It’s difficult to resist Airbnb

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/13/difficult-to-resist-airbnb

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Being a tourist is such hard work. All those museums to visit. And major historical monuments to be photographed next to. And badly researched guff in the guide book to be taken in by. You just have to take one look at the crowds milling around Leicester Square in the part of London that few actually call “the West End” to realise how misguided the whole business is. That’s not London, you fools!

The Angus Steak House is not a restaurant, it’s a time-travel machine back to 1973. And one doesn’t go to a “show”, not if one lives here. One goes out to dinner. Or down the pub.

But that’s the thing about being a tourist. You’re always slightly helpless, slightly clueless, a hermit crab who’s left its protective shell and is fair game for any passing gull or over-enthusiastic write-up on Tripadvisor. It’s tiring and confusing and especially dispiriting in countries where they don’t understand the curative properties of a nice cup of tea. There are still vast swaths of the world where hotels fail to recognise the mini-kettle as one of the great inventions of civilisation.

Against this backdrop, it’s not hard to see why Airbnb has been the roaring success it is. Some 22,000 people in Britain have listed their homes on the site. And this week the housing minister, Brandon Lewis loosened the regulations that, officially at least, had made Airbnb in London illegal until now. Theoretically, householders needed planning permission to let out their flats or risked a £20,000 fine.

In practice legalisation is mostly just an exercise in political brand management – because Airbnb is a breaking wave that no city in the world has managed to hold back. New York keeps trying, but the fact there are currently 15,977 NY listings on the site suggests how well that’s going. And if I were a housing minister shortly up for re-election – overseeing a nightmarish scenario of increasing numbers of households being driven into poverty by rising rents, and levels of home ownership falling like a stone – I, too, would prefer to ignore all that and hitch my wagon instead to the great and glorious sharing economy.

Related: Airbnb to be legalised in London

Except that it’s not “sharing”. This is capitalism red in tooth and claw. The only people getting rich out of Airbnb are Airbnb: the company was valued at $13bn in October. And, it’s the same old, same old. To those with money, more money will accrue. If you own a nice Georgian townhouse in central London you’ll make an awful lot more out of it than Airbnb-ing your semi-detached in Bolton.

The losers of the Airbnb econoverse are the perennial housing losers: those without homes at all. In Berlin, a massive citywide hike in rents has been blamed on a massive citywide increase in Airbnb rentals. And is it really such a bold stroke of genius to do anything that makes it easier to take more homes out of circulation in London? B&B owners pay business rates. Landlords have to ensure annual gas safety checks. There’s arguably a case for greater regulation, not less.

But the horse has already bolted. Because as a tourist, or business traveller or helpless stray in a foreign city, Airbnb has quite literally opened doors. You hang out in the parts of cities where people actually live rather than the parts where tourists go to drop their kebab wrappers. And there’s pretty much always a kettle. Though it’s not for the risk averse. I’ve encountered the kinds of pads that make the interiors featured in Wallpaper look a bit chintzy and old-fashioned.

There was also the time I realised in the morning that the sheets on the bed weren’t actually clean. And the other time the hosts forgot to mention they had a flatmate. I found out soon enough: he came crashing through the front door roaring drunk at 2am with a new, and as it turned out, loudly enthusiastic, sexual partner.

At its best though, it’s the closest thing the modern world has to the portal in Being John Malkovich. A direct entry into someone else’s brain, someone else’s life.

Browse the listings for any length of time, and you’ll find yourself playing fantasy alter-egos. Could you have been the sort of person who opts for a vegan eco-home in Somerset (£30 a night). Or the new tenant of Christian Grey’s apartment in Seattle (£171 a night but note, there isn’t actually a Red Room of Pain).

The most interesting times I’ve ever had travelling are when things go wrong. When you miss the train. Or get lost. Or leave your bland corporate hotel room and go and tangle with the world outside. In my own personal Airbnb multiverse, I’ve been both a successful screenwriter living in a beach bungalow a block from the ocean in Venice Beach. (Yes!) And a single mother in a high-rise council block in Paris. (A mouse infestation was the least of it.)

That’s why it’s pretty unstoppable. We have seen the future and it’s half the price with a full complement of hot beverage-making facilities. And, cross your fingers, clean sheets on the bed.