On Airbnb, the Côte-d’Or is sexy! It’s summer, the weather is nice, it’s time to go on vacation. And many are those who rent a gite or an apartment at the last minute before setting sail. For this, many go through the Airbnb application. The platform for renting accommodation between individuals published a series of statistics for the summer of 2021 two months ago. In these, we learn that our department has entered the top 20 of the most sought-after French destinations by travelers on the application.
And that seems to have created new vocations, as with Stéphanie Déniel. The latter was still working a year ago in a tourist office, but she decided in 2022 to leave her job to devote herself exclusively to the management of her two gites located in the Beaune countryside.
However, Stéphanie Déniel says it herself, she started on Airbnb to follow the trend. “It was in 2019, the application was starting to be popular in France. I then renovated an old building which belonged to my grandparents, an old chicken coop, very close to my home”.
The chicken coop then becomes a gîte, which soon receives 4 stars. Stéphanie Déniel also takes care of a small stone house, a tiny house. With success: on the Airbnb application, it was impossible to rent one of the two properties before September. “Even during the Covid it didn’t stop spinning, she explains. If I’m not cleaning or receiving customers, I’m ironing. No respite”.
The opinions left by visitors are all dithyrambic. But what is the secret? “It’s the Côte-d’Or, we are the best. And then I personalize all the receptions with little attentions” smiles Stéphanie Déniel.
The former tourist knows how to do it. The Airbnb company rated it well. In search of credibility, the American firm recently created “guest communities” on social networks. Gathered on Facebook, the members of these groups meet to exchange advice and experiences. And in Côte-d’Or, it was Stéphanie Déniel who was chosen by the company to chair the network on a voluntary basis: “I organize meetings and I report information from management. It also allows us to meet” .
And don’t come and tell the voice of Airbnb in Côte-d’Or that this new business is overshadowing more traditional sectors, such as the hotel industry: “We can’t fight against new modes of travel people,” she says.
This proliferation of Airbnbs may have positive spinoffs for tourism, but it also worries some local players. This is particularly the case in cities, which are seeing more and more accommodation turn into rental between individuals.
For us, this is particularly the case in Beaune. Since June 2021, a prefectural decree regulating Airbnb has been in force in the city. To put it simply, anyone wanting to rent out a property must first make a request to the town hall. The municipality can in particular request compensation: if a dwelling is put on Airbnb for example, the land equivalent must be able to be offered on the more traditional real estate market to benefit Beaunois.
The challenge of this measure: to prevent the city center from becoming only a place of passage, and that no one can settle in the city any longer because of the domination of Airbnb. For Pierre Bolz, 1st deputy mayor of Beaune, the mission is accomplished, one after the implementation of the decree: “Over the past few years, we have had between 60 and 80 declarations of furnished tourist accommodation per year. Second half of 2021 we We fell to 5 declarations. We very quickly felt the effects of this framework, made necessary for the economic development of the city”.
However, for most of the Beaune real estate agencies interviewed, the difficulties are still very present, even if they are less significant than a few years ago. In their stocks, few properties for rent. The few remaining are with high rents, in particular because of the inflation caused by Airbnb.
“For the moment, the municipal deliberation of June 2021 does not have much effect, affirms Caroline Bernhard, elected opposition Europe Ecology The greens at the town hall of Beaune. We still have 100 more dwellings in standard rental Airbnb since the decree. We risk falling below the bar of 20,000 inhabitants. We are witnessing the transformation of an inhabited city center to a city center made of cardboard, only tourist and less and less lively. should do more to prevent this”.
Because yes, the main risk in all this, and the demographic decline. Since 2011, the city of Beaune has been losing inhabitants. Against 21,872 inhabitants 11 years ago, in 2019 there were only 20,551 Beaunois according to INSEE.