(TAN): Airbnb has launched City Portal, a platform built exclusively for governments and tourism organisations, which includes tools and locally-specific data for a deeper partnership with Airbnb, the home-sharing company said.
City Portal’s technology directly connects the Airbnb platform with governments and tourism organisations to provide them with the following:
- The City Portal’s dashboard, which includes local and global Airbnb data insights into short-term rental market characteristics and remitted tourist tax revenue in places where tax agreements have been established. For example, tourism organization partners can see where guests are coming from and adjust marketing accordingly.
- Industry-first compliance tools to help governments develop and manage fair short-term rental policies and regulations. Governments with applicable short-term rental laws will be able to utilize City Portal to view Airbnb listings within their registration systems.
- Central location for resources such as the Airbnb Neighborhood Support hotline and Law Enforcement portal. An official who needs to reach our law enforcement support team because of a safety incident, can more easily find the applicable tool via the portal.
- Direct access via City Portal to an Airbnb team member, providing one-to-one support with City Portal or issues that arise locally. If an official has a question about an Airbnb listing in their community or a broader inquiry about our rules against both parties and “party houses”, they can easily reach Airbnb policy staff.
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The Airbnb City Portal is launching with more than 15 pilot cities and tourism organisation partners in its first phase. Pilot cities and counties include Buffalo, Calgary, unincorporated Miami-Dade, New Orleans, Palm Springs, Raleigh, Sacramento, Seattle, and San Francisco in the US and Vancouver in Canada. Pilot-phase tourism partners include Visit Tampa Bay, Visit Denmark, the City of Krakow, Sao Paulo State Secretary of Tourism, Visit Scotland, Visit Tuscany and Wesgro (Western Cape of South Africa).
“We created this tool with cities and our goal is to ensure it works for big cities and small towns, and is adaptive to different needs. The way we live and travel continues to change, with people dispersing to more places. The Airbnb City Portal will make it easier for cities of all sizes to work with us and benefit from our community,” said Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb.
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City Portal builds upon years of partnership with governments across the globe, Airbnb claims, adding that its tax agreements have streamlined tax collection for our hosts and made it easier for jurisdictions to receive tax revenue from Airbnb rental income.
“We have collected and remitted more than USD 2 billion in tourist and occupancy taxes around the world. As much as 72% of Airbnb bookings for listings in the US are already covered by collection and remittance of tourism or hotel taxes – almost three in every four reservations,” Airbnb said.
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