Despite their very proactive speeches, Emmanuel Macron’s successive Housing Ministers are slow to regulate the short-term rental sector. On January 11, 2024, “Additional investigation” looks at the leader in furnished tourist platforms, Airbnb, and its influence strategy.
“We have to hit very hard those who have become real professionals, those who buy apartments and who only do Airbnb, and therefore these same apartments are withdrawn from the rental market.” In 2018, the Minister of Housing Julien Denormandie posed himself as a resolute opponent of short-term rentals such as Airbnb. But despite the promises of successive ministers, no one seems to be able to regulate a sector of which France has become the Eldorado. In a few years, the number of these seasonal rentals has doubled, or even tripled in certain cities, driving residents who live and work there all year round to the outskirts. What is Airbnb’s strategy to remain all-powerful?
The platform would have access to parliamentarians and certain ministries, where a struggle for influence would take place between its supporters and its opponents. In this extract from an issue of “Additional investigation” to be seen on January 11, 2023, the former president of the National Hotel Union looks back on an episode that scandalized him. It was in April 2020, “ in the middle of the Easter holidays, right in the middle of the confinement which had started two months before, where the platforms remained open. Well, says Laurent Duc, you had the entire French Riviera which was filled with Airbnbs, there were plenty of balconies. So we wrote to the Minister of Housing about our amazement. We simply said that it was scandalous that the platforms were open while our hotels were closed.”
Was an email addressed to the minister sent to Airbnb?
But hoteliers are still astounded: this letter sent on April 14 uniquely in the minister’s office, the same Julien Denormandie who promised to declaring war on furnished tourist accommodation, will receive a response the next day… from the boss of Airbnb France at the time. In an email to which he attached the hoteliers’ mail, he accused them of leading a “rearguard fight”.
“You write to a minister, it’s an American company that responds to you. It’s a scandal!”
Laurent Duc, former president of the Hoteliers Unionto “Further investigation”
Did the Minister of Housing send Airbnb a letter that was not intended for him? Julien Denormandie did not wish to answer this question. On the other hand, the journalists of “Complément d’investigation” received an email from the Airbnb platform affirming that it was directly mandated by the ministry: “The minister’s office very quickly contacted us to request a detailed response from our company to these accusations, in a worrying context of health crisis.”
Extract from “Airbnb: no more roof for you!”, a document to see in “Additional investigation” on the 11th January 2024.
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