Barcelona fights against the "James Bonds" of Airbnb

BarcelonaA new chapter in the dispute that has raged in recent months between Barcelona City Council and Airbnb. Following the tense meeting held on June 17, the council announced this Tuesday the proposed new agreement it sent to the platform. A new action protocol tightens controls to combat illegal tourist apartments and requires the City Council to have "unrestricted" access to the data of listings published on Airbnb, including the account holders of the bank accounts where payments for the accommodations are received.

The proposed new agreement stipulates that, as long as tourist apartments are not properly registered in the new registry launched by the Spanish government on July 1, Airbnb will send the City Council monthly all the data that advertisers should have provided to the State. Thus, the platform would send a monthly report to the city council with the listing's URL, the host's email address and name, CIF (Tax ID), ownership, licenses, address, room type, and the match between the license and the property's address. Furthermore, no listing may be published without a complete personal or social identification and a verified NIF (Tax ID Number) or CIF (Tax ID Number).

"We cannot find listings published by hosts named James Bond with 007 as their license number," explained the First Deputy Mayor, Laia Bonet. The head of Urban Planning has argued that the conditions included in the new agreement are "common sense" and seek above all to include the new regulations that have been implemented since the previous one was signed. Therefore, she assured that the city council will not negotiate discounts on the text and that the company will have to decide whether to accept it as it stands. "We cannot joke when we are talking about an illegal activity that affects the right to housing," commented Bonet.

Airbnb now has fifteen days to respond to whether or not it accepts the agreement proposed by the City Council. Otherwise, Bonet warned that the council is already considering civil, criminal, and administrative action against the platform for considering it complicit in illegal activity. In fact, at the meeting held less than a month ago between Jaume Collboni's government and Airbnb officials in the Iberian Peninsula, the mayor already threatened to take action against the company if it did not help pursue illegal tourist apartments.

Listing removal within 48 hours

Among the new features included in the agreement proposed by the City Council is the obligation for Airbnb to implement "a web-based system for rapid listing deactivation." This would avoid what currently occurs, where the council must notify Dublin by post of the list of apartments to be removed from the website. Furthermore, the agreement establishes that the platform must remove these listings within a maximum of 48 hours—currently, it took between five and ten days—and that, in the case of repeat offenders, removal would be immediate and the listings could not be reposted later.

The new relationship protocol also establishes that Airbnb must provide the City Council with the details of the holders of the bank accounts where payments are received for transactions made through the platform. This measure aims to increase the control over who is hiding behind some tourist apartments and improve the fight against fraud.