Airbnb is making life hell for young renters in tourist hotspots
dazeddigital.com
dazeddigital.com
This creates two markets with different prices. A similar sized "cabin property" is probably 3-4x as expensive as the same house on a boplikt-property. But this has kept locals from being prized out.
(I write "solved", as it's not easy to just move to the small city and find somewhere to live, but that's not really because of airbnb like situations. It's more that no one dares to build housing hoping someone will move here, and possibly have it unsold for ages)
Buildings that can’t be sold in a market with high demand for realestate.
https://localhousingsolutions.org/housing-policy-library/dee...
By the book, "Zoning is a legislative act dividing a jurisdiction's land into sections and regulating different land uses in each section in accordance with a zoning ordinance" [1]. So in theory, zoning rules deal with any kind of "land use", however the governing body chooses to approach the topic. In practice, you'll of course see zoning district rules that describe some of the more obvious "allowed uses" such as "dwellings, one-family, other than mobile homes" as well as construction/building characteristics like "detached homes", "townhomes", "multi-story buildings", etc. I think that is the kind of thing you're expecting of a zoning code, and it's definitely a big part.
But, zoning regulations get quite specific in dealing with uses too, and often these details have little or nothing to do with the buildings or construction. A major example is what kinds of business uses are allowed in a particular zone, for example: "Retail stores selling soft goods, clothing, leather goods, health aids, eye glasses, toys, jewelry, cosmetics, printed materials, glassware, home furnishings..."
It goes beyond characterizing the primary use of a parcel or structure. "Accessory" and "prohibited" uses are often even more specific, e.g. "entertainment (piano player, guitarist, small combos, dancing, etc.) in restaurants and movie theaters". You'll also see regulations for things like in-home occupations (hairstylists, massage therapists, etc), gardening, operation of vending machines, storage of construction materials and refuse, butchery and meat processing, etc.
Certain "performance" requirements are also sometimes listed, which usually deal with noise, light emission, and other nuisances, but these can get as oddly specific as this: "All surfaces shall be of a dust-free nature."
All examples listed are from the zoning code where I live [2].
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/zoning [2] https://ecode360.com/28334794
For instance, if you're tax based in Oslo, you would have to "move" to buy a family home in my city and use it as a cabin. And that move on paper has implications. Where you can vote, where your children can go to kindergarten or school, how you're taxed etc. So people don't do it.
And while this keeps the prices of homes lower than not having it, it gives some weird incentives. For instance it's more profitable for the city to zone more of the cabin properties, as they can sell them to developers for much more. And developers rather build houses they can sell to a larger market (people in the whole country), instead of building a house and hoping someone will move to the city soon. These things would probably also happen without the living restrictions in homes, but the restrictions haven't solved these issues.
I met him a few months later and he was telling me he was making over 4000 a month. I can't blame the landlords in this case.. It's obviously the better option for them, even as the article suggests, the landlords can afford to have the locations close during the `off-season` because there is so much money to be made.
Some regulation around the pricing would be nice, but I have no idea how you would even navigate doing that.
In my apartment complex, AirBnB and short-term rentals are technically forbidden, but people still do it if they feel they can get away with it.
Economists of every school and political affiliation will tell you that rent controls are a terrible idea.
Just ban AirBnb and other short term rental schemes in residential buildings.
Tourists should stay in buildings designed as such (i.e.: Hotels)
"The court ruled on Thursday that the Berlin government had overstepped its powers in introducing the law, as federal law governing rents was already in place."
this does not support an argument against rent control in general, but only against outright freezing rents in place which is what this law tried to do.
the stories about landlords getting around the rent limit by charging extra for furniture are also not helping the argument because the law covered that too, so they were effectively breaking the law. the only argument that is valid is the fact that less units were available for rent, showing that this particular law didn't work. but again, this does not prove that rent-control on general is bad.
german rent-control generally means that rent may not be charged higher than about 20% of the average rent in an area. this means that rents are still somewhat flexible and they can rise, but not excessively so.
Like honestly, rent control is just beyond dumb. There are like 1000 ways that actually solve the problem - but unfortunately they require cities and bureaucrats to work instead of just passing a law. Supply and demand. If it takes LONGER to get a building permit that to actually build a housing complex… When cities are not planning ahead creating new space (argh, infrastructure, public transportation, this sounds like work…
actually i disagree that simply allowing to build enough property will work. businesses tend to charge as much as they can, and if we want actual competition in rent prices, then the supply would have to vastly exceed the demand and not just meet it. with all the best intentions, that is not going to happen, and i don't think it is desirable either.
excessive prices need to be prevented either way.
> and if we want actual competition in rent prices, then the supply would have to vastly exceed the demand and not just meet it.
So, having less than 1% of the housing stock go to AirBnB supposedly makes cities unaffordable but increasing the supply of housing will not have the opposite effect until supply greatly exceeds demand? Why?
In Narnia? Go look at the actual vacancy rate.
i highly doubt that these people, when confronted with a more competitive market would choose to lower rent to compete instead of again just sell.
so i highly doubt that more rental units will automatically lead to lower rents.
They will IF landlords can expect positive returns on their investments given a certain price level. You can dig into the public filings of companies like LEG, Vonovia and TAG who publish the average rental prices and the occupancy. In cities with supply exceeding demand, rents are lower (e.g., high vacancy rates). Example: https://irpages2.eqs.com/download/companies/legimmobilien/Qu..., page 5.
There is of course also a big callout with respect to “correlation does not imply causation”, e.g., it is very likely that there is a hidden confounder (economic prosperity) that drives down vacancy rates and drives up rents which ties back to my earlier argument that capping rents doesn’t make sense if the cities, politicians and bureaucrats fail miserably at their jobs.
Maybe get a business degree or learn something about it. Your statements make me cringe very much the same way an MBA explaining LLMs to you may make you very miserable.
Go read the public filings from the big real estate companies in Germany - Vonovia, LEG and TAG: https://irpages2.eqs.com/download/companies/legimmobilien/An...
https://report.vonovia.de/2022/q4/app/uploads/Vonovia-SE_Ges...
https://www.tag-ag.com/fileadmin/content/geschaeftsberichte/...
There is no single company that dominates a city or market enough to “profit from keeping rental units vacant at scale”. Vacancy rates and driving them down is a massive talking point in investor calls. High vacancy is bad because investors mainly care about rental income. The aforementioned companies achieve 3% or so organic rent growth - which is LOWER than inflation.
You have very little understanding of how the business world works and I’d recommend to take a couple of courses or classes in that field. It’s the same suggestion you would give an MBA type posting his opinion about programming or ML on Hacker News I suppose.
There are strategic investors though that buy run down buildings without any intention of renting them out ever but holding them for speculation. This is wrong and harms society. Land zoned for urbanisation is a right that is granted by society and has implicit value only from society granting these rights. Speculations on these artificially (by said society) limited building permissions needs to be eliminated. The space does not have much “inherent value” in itself (e.g., assuming no building for the ease of argument) - but only gains value by being artificially limited in quantity by society.
Rent control has the efect of locking people in and reducing mobility, favoring those already in the market at the expense of those looking to get in to the market.
The obvious solution is to build more.
as far as i can tell, the effect of rent control in germany is mostly that similar properties cost a similar rent which does not prevent people from moving, because they are not risking an increase just because of the move.
Just look at Berlin. Try moving there now and see what options are available to you.
a more desirable area will always be more expensive. rent control allows to keep that in check, no control will mean that even if there is enough supply elsewhere, those more desirable areas will remain expensive. rent control is needed to prevent gentrification too.
That's what all NIMBYs parrot. Berlin population only grew by ~250k people ... since 1990, and back then Berlin was basically depopulated. It's also one of the least dense capitals in Europe today, Berlin is not Amsterdam to not have any space.
Saying "there's no more space" doesn't pass the smell test. There's more than enough space but there's too much real estate speculation going on to jack up the prices because certain interest groups need to make money from it.
>most people do not want to move until the area is sufficiently developed, and there are local jobs too
Once that area is sufficiently developed it's too late to move because you'll already be priced out. If you want to live somewhere you need to move thee before it becomes "cool" and "hip".
ok, fair point. so berlin does have other options. but the rent problem is not only in berlin, and other cities don't have that space. and nevertheless i stand by the claim that even if more rental units are going to be built in that space, rent prices will not go down without any additional effort.
a good example of doing it better is vienna. somewhat similar to berlin, population was shrinking until the turn of the century. down to 1.5 million. then suddenly in the last 20 years it grew back to 2 million. faster than berlin. vienna government itself is building new housing (a program that started 100 years ago). and infrastructure with jobs to go with it. 25% of people in vienna live in government owned and subsidized housing. (apparently berlin has something similar, but it is privately owned with a government mandate)
Once that area is sufficiently developed
ignoring the option to work remote, if an area doesn't have jobs close enough to easily reach by public transport i am not going to move there, no matter how attractive the rent.
Berlin has a population density that's less than 20% of Paris. Tell me more about how there's no space to build.
so, you if want to rent, build first.
An external person they want to be mad at when they think of them
But they’re all missing their neighbors: the individual non-corporate landlords who they could actually put peer pressure on more effectively
Landlords could always have gambled on the highest possible rent and it has nearly nothing to do with the recent influx, they can always just as easily not attempt the highest possible price. The wealthier visitors always had the funds to afford the higher prices, and can afford even higher prices than today, double, triple whatever is in the back of your mind. The wealthier people don't care if the presented rent in your area is $500 or $5000, most of them will accept what is presented.
I stayed at B&Bs in Scotland 20 years ago and it was a very memorable experience.
Even better would be house sharing either banned or severely restricted.
It is ruining our society, making renting impossible in some towns, driving up house prices, pushing society towards "houses for the rich, nothing for everyone else".
I'd really like to give a big middle finger to AirBNB.
Maybe another symptom of wealth inequality.
There are many horror stories of people squatting places, or just not paying rent anymore. The police won't intervene as it's a civil matter, and you need to get a court order which takes anywhere from 6 months to multiple years. The tennant has 2 months to comply with the court order. If after the two months, the tennant still hasn't complied, you need to get a "commissaire de justice" to execute the eviction (who is typically appointed by the court).
In addition to this, there are specific months in the year where you cannot evict people (November-April). Whenever a tennant wants to live somewhere for free, they just use that clemency period as a weapon and make the court proceedings wait from one year to the next. Obviously, "for free" means you still owe the rent after all is said and done. But if you file for bankruptcy and wait 10 years, the debt is forgiven.
If a landlord attempts to evict the tennant themselves, they risk a 30k€ fine and 3 years in jail.
In other words: your friend was most likely served an illegal eviction (it's also not possible to end a "bail" in France on a whim), and she could've just stayed put.
Edit: the reason for the fine/jail time for a landlord is because an individual's home is considered quite sacred. Trespassing is taken very seriously by the law, it's called "violation de domicile" for a landlord to enter a tennant's home without permission.
Destroy housing -> destroy people's future and family creation.
Air b&b is cancer for people trying to start families as it destroys all local affordable housing.
Maybe we should just build enough housing for everyone.
The issue isn't tourists, it's where they're staying. Tourists are welcome, they're not entitled to live like 'locals' at the local's expense. Stay in a hotel.
> Maybe we should just build enough housing for everyone.
Except that won't ever be enough because more and more will just come. And there's already even a glut on AirBnB for tourists, so none of that housing will go the locals. Building isn't the only solution.
I maintain that the issue can be fixed with more development - build a new tourist zone with hotels that appeal, or AirBnB friendly zoning, or something like that. And for locals, more housing = more options. The local housing can be built outside tourist zones if it has to.
The fact is we have a growing population, a growing global economy, tons of people exiting poverty and entering the global middle class and travelling. This will all accelerate for hundreds of years to come.
I feel this is an artificial distinction. It's not really the type of building that's involved. People tend to pick whichever of AirBnB or hotel is the most economical for their stay. It's the massive conversion of property from residential to "hotel" by the (often local!) owners that's the problem.
If you play "count the lockboxes" in the centre you realise almost every flat in the centre is an AirBnB. Those flats take in 4x what a normal rented flat will make, so of course there's a strong incentive for landlords to rent on AirBnB. Right now the city is going through a huge housing shortage - people are having to defer degree courses or live outside the city because they literally can't find anywhere to rent.
Of course, tourists aren't the only cause of this. There's a huge intergenerational issue (I know countless people in their 60s living in very large houses), and the city has historically been very conservative about building new houses to match population growth.
Ultimately the city is owned and run mostly by the people who live there. Most of them have no choice about the level of tourism, and it's pretty reasonable to want to have a discussion about whether you really want to have your city turned into a theme park.
This is the main problem. Solution is simple: Allow more new construction, lots of it.
Local people have voted against their own long term interests, if they have voted for politicians who have opposed new construction.
It is easy to succumb to short term selfishness: "I already have a home, so I don't want any new construction near me. I oppose building new homes." But in time, every one of us will need to move to a new home. Then you will start to wish that if you had supported building new homes, it would be easier for you, too, to find a new home.
I don't know what the answer is, but there is something to be said for retaining some beauty at the expense of fewer people, and maybe rethinking the idea that growth is necessary to success, 'cause we're running out of room and that definition can't last forever.
Change is inherent in a situation where you have however many billion people we have now. We are a dynamic system, and a huge one.
What you say is true, and also isn't anything new to the discussion. Change is awesome, and isn't even the point. It's more about the unsustainable quest for growth that is the foundation of our economy.
I'll let you argue with the "why aren't people having children any more?" people.
Vancouver built lots of new housing but it was mostly snapped up by investors.
That Norwegian ski town got it right.
Even speculators who buy and hold empty houses aren’t a problem. No investor is satisfied with no returns (ie, no sale and no rent) indefinitely. Speculators that are dumb enough to be happy with zero returns ought to be, and always are, separated from their capital.
Within a short time the market will balance out between the builders, the buy-to-let landlords, the single-family owners, and the flippers and speculators… assuming you don’t have some crazy regulations putting a thumb on the single-family owner end of the scale by blocking construction.
Specifically in Edinburgh, the problem is the city is a World Heritage Site. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/728/
It's an inherent problem in tourism: tourists want an "unspoiled" view, which means not building infrastructure for tourists or locals.
Building definitely is happening. See the Plan: https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/25264/edinburgh-... - but of course you can't build just houses, you have to build roads and schools and waste disposal and public transport to go with them. The city has struggled with its tram project and the railways are at capacity.
But if downtowns of cities are being hollowed out and filled with tourists, it’s not going to go well for anyone - because eventually even the tourists won’t really want to be there anymore.
Hotels and hostels are a thing, you know?
Rather: they feel entitled as tourists to live in a Disneyland version what they imagine to be the locals' lifes.
Land owners didnt create the land. Rights to land are always acquired, ultimately, through violence.
Land owners dont make it valuable - a good teacher drives up her own rent.
Supply and demand work in reverse. The more land owners buy and hoard it the more valuable it becomes.
Unlike, say, income taxes, which discourage work, taxing land just discourages hoarding and unproductive use. Higher taxes would thus relieve shortages on top of bolstering government budgets.
Airbnb isnt a direct cause of those shortages, it just partook in the rent bonanza driven by the global property hoarding frenzy. Banning or strictly regulating it in tourist hotspots is probably a good idea but doesnt resolve the underlying problem.
you are out of your mind
Then we need to end institutional and foreign investors ownership of single-family and few-unit homes. (I don't mean this as a "wouldn't it be great if someday, but we're never going to do it", but I think the housing crisis some places warrants state legislative efforts this year, requiring immediate halt to new purchases, and liquidation within 12 months.)
We might first have to outlaw campaign contributions.
A little less flippantly, just adopting this YIMBY line without thinking through regulating the market to ensure houses are for human habitation will not address the underlying issues. It will just line the pockets of real estate developers.
All the new building near where I live is high-priced apartments that no one can afford anyway (unless you airbnb them).
I am also very frustrated at rental markets in many place, though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots.
I am very prepared to lay a lot of blame on Airbnb for high prices, just haven't seen anything conclusive (US-centric stuff I've seen, the fact that building has crawled to a halt feels way more relevant)
> though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots.
It very much is happening. Dublin saw this during the pandemic, when the long-term rent market doubled after tourism was shut down. These are houses that are zoned for residents, not people coming in, and landlords see they can easily make more money letting them out to the tourists.
See this article from The Irish Times about it: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/pandemic-reveals...
It's only gotten worse now, too, with many going back to AirBnB.
Dublin has a population of over 1.5 million. On average, a dwelling in Dublin has 2.5 people. 5000 AirBnB's account for less than 1% of the total housing stock.
I constantly hear about people complaining about how short term rentals are running the housing market but the numbers never add up.
I don't think that it is the primary effect, but we can walk and chew bubblegum!
[citation needed]
It's a cancer that has directly impacted and caused the skyrocketing of prices and constraint of supply. The answer isn't to (just) build more, but to end the exploitation from AirBnB.
And, as mentioned, it's worse in other cities.
Clearly there's demand for tourists to come and visit Dublin, maybe they should either tax the tourists into not coming (and hit the economy), or build enough room for everybody?
Where? And how do these extra people move about?
It's definitely doable, but it's far from simple, and is going to further change the character of the city. And involve a lot of public spending which people object to.
We have oodles of room. Every human - not families, but individual humans, including children - can get their own massive house, with a big back yard.
Here's my math: Back yard size: 15x40m = 600 sq m.
Public amenities per person = 300 sq m. (very generous)
Total space per human = 900 sq m. = 9e-4 sq km.
Number of humans = 8e9
Land required for this most ultimate of suburbs: 7.2e6 sq km
Surface area of Canada: 9.98e6 sq km. USA: 9.83e6 sq km.
In my absolutely absurdly overprovisioned scenario, we all fit in 72% of the admittedly very large Canada. ALL of us. Leaving plenty of room for every holiday-worthy place on earth to have all the AirBnBs and apartment-hotels needed.
> It's expensive
Investing public money to create amenities for tourism is going to be an economic no-brainer. Tourists, visitors, and locals will all benefit from it.
> Character will change
Everything changes all the time. The history of the world is a story of the character of things changing, whether happily or otherwise.
In a time of great change, desperately trying to slow it down isn't the way. Rolling with, and even initiating, the changes in an authentic way is much better.
> There's 10x more rooms on AirBnB than there are long-term rents in Dublin;
AirBnB places would have high turnover, probably an order of magnitude higher than long term rentals. It makes perfect sense that more of the former would be vacant at any given time.
When there’s 100 people applying for rentals. Or people moving from Blanch to South Wexford or Carlow because that’s the closest they can afford. Rents have doubled or tripled in the last 10 years.
We bought 5 years back when we couldn’t find a rental, rents were 1400 for a 3/4 be then, we got 1600 3 years ago when we were away for a year, and comps now are 2500+, in a place with a 1.5 hr commute to Dublin.
I'm glad I left and wont look back but whenever I need to travel back for whatever reason I have to crash at a friends place because the cost of an airbnb or hotel is simply extortion.
Maybe this is an unescapable consequence of globalization and specialization. We have grown accustomed to the facts that the best microchips are made in Taiwan and the most influential software corporations reside in Silicon Valley. Perhaps some cities are destined to be tourist traps and nothing else. Many people want to visit Prague, Florence or Mecca; no one wants to go to Gary, Indiana.
Remember: the global tourist class is destined to grow. As numerous Asian nations are slowly (or faster) climbing towards the developed status (India, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc.), the # of people who want to travel and have the means to do so will rise enormously.
15 million people visit Rome yearly - now. It might be 50 million in 2050.
Edit: this comment attracted at least two downvotes. I am not too salty about it, but I would like to know why you think I am misinformed/wrong. Don't just downvote - argue, please.
I don't particularly like human mobs in tiny medieval streets either, but I believe the global trend does not depend on what I like or not.
What's the point of traveling when all you see around is other tourists and it's just a collective ripoff experience?
It's sort of like F1. Best experience is at home watching on TV. Or really really really expensive. Going cheap route is just cargo cult for the sake of a worthless picture. Going to a tiny local event is likely to be so much better on many fronts. Aside from bragging rights to other cargoculters.
And yet, there is something magical about walking around the ruins in Forum Romanum or seeing the Dome of Florence towering over you, all the people notwithstanding. The touch of ancient marble, the smell in the air, the heat of the early May Italian sun, the reverbation of ambient sounds in an ancient amphitheatre, all this cannot really be "tasted" in the virtual space.
I am personally torn on this, seeing both the good and the bad things.
I agree such experiences are awesome. But IMO 1) you've to prepare yourself for such trip and get yourself immersed in that context (be it historical or cultural) 2) have a proper setting to get into mood. Which is quite a task in peak season in many hotspots... At the same time, you don't need top-tier hotspots for that. Once you're prepared, there're lots and lots of places off the beaten path that are likely to offer better overall experience than top-tier places.
IMO there're the good parts for immersive experiences. But, unfortunately, the crowds seem to apply very consumerist fast travel approach. It just became too cheap (frequently by externalising the costs) and many people don't take it seriously.
That's just not true. My brother went to university in Venice a few years ago and the tourists and their traps concentrate in a few hotspots. It's true that some parts have completely been eaten up by tourism, but tourists hardly wander away from the few streets that connect the main sights.
> 15 million people visit Rome yearly - now. It might be 50 million in 2050.
I think by 2050 we will have to reckon with the true costs of flying, large swaths of the global South will not be livable anymore and a lot of people will be forced to move to cooler climates.
What I encountered, even far from the main thoroughfares, were AirBnBs and restaurants with multilingual menus.
The only object that I saw and that was unambiguously not-touristy was a naval academy.
The global North is unlivable for most of the year. Winter as a phenomena is a form of natural disaster, making it impossible to grow food and energy intensive for humans to survive.
We will see high tourist taxes introduced all over.
I wonder if the cities blessed/cursed with an enormous influx of people willing to pay high tourist taxes just to see them will develop something akin to "Dutch disease" = basically stagnation and corruption based on certain income regardless of quality of governance, which disincentizives competition, learning, investment etc.
The original concept of Dutch disease is based on resource-rich states, but being touristically attractive is a kind of "natural" resource too. As long as places like Rome can prevent street crime and keep the monuments from falling apart, the crowds will come, even if the local town hall consisted of mediocre politicians.
Mafia is also known to prey on tourist establishment. If the main lucrative attribute of your pizzeria is that the guests can see Colosseum from its windows, you cannot move your business and are forced to pay whatever protection money they want from you.
In smaller Italian towns I have seen AirBnBs that I'd want to grant a "maybe it's not all bad" exception: old town flats that are basically museums to live in. A permanent resident would likely want modernize quite drastically, but tourists interested in the past can be the perfect solution to keep the legacy setup maintained. But that should be easy enough to regulate, plenty of existing cultural heritage protection schemes to tie in with.
Anyone wanting to do short term rentals all year must abide by the same regulations that traditional accommodation providers do - paying commercial rates, not running their business in a strictly residential area, etc.
They would then say that the local wages will eventually increase to the point where a worker can live close enough to make the job in the high cost town worth the commute.
If a town gets popular among rich tourists and supply remains limited, the tourists will price out the locals (as is already apparent)
Zoning/limiting the number of airbnbs in proportion to the the total housing stock can be one solution to stop the tourist industry from gobbling everything else up (at the expense of the tourist economy)
Not an economist, but an extreme solution to achieve 100% efficiency, i.e occupancy would be for everyone (including locals) to become nomads and be willing to move homes everyday based on daily spot rates for housing and take up any unoccupied house that day based on what they can afford. (I.e a combined market where tourists and locals both live the hotel/Airbnb lifestyle). Sounds horrible though.
The apparent inefficiency (in terms of unnoccupied rooms/houses) IMO arises from the very real inconvenience and costs involved in moving houses too frequently. Contrast that with tourists who want to definitely want to stay in a city only for a few days. The two classes will always compete without intervention that favors one over the other - or tries to find some arbitrary balance
I think segmenting the space, as mentioned by matsemann, is a good solution here. If you allocate half the town (including half the areas for future development) to long-term housing and the other to short-term stays, you prevent the markets from sharing a single supply. In the first years it will still be much more profitable to invest and build in the short-term half of town, but as long as there's profit to be made in building in either half of town this will sort itself out.
If the concern is truly that the usage is overall extremely low (not just vacation vs resident), due to property value speculation...there is the idea that property taxes should be higher.[1] This will force productive use of the land.
However, raising property taxes tends to hurt residents more. So...it depends what objective you actually want to achieve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRE23YfSvc8
A bit extreme/coarse, but I can't imagine that it wouldn't be effective.
Was it in the first hours that the idea was conceived? When it started to take off? Not until they were projecting growth at those levels?
It was setup as live with a local who will show you around
It came to be because hotel stock sucked for elastic demand: big conferences and festivals
Who would benefit from people not building more? Who's pushing for regulations against building more supply?
Unpopular opinion: A lot of other people want to experience that too! Perhaps the best thing is to rent/share those prime locations, so a lot of people can enjoy them.
Fighting against people visiting is rent-seeking of a different kind.
Certainly without those service workers, it won't be much of a tourist attraction.
The 20+ work week and 5 roommates is apparently preferable to their other options.
Let me know what you think.