Nathan Blecharczykco-founder and director of strategy at Airbnb, explains that this program is part of a pilot in which, in addition to Mexico City, Baja California participates, and seeks to come up with a scheme in which digital nomads can get to know and immerse themselves in localities, mitigating their potential impacts, such as the increase in housing prices –both for rent and for sale– and the cost of living in general.
“Over the last year we have partnered with 20 different destinations to explore this topic: what do digital nomads mean for Airbnb and big cities? What are the best practices?”, refers the manager in an interview with Expansion.
“There is an alignment of objectives and ambition. There is an appetite to explore this together, but these are just pilots”.
The strategy takes place in a growing market for Airbnb, in which long stays – of more than 28 days – have grown 54% from 2019 to date, and guest spending was more than $2.5 billion in 2021.
Gentrification and other risks
The strategy seeks to take place in a city pressured by the lack of housing options, which has been a recurring consequence throughout Airbnb’s history. As an example, some studies report that, in the case of New Yorkrents increased by around $400 each year from the raid of the platform in the city.
“Although the introduction and expansion of Airbnb in American cities and around the world brings ample potential for economic benefits, the costs to landlords and locals probably outweigh the profits for travelers and owners”, refers to the study ‘The economic costs and benefits of Airbnb’ carried out by the Economic Political Institute.
Similarly, an analysis by the Harvard Business Review found that for every one percentage point increase in Airbnb inventory it is associated with a 0.018% rise in rents and a 0.026% rise in home prices. “While this effect might seem very small, consider Airbnb’s average annual growth to be around 44%,” says a 2019 analysis.
For Roberto Ponce, an academic in the area of citizen urban planning at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, this has been one of the main challenges for Mexico City when it comes to platforms such as Airbnb, and it could be aggravated by further promotion of the destination without adequate measures. .
“The main effect is that it raises the prices of rental housing; if there is a reduction in inventory, and for an economic reason you can rent it for 10,000 pesos a month when on Airbnb you can rent it double or triple, it is usually done. Therefore, that dwelling ceases to be on the rental market, and, as in any reduction in supply, raise prices”, he refers.
To this have been added the disagreements of the tourism sector, particularly the hotel industry, which sees on the platform a competition with an uneven floor given the number of requirements that a hotel must meet to operate, and that do not contemplate Airbnb accommodations.
Although the platform collects the Lodging Tax – used to promote destinations – in 10 entities (Mexico City, Quintana Roo, Baja California, Oaxaca, Baja California Sur, Yucatán, Sinaloa, State of Mexico, Jalisco and Sonora) , there is still a long series of factors that the industry considers unfair.
“A host already has to pay ISR, VAT, and Lodging Tax, but there are still a lot of other things that they do not do,” says Francisco Madrid, director of the Anáhuac Tourism Research and Competitiveness Center (Cicotur). “They do not go through an opening license, it violates a large number of provisions in the rental of furnished real estate for shorter periods determined by the legal framework. We have a serious problem of inequity”.
To mitigate the potential effects of the search for digital nomads, specialists consider that although prohibiting these platforms is not very beneficial, measures such as limiting the number of days that a home can be rented through Airbnb, coupled with a policy to facilitate access to a decent home, they can be an alternative.
However, the start of this strategy does not seem to contemplate measures to prevent this type of collateral effects.
“There is a great opportunity as part of this trend [de los nómadas digitales]. You can’t totally control everything, but you can shape it. That is why it is important to be proactive at the beginning, together with different figures with different perspectives, to model it together”, concludes Blecharczyk.