)
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