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This article is reproduced from the public account "Urban Planet Institute". If you need to reprint, please contact the original author. At the end of 2007, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, two designers who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, were distressed by the high rent and were forced to rent out their beds to share the rent. They bought three air mattresses, placed them in the living room, rented them to people who came to San Francisco for meetings, and provided breakfast for the renters for $80 a night. This simple idea was also given the simple name, “Air Bed and Breakfast”. In this way, Chesky and Gebbia teamed up with technology guru Nathan Blecharczyk to establish Airbnb, the first community-based, short-term rental housing market Internet company in San Francisco, USA, in August 2008.  Airbnb founders (from left to right): Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk In just ten years, Airbnb has achieved "a total of more than 3,000,000 listings in 191 countries and 65,000 cities", and its revenue even exceeded US$2 billion in its first 10 years of operation. The two pauper roommates who had no money to rent a house have now become billionaires and created a new business direction of "sharing economy", which affects the economic structure of the world. *Airbnb's brand name in mainland China is Airbnb, which means "let love welcome each other". Deep in crisis and anxiety In 2018, Airbnb held a 10th anniversary event in San Francisco, USA, during which one sentence was repeatedly mentioned: Airbnb should reach “everyone.”  Airbnb 10th anniversary event | Britton MDG Because in more and more European cities, Europeans are choosing not to welcome or even reject Airbnb, and Airbnb is also aware of the seriousness of this crisis. On February 10, 2019, the Paris city government took Airbnb to court and requested a "sky-high fine" of 12.5 million euros. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said: "We want to prosecute unauthorized rentals because they are seriously disrupting order in some Paris neighborhoods."  Paris City Hall defies Airbnb | Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast The main reason for the crisis is that although Airbnb's operating model has brought more profits to landlords, it has accelerated and worsened the housing crisis that the city has been facing, such as rising housing prices, increasing community instability, turning investment properties into "illegal" hotels, and affecting the interests of legal tax payers. Therefore, it can be seen that Airbnb is gobbling up tens of thousands of housing units because Airbnb is turning social housing into a commodity, accelerating the blind development of new investors and disrupting the short-term rental market order. For Airbnb hosts, they use the platform to earn a lot of money, and some data also shows that hosts are trying to increase their number of properties to maximize profits. Therefore, Airbnb seems to have gone against its original intention of "sharing rooms with local hosts." Sebastian Major, a spokesman for the city of Amsterdam, said: “This was originally a good platform for home sharing, but now it has become a way for people to make money. Some communities have more renters than residents. We want to protect our city and prevent our communities from being disrupted by some illegal short-term rental operators. ” Therefore, Airbnb's intervention in the short-term rental market has seriously eroded the harmonious neighborhood atmosphere, and the promise of "home sharing" has turned into "home stripping." Moreover, short-term rentals that lack reasonable controls increase the scarcity of rental housing, prompt landlords to raise rents, and accelerate community gentrification, thereby threatening community controllability and the original quality of the community.  Community residents protest against Airbnb | Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Therefore, although Airbnb has achieved great success in the vacation rental market, a series of problems such as "over-development of the urban tourism market", "destruction of community stability", "housing shortage", "housing gentrification", etc. have caused Airbnb to be questioned by individuals, the market and the city. When the vacation rental industry is in trouble, and even facing a crisis that harms communities and the housing market, can the emergence of a non-profit cooperative turn the situation around?  The emergence of Fairbnb In 2016, after discovering common problems, five free individuals decided to come together and establish a fair and pure organization called "Fairbnb.coop". Fairbnb is not a private company, but after years of incubation, it has become a non-profit cooperative (nonprofit co-operative) composed of community citizens, designers, scholars and researchers from multiple professional backgrounds, aiming to bring true "sharing" back to the sharing economy model. The emergence of Fairbnb has given people a new development idea. Its goal is to become an alternative to Airbnb. As founder Sito Veracruz said: “What we want to build is a collaborative sharing platform that is truly fair and never pursues extractive benefits. ”  Co-founders of FAIRBNB.COOP (from left to right): Emanuele Dal Carlo, Marco Lotito, Sito Veracruz, Indre Leonaviciute, Damiano Avellino. Their goal is to challenge the crisis caused by Airbnb, establish a brand that can adapt to the tourism market, and turn the current crisis into an opportunity for local community building. Fairbnb, getting better and better In recent years, various loosely regulated online platforms have emerged frequently, all of which aim to achieve high profits by solving tourists' short-term stay needs. Together they contribute to this irresponsible rental model and accelerate the overexploitation of the urban tourism market. Therefore, when short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb began to face counterattacks from many European and American cities, Fairbnb.coop’s operating model became more in line with the preferences of the public and the government. In 2016, the Fairbnb concept started in Venice, Amsterdam and Bologna, working with local communities to establish pilots and provide community consulting services, and gradually spread to Athens, Rome, Barcelona and Seville. Other groups from Europe and around the world have also joined in to help Fairbnb explore a more suitable development model and then seek the final model for implementation.  Fairbnb.coop organizational structure At the end of 2018, Fairbnb officially established Fairbnb.coop and launched crowdfunding at the same time, mainly to speed up the resolution of the last technical problem before going online, launch the Fairbnb mobile application, and accelerate the completion of its own ecological closed loop. Fairbnb officially launched After years of incubation, Fairbnb was officially launched in four cities: Venice, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Bologna in January 2019. Once the project was launched, its operation model and stay experience were recognized by the local government, community participants and tourists.  Fairbnb global distribution A new model of home sharing The Fairbnb platform attempts to transform the home sharing model, taking community development as the central goal, prioritizing the interests of the community, and providing users with an authentic, intimate, fun and sustainable travel experience. In terms of basic needs, the platform allows community residents to provide discounted rooms, full apartments and B&Bs (A bed and breakfast), campsites and farmhouses are also featured. However, they must strictly abide by the rules agreed with the local government and fairbnb.coop. In Venice, for example, the landlord must be a resident of the community, and if the owner owns the entire apartment, only one room will be used for tourist services. An operational mechanism that truly touches “everyone” In addition, similar to standard home-sharing models such as Airbnb, it plans to charge a commission of 15% on the booking of housing services, with half of this money being fed back into the local community to fund projects selected through consultation with community committees. These projects may include non-commercial meeting spaces, community centers, or social housing. Fairbnb guests can choose which community projects they want to fund and can visit them during their stay.  Fund recycling mechanism for Fairbnb rental housing Fairbnb, what are the advantages? |Shared collaboration| In terms of collaboration, Fairbnb works with local city halls to ensure that all rental properties are legal and fully comply with local laws. In addition, in terms of decision-making, the platform is not owned by certain investors, but is jointly exercised by cooperatives and communities with regulatory and decision-making rights. In terms of benefit sharing, half of the commission collected by the community through Fairbnb.coop will be returned to the local community. This amount will be used to maintain and rebuild projects selected by local residents, from children's playgrounds to cultural centers, community gardens to women's shelters.  Community garden project with Fairbnb |Fair and transparent| Fairbnb is transparent. It shares operational data with local governments so that they can more accurately understand the real-time status of the tourism industry. Fairbnb respects local regulations. It incorporates the specific requirements of local communities to enhance the effectiveness of regulations in the short-term rental market. Additionally, Fairbnb has publicly committed to complying with all local laws regarding vacation rentals and requires their renters to do the same. Fairbnb uses the strategy of "one landlord can only have one rental house" to avoid the problems brought to the market by one person with multiple houses on the platform, thereby limiting the negative impact of short-term rentals on the housing market. These also mean that Fairbnb can exercise a certain degree of self-regulation in places where local monitoring capabilities are insufficient. |sustainability| Fairbnb's organizational model, in terms of its own capital chain, greatly avoids the financial risks caused by angel investment and venture capital. In the early stage of the project, Fairbnb.coop only relied on 100,000 euros provided by its own members to start the project plan. In the later stage of the project, crowdfunding was carried out with quasi-mature products to accelerate the product launch process and put it into the market. ； In terms of project operations, Fairbnb is committed to finding non-commercial community projects that are eager to resolve the crisis caused by the tourism market, such as housing for community associations, non-profit food cooperatives or community gardens, and to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for the projects.； On the user side, travel users not only solve their housing needs, but also experience interesting projects donated by them in the community to provide unique experiences and exchanges.  Non-profit community plantation in partnership with Fairbnb Is it sustainable and replicable? Overall, Fairbnb’s operating model is guided by four core principles – collective ownership, democratic governance, public participation and institutional accountability. Strategies that empower citizens effectively strengthen the social fabric of urban areas and limit gentrification and inequality to a certain extent. The practice of investing half of the income in local sustainable development projects has won the collective support of community residents by upgrading and rebuilding communities to combat the negative impacts of tourism development on communities and cities. Created by citizens to create a multi-stakeholder cooperative, it can ensure the well-being of all community residents and the entire urban community while ensuring rental income. Therefore, in terms of sustainability and replicability, Fairbnb considers more in the market of short-term accommodation rentals, how to allow guests, hosts and neighbors to jointly decide with municipalities how to make the rental process of the entire community fairer, more sustainable and more valuable. Fairbnb believes that as long as the profit of the platform itself is not the fundamental purpose, but invested back into the community that cooperates with the platform, the platform will maximize social benefits and have promotion value.  Participatory workshop for Fairbnb Venice project Will it completely replace Airbnb? “I was very optimistic about Airbnb from the beginning because it's great to pass on the benefits of tourism to neighbors and communities. But it requires restrictions and appropriate regulations to ensure it runs smoothly, which unfortunately does not happen with Airbnb. I did not foresee that this kind of platform would be profit-oriented, nor did I realize that this "game" would be so selfish. When you see about 20% of users making 80% of the profits, you will understand what is wrong, which is why we choose to appear.” 。——Veracruz, founder of Fairbnb. Fairbnb hopes that the rental behavior between individuals should focus on the concept of benefit exchange rather than the concept of profit. Therefore, compared with Airbnb, Fairbnb's focus is no longer on personal gains, but on contributions to community projects. What guests see when they experience it is the running projects of the entire community. Because the original intention of the team is to allow local community citizens to create, manage and make decisions together, thereby maintaining community interests and thinking about how to face the surge in tourism market demand and the negative impact that tourism has on people's lives. But it’s just one way to strengthen ties within a community. The rise of a product must solve certain pain points of users, and the success of Airbnb is precisely to meet people’s accommodation needs and experience pursuits during travel. Therefore, most travelers do not care about the development mechanism and meaning of a product, because they care more about whether they can successfully book their favorite vacation apartment and whether their stay is comfortable. Therefore, although fairbnb.coop will not be accepted by the public for some time, and it will not be able to completely resolve the crisis in the national tourism market, its emergence has still contributed a set of reliable participation models, shaping a sustainable development ecological closed-loop mechanism as a reference, and empowering local governments and residents to cope with the crisis in the tourist city where they are located. Fairbnb just happened to appear at this crisis moment, a moment when people are most eager to find alternatives to Airbnb. However, whether it can completely replace Airbnb still needs further verification by the market and time. Q&A with Veracruz 1. What is your (founder) background, what do you do for a living, and how did you get the idea to start Fairbnb? My background is in law and urban planning, and although over the past few years I have been focusing on smart cities and the sharing economy, my company, City Makers, provides digital services to cities. We are currently developing a bicycle management program in Amsterdam and a tourism platform in Santander (Spain). The idea of Fairbnb was proposed at Faircity Amsterdam in 2016. We discussed how to improve the policy on short-term holiday rentals in Amsterdam and during the discussion we realized that it is not just about legislation, we also need to bring together players on the platform who respect local regulations. * FAIRcity is a recently launched open platform that aims to unite many initiatives, groups, organizations and individuals in Amsterdam as a just and equitable city. The sales in our city must stop! Our platform relies as much as possible on the self-organization and own initiative of the groups and the people who participate in them. 2. Explain to us the real difference between Fairbnb and Airbnb and why Fairbnb is better? Fairbnb's first priority is to keep vacation rentals peer-to-peer: activity between peers, rather than having transactions between companies and travelers. * P2P finance, also called P2P credit, is a type of Internet finance (ITFIN). Meaning: point-to-point. P2P finance refers to small loan transactions between different network nodes. It requires the help of professional e-commerce network platforms to help borrowers and lenders establish lending relationships and complete relevant transaction procedures. We have three main principles: 1) Legality, complying with city legislation; 2) Public orientation, putting the needs of the city before interests. This public-oriented approach will also lead to the reinvestment of profits in local projects voted on by the community; 3) Co-ownership of the platform between employees and platform users. Fairbnb will be a cooperative, but members will not receive income as it will be plowed back into community building projects. 3. What are your thoughts on Fairbnb? How did it develop? We hope that the P2P vacation rental model can play a positive role in cities. We are working with groups from cities like New York, Barcelona or Venice. If we can do a good job in these cities, I believe more people will join in the future. Vacation letting is an activity that needs to be properly regulated and we are looking for a more sustainable model for this market. 4. How will Fairbnb respond to social crises in the future, and what is your strategy? I try to anticipate problems from a social perspective and combat them in a collaborative way. However, the future of cities is unpredictable, and what worries me most right now is the environment, workforce, and housing. The cooperative economy and platform cooperatives can alleviate the exacerbation of these problems in the short term, but we need to come up with a better strategy and systematic policy legislation. Unfortunately, when it comes to innovation, good ideas come too slowly. Nonetheless, I am optimistic and believe we can find sustainable alternatives to create better urban living. References: 1.《‘Fairbnb’ Wants to Be the Unproblematic Alternative to Airbnb》 Article author: Feargus O'Sullivan (European region writer. Focus is on housing issues and social change, infrastructure, urban policy and national culture) 2.《FairBnB is an ethical alternative to Airbnb, coming in 2019》 Article author: MÁR MÁSSON MAACK (Icelandic expat in Amsterdam, writes for TNW and is the editor of Podium, TNW’s expert planning community)   Are you "watching" the 2B battle▼ |
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