Well, this certainly makes me want to never book an AirBnB again. You'd think AirBnB would be more alarmed about the reputational and consequent business hit of this sort of thing. Maybe they will be after this article?
AirBnB is/used to be cheap. People want cheap. They don't want to pay $200 a night for a hotel room when they travel to Paris, AirBnB knows that so I think they are much more concerned about the size of their inventory than the satisfaction of the guest or their reputation.
What fascinates me is the ability of most of theses "start-up" to successfully straight out ignore local laws, with very little consequences, and manage to put all the burden of legality onto their users.
They must have very good legal teams that exploit the flaws of legal systems. Talking about Paris, the great majority of listing are outright illegal, or at least used to be. If I were to set up a similar operation on my own, in France, I'd be shut down in a heart beat for providing illegal hotels and rentals and go straight to prison.
These people seem truly untouchable.
That's the strength of these services.
Without knowing details about AirBnB's corporate structure, I assume they don't have any subsidiaries or offices or employees in France. That makes it hard (but not impossible) to compel them to follow French law, or local laws in France.
The easier option is to write a law that compels payment processors to disallow payments to or from a company that does XYZ, then declare AirBNB has done XYZ and cut off their payments. It's certainly possible to rent an apartment in Paris and have all the payments done outside of France, but it removes a lot of people from both sides of the market.
The other option is to work through courts internationally, but that's very slow and costly for things that aren't capital crimes. You basically have to get your government's diplomats to make the US State department care to do the interfacing.
Which is funny; not sure how it would work in France, but many US jurisdictions have profoundly vicious civil forfeiture laws, where a local (not even talking about state or federal, just a town/county/city) police force can seize property thought to be used in or related to criminal activity, and keep it for themselves. Or auction it off and keep the proceeds.
Running an unlicensed hotel is a crime in many jurisdictions. As is operating a hotel with fire-code or safety violations.
If you start seizing buildings from people, word will get around quickly. Especially in the nicer neighborhoods.
You don't even have to stay one night... I ran into this exact scenario where upon arrival, the place had no electricity, wifi, and construction for a few blocks outside. I was unable to contact them until the next day since my first instinct was to look for another place ASAP and rest from the long flight. Sure enough, they threw their ToS at me and stated that I wasn't eligible for a refund. I contacted AMEX, but they partner with AirBnB so I was denied a credit there as well. I ended up paying an entire week for a place I didn't stay at.
Thanks for that, didn't realize they deny chargebacks in cases of fraud and misrepresentation. Partnering with a company that engages in widespread global fraud and illegal activity is an interesting choice for Amex.
The purpose of AirBNB right now is to give the current owners a nice exit. After that occurs, then they can worry about customer service and the related expenses.