The critical element missing in the Airbnb discussion
When you board a plane, you have the right to be transported in a safe and well-maintained airplane that complies with regulations and fulfills fire and life safety standards. When you check into a hotel, the operator guarantees to you that the building complies with hygiene, fire and life safety standards, complies with building regulations and that the hotel is in a safe and well-maintained condition. In case you suffer damages, you can sue the hotel or hotel Company.
When you book a room or an apartment via Airbnb, you have no guarantees that the building in which your room or apartment is located complies with any standards. I always wondered why this issue is left out of the discussion regarding Airbnb. For me the discussion seems to be reduced to whether local taxes (or taxes at all) are paid or if the rooms and apartments are lost for the local housing market.
Very important, of course, but imagine you come to a hotel and notice that there are no emergency routes or exits, no fire doors, no fire extinguishers and no fire alarm systems. I assume you will leave and stay somewhere else.
Hotel owners and operators spend huge amounts of money to comply with standards and regulations and to stay compliant. There are many renovation projects where more money is spent to comply with fire and life safety standards than for the guest-facing features. Hotel staff is trained to keep emergency routes free and check that fire doors are not locked or blocked. Regular inspections of the relevant systems are required by law.
Who is in charge of this when you stay with Airbnb? I assume most people are not aware of this – or they just do not care. They are also not aware of the safety standards of hotels in detail; they simply rely on the fact that they are there. When you stay in a licensed hotel you can be sure that this is the case.
I do not want to be extremely pessimistic, but experience shows us that certain issues are ignored until something severe happens and people get hurt.
I am not opposing Airbnb, but I think that it is important to make people aware of these facts. I assume that most of the people who are booking Airbnb think that they book something similar as a hotel, just smaller, more individual, closer to local neighborhoods or simply cheaper. They do not know that they are booking a product without clear and obvious hygiene, fire and life safety standards. The quality rating, which is done by the guests, does not cover this at all – or did you see a comment like “The room was great, but we missed the fire extinguisher”?
What surprises me is the fact that this topic is hardly touched in discussions over Airbnb.
DI HERBERT MASCHA, MRICS, Partner - MRP Hotels
Herbert Mascha is an experienced civil engineer, working on international hotel projects as a project manager and consultant.
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