Expedia, Bookings and TripAdvisor should join Airbnb in forcing hosts to licence, says Vancouver staff
Credit to Author: David Carrigg| Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 06:14:33 +0000
The Mayor of Vancouver should ask online short-term rental businesses Expedia, Bookings and TripAdvisor to join Airbnb in ensuring all hosts have a business licence, says the city’s chief licence inspector.
In a report going to the city’s committee on city finance and services on Wednesday, Kathryn Holm makes a string of recommendations following the anniversary of the city’s short-term rental management program. The program permits principal residents of Vancouver homes to rent out space for less than 30 days, as long as they hold a short-term rental business licence. It was previously illegal to rent out to anyone for less than a month.
Holm suggests council ask Mayor Kennedy Stewart to contact the Expedia Group, Bookings Holdings and TripAdvisor asking they “take additional measures to ensure their listings and operators in Vancouver comply with the city’s short-term rental regulations … including a mandatory business licence field, data sharing with the city for the purposes of enforcement and removal of listings that fail to include a business licence number.”
Vancouver is the only city in Canada to have an arrangement with a short-term rental provider (Airbnb) that blocks hosts from the site unless they provide a business licence number. The law came into effect on Sept. 1, 2018, a day after Airbnb delisted 2,482 Vancouver units because they didn’t have a licence.
Between the start of enforcement and Oct. 10, 2019, the city suspended 204 licences, while another 223 were voluntarily cancelled due to threat of enforcement. The city also issued 1,810 legal orders, violation tickets or warning letters to unlicensed operators, with 12 listings referred for prosecution.
As of Oct. 10, 2019 there were just over 5,000 short-term rental listings in the city, with 1,100 in the downtown area. According to the city report, Airbnb makes up 82 per cent of those listings, while Expedia is second with 11 per cent.
Holm is also recommending the cost of a business licence roughly double from $51 to $99. This is expected to generate an extra $200,000 a year, that would go toward the $700,000 a year cost of operating the program.
She also wants professional short-term rental managers to obtain a $155 city Property Manager Licence and hosts be asked for more information to prove that the property is a principal residence.
Overall, Holm said the short-term rental program was working well.
“Staff found that overall, the current STR regulations and program administration have been successful in terms of licensing and enforcement,” Holm wrote. “Vancouver continues to be looked to in Canada as a leader in this challenging area of regulation, a sentiment often expressed to staff by counterparts in other cities in Canada.”