What happened to Airbnb?

Financially, the sharing economy darling is thriving, but guests, hosts, and cities have had enough

All its success is part of the company’s problem. What started as a scrappy idea offering an affordable alternative to hotels has now made Airbnb a target for lawmakers and a magnet for critics. Airbnb may not be collapsing, as some doomsayers are predicting, but it is facing a reckoning - an existential questioning of what it offers and where it will go from here.

Key takeaways

The relative slowness of Airbnb regulation, happening in piecemeal fashion across the country, is why so many regions now find themselves overrun with short-term rentals. The era of an unfettered short-term rental market, however, is over;

New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu are among the major cities that have passed short-term rental restrictions of varying strictness.

Yet Airbnb keeps pushing for more hosts to join. It was a core goal of a shareholder letter released earlier this year, with the company stating that it wanted to turn hosting “mainstream.”

Get the full story at Vox