Last week, the platform said it may cancel thousands of bookings and blamed how government rolled out B.C.’s new registry
James Bay resident Dianne Donohue was checking her messages last week when she got a note from one of her Airbnb guests telling her that the online platform had reached out to guests recommending they cancel their stay.
The reason was that Donohue was not in compliance with the province’s new registration system and the platform would be forced to cancel her listing if she did not have a valid registration number issued by June 23.
In a panic, she called both Airbnb and Vrbo, Donohue said. She later realized she had filled out the provincial registration form improperly. She had said her property was not her principal residence and that it was available for 30-day rentals instead of for daily bookings.
While she rents out her laneway house for a 30-day minimum, two rooms in her house are rented out as daily short-term rentals.
After Donohue sent what she estimates were 15 emails to the government, an official got back to her and walked her through how to redo the application.
“By the next morning, she had taken care of it, passed it on to who needed to approve it. It was done literally within hours,” Donohue said on Monday.
Not everyone has been so lucky. Airbnb estimates it has started cancelling thousands of bookings in the lead-up to the official deadline of June 23 for hosts to register their listings with the provincial government.
The registry is meant to ensure all listings and hosts are in compliance with provincial laws that restrict short-term rentals in most communities to people’s primary residences and an additional unit on the same property.
However, the rollout of the new registry has been anything but smooth, according to Airbnb.
Alex Howell, Airbnb’s Canadian policy lead, said the problem is that listings in full compliance with provincial laws are being rejected by the registration system for simple discrepancies such as formatting errors in addresses.
Howell said there is no flexibility within the province’s laws governing short-term rentals and the government only allowed a month for Airbnb and other platforms to test the registry system before the June 23 deadline.
“The reality is a system like this is incredibly complicated. It requires two separate databases to talk to each other. Something like that typically requires three to six months of pretty intense testing in a live environment,” said Howell.
“We have been telling them for months to slow down, and they have just failed to listen. And so we are now in the situation where we’re playing whack-a-mole, trying to address these issues as they crop up.”
Airbnb said that while they have helped thousands of hosts experiencing technical issues, between 600 to 800 are still experiencing difficulties.
One host, Jonathan Rossouw, said his application with the City of Victoria was denied because he had a car that was still registered at his old home with his ex-wife. He said they separated several years ago and no longer live together but that was enough to get his registration rejected.
He said he simply wants to be able to rent out his condo, which is his primary residence, when he is out of town for work.
“It took about two months for them to get back to me, or even more, three months almost,” said Rossouw. “They said it might take one to two months, possibly three months for the appeal. I was like, OK, well, then it’s the end of the year, and then you got to re-register.”
City of Victoria spokesperson Colleen Mycroft said the city couldn’t comment on Rossouw’s specific case but that it had approved roughly 80 per cent of registrations.
While Airbnb is pointing the finger at the province for the difficulties, Donohue blames Airbnb, saying that it should have contacted her, instead of her would-be guest, about potential cancellations.
She also said that while the provincial government was helpful in addressing her concerns, Airbnb has just been going around pulling properties off the site.
“It’s Airbnb that is going to come into compliance with what the government wants,” said Donohue.
“I think the government program has its inefficiencies, but Airbnb is being really aggressive, removing people’s listings ahead of time, because the province has given people until June 23 to actually have everything registered, whereas Airbnb is starting to rip people’s listings now.”
Salmon Arm resident Jen Chang also blamed Airbnb, saying she had registered as soon as she could in February and received a tentative number from the province pending an official review.
Despite this, she said she has been getting emails every week from Airbnb telling her that her house number didn’t match the address on her registration and that the listing would be taken down without fixing it. She said she made the required change but her property was removed anyway.
As of Tuesday afternoon, it was back with no explanation. She said the platform tried to tell her she had taken it down herself.
“Airbnb, it’s like a game for them — they’re not working with us. They’re just saying you need to complain. It’s like they want to cause a kerfuffle,” said Chang.
“It’s like every week I get an email from Airbnb telling me I need to complain to my MLAs, I need to rectify this issue. I’m just kind of done with it.”
Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon told Postmedia that the province has created a system that allows for registrations to be fixed on the back end if there are any discrepancies such as misformatted addresses.
He said Airbnb is instead using its hosts as “a tool” in its efforts to get the province to back down on its short-term restrictions.
“Clearly Airbnb is using opportunities to put their hosts under stress because they have a greater motive, which is to get rid of the reforms that we’ve brought around short-term rentals,” the housing minister said in an interview.
“I’m not surprised — they are hiring very highly paid lobbyists to go out and try to make the case for why these rules can’t be in place.”
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