St. John's willing to work with province on Airbnb regulations

The City of St. John's would welcome provincial regulation of Airbnb properties and other short-term rentals, the mayor says, in order to recoup what it sees as lost tax revenues.

Locally, one of the issues with short-term rentals is that customers aren't paying the four per cent tourism marketing levy that is charged on hotel room and bed and breakfasts in the province, said Mayor Danny Breen.

"It generates about $3 million a year in revenue, which is directed specifically to paying the financing charges on the new convention centre and to funding the marketing activities of Destination St. John's," he said.

"The Airbnb and short-term rental market availof both of those services, and therefore we feel that they should be paying the four per centtourism marketing levy."

However, oneAirbnbhost says that any regulations should be targeted to the province, even to particular neighbourhoods, instead of relying on national data.

"The challenge here is that we've got a report that studies the industry nationally, and the markets are so varied and so different," said Brandon Copeland, referring toguidelines on Airbnb regulation recently released by the Hotel Association of Canada (HAC).

'Not a one-size-fits-all solution'

Those HAC guidelines suggest regulations for the short-term rental industry based on best practices from cities around the world. The association says that people are using sites like Airbnb not for home sharing but to become commercial operators, sometimes renting entire properties strictly as short-term rentals.

Copeland says such a report takes too broad a view to be used to shape legislation in Newfoundland and Labrador, given the differences between the short-term rental market here and in larger Canadian cities.

Airbnb can have a real effect in Toronto or Vancouver, he said,when units that traditionally would be rented month-to-month are listed as short-term rentals instead.

"In St. John's we have a seven per centvacancy rate. That's a lot different than Toronto, which is a 0.9 per cent vacancy rate."

The option to supplement income byrenting units or bedroomsout short-term, as he does, can encourage people to buy property when they otherwise might not feel comfortable doing so, he said.

"Anything that's encouraging people to buy units at this point in time is valuable."

A localized assessment is the best way to get a sense of what the short-term rental market looks like in this province, Copeland said.

"It's not a one-size-fits-all solution," he said."We need to better understand how people are using Airbnb, and really what the numbers are here."

Copeland, who rents a unit in his home when it is not occupied by visiting family, is not against regulation as a rule, and can understand the hotel industry's concerns. However, he also thinks that Airbnb rentals like his are filling a need in the tourism market and have benefits.

"I do understand that the industry is being disrupted, and nobody likes their industry being disrupted," he said.

"But Ido think a bit of this is a play to try to claw back market share that's been lost."

Rental regulationa provincial responsibility

Any regulations that do come into place in Newfoundland and Labrador won't come from the City of St. John's directly. The city regulates things like safety codes and zoning for hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, Breen said, but an overarching regulatory framework for Airbnbs as requested by Hospitality NL would have to come from the provincial government.

The city is willing to work with all parties to get such regulations in place, he said, and Airbnb itself has also indicated that they would welcome regulation and has submitted a budget proposal federally to the House of Commons saying as much.

The short-term rentals do play a role in the province's tourism industry, which promotes visiting Newfoundland and Labrador, Breensaid.

"Short-term rental properties allow the opportunity to live in that experience, so it's a very important part of our tourism marketing."

The hosts of those properties also benefit from that marketing, he said, as well as the province's wider tourism infrastructure, and therefore it makes sense that the people who rent those properties pay the same levy as those who rent a room at a traditional property.

"Certainly anything we can do in working with the Airbnb owners, the hospitality industry and the province to make that happen, we're willing to sit down and walk through."

Read more articles fromCBCNewfoundland and Labrador

With files from Mark Quinn andZachGoudie