Fairbnb: The Ethical Home-Sharing Alternative That Wants To Undermine Mass Tourism

Europe is home to many of the favorite destinations of travelers all over the world. Throughout the years, the tourism industry has changed the face of many European cities. On the one hand, the innovations in the sector, like low-cost airlines or accommodation services, have made it possible for pretty much everyone to afford to travel to new places. However, on the other hand, many areas and sites have been suffering mass tourism which triggered a process for which neighborhoods look more like museums, as well as several economic mechanisms that eventually damaged local residents.

Many cities lost their identities, becoming a mere touristic attraction. But it is not just a question of distinctiveness and individuality: commercial activities that were once a supporting element of the local economy have been replaced by international franchises and facilities intended for tourists. The case of Venice, a thousand-year-old city which is now considered as a theme park from visitors, while locals are slowly disappearing, is a hurtful reminder of the effects of mass tourism.

One of the most impacted sectors has been housing. In some of the most traveled-to cities in Europe, rents have become too high for locals because of the home-sharing platforms’ economic competition. Above all, Airbnb’s. The real estate market has become more vulnerable to speculation while becoming in many cases far more accessible for tourists than for long-term residents. This is why an Italian startup based in Bologna, a city which has recently lived through students’ protests against rent increase caused by a pervasive presence of Airbnb hosts, has founded Fairbnb. The startup acknowledges the innovation that came with the original aim of the company born in 2007 in San Francisco, but is working on a more ethical approach. I interviewed Emanuele Dal Carlo, the startup co-founder.

How did you come up with the idea of an ethical counterpart to Airbnb?

Emanuele Dal Carlo: The fairbnb.coop concept was born in different cities by autonomous groups that, once they discovered the existence of others that were working on the same issues, decided to come together. Hot spots have been Venice, Amsterdam and Bologna but soon people from Athens, Rome, Barcelona and Seville joined the challenge. We didn’t want just to protest or to make a statement, we wanted to demonstrate that is possible to operate in the touristic market on a large scale and at the same time show social responsibility. We want to show that is possible to create a market solution that transforms tourism from a problem to an opportunity for local communities. We aim to set an example, hoping that the market will follow. The initial ground-breaking and innovative idea of home-sharing promoted by platforms like Airbnb have changed, letting in speculators and hosts with a multitude of homes to do a short-term rental with virtually no control over the local regulation. This process without any self-limitation has contributed to the rise in costs for residential accommodations. As citizens, we have been directly affected, seeing our cities dramatically change in a few years. The urgency of the problem motivated us to start this journey that involves people in the co-creation of a fair model that create distributed prosperity. We combined our backgrounds of social entrepreneurship, activism and a cooperative approach to propose a model of sharing economy that is better for the users, for the communities and the touristic market itself.

Which are the problems you found about Airbnb and its impact on the tourism industry that made you want to create Fairbnb?

The impact of mass tourism in our cities is complex phenomena related to many factors: however, the unregulated expansion of these platforms have resulted in the increase in rents’ prices in many places, as well as in the rise of protests from many residents. Vacation rental platforms usually do not put in action any filter to check if hosts comply with local regulations. Also, they do not share their data with public administrations, which is the only way for local governments to properly regulate this activity. Some of us were directly affected by this phenomena: just recently one of our co-founder that moved to Bologna have been struggling in finding an apartment due to the lack of offer and the high prices.

As citizens living in touristic destinations, all of us suffered the effects of mass tourism in the last few years. Often we saw entire neighborhoods losing their identity while having many of the local people and businesses forced to move by the increase of rents. The transformation from residential areas to touristic districts, with local shops converted in bars and takeaway and entire streets populated just by tourists, residents have been struggling. There is an element to the tourism industry and especially related with vacation rental apartments, that we would like to challenge: the positive impact of tourism is felt only by companies and house owners, whereas the negative impact is suffered by the whole community. This impact is indeed related to housing market prices. It results in an increase of nuisance, less cohesive communities, the replacement of traditional stores with retails directly addressed to tourists. We are doing this not only to relief residents but to help tourists too. We believe that a sustainable level of tourism will create a better experience for travelers and reconcile locals with an industry that have overextended its welcome in our communities. We believe in a technology that is inclusive, that promote the well being of people over the profit and that enable people to collaborate and support each other: that’s why we decided to create Fairbnb!

How is the platform going to work? Can anyone become a fairbnb.coop host? How do you select them?

The platform will allow locals to put on offer rooms, full apartments and houses, locally owned hotels and B&B, even camping sites and farmhouses. However, they will have to strictly follow local regulations and, on top of that, abide by fairbn.coop sustainability rules that have been agreed by the local node. For example, in Venice hosts can only be residents and, in the case of full apartments, the owner can have only one secondary house on the touristic market all year around. This has been decided in order to maximize the positive economic effect on the resident population that pays taxes locally and to promote a circular economy. We believe it is also a much more meaningful experience for tourists that will know that they are actually going to live in a house that belongs to a local family. Other cities may follow different rules and there could be exceptions but in general, the golden rule of 1 house for 1 resident host will be suggested worldwide.

We will ask no fees or commission to the hosts and also we will allow our hosts to be present on other booking platforms. We will actually charge a booking commission on the traveler and ask them to decide to which local-based social project they want to donate the 50% of the platform fee. At any moment of the booking process, all parties will have a transparent and open vision of where the money goes. It will be also possible to donate directly to one or more projects without having to book a room or an apartment. This will allow the local community to use fairbnb.coop as a crowdfunding tool and to travelers that have booked on other platforms – or are just interested in supporting a community -to back social projects in an independent way.

Our objective is to involve local organizations. We are selecting the first projects on several criteria (topic, number of people impacted, etc.), promoting at the same time events on the territories where we operate by empowering those who want to help bringing fairbnb.coop in their cities. We are creating local groups that will be in charge to find new projects and co-create initiatives related to fairbnb.coop and the model of a sustainable economy.

How did you choose the cities in which to put it to test?

These cities are those where we have the most active communities. These are also the homes of our  founders. Here we encourage everyone to pre-register as a host and to contact us in order to speed up the process of opening fairbnb.coop worldwide. To enroll a new location, we just need a small group of locals to take the lead, find some hosts and social projects; then we will work together on respecting the local regulations and bureaucracy, in order to be 100% compliant with the local legal and tax system.

What was the reaction you had from the residents/local authorities of the cities in which you are bringing the platform? How did mass tourism affect their lives?

The initiative has been welcomed very positively by the people that want to experiment with new models of sharing economy. Even though fairbnb.coop cannot alone be the solution to mass tourism, we can present local authorities and residents with the possibility to experiment a model that limits the negative impact of the industry, while contributing to the creation of a network of sustainable initiatives. We had different responses by the local administrations in the cities where we are going to launch the pilots: Amsterdam, Bologna, Barcelona and Seville have been really supportive. Great support also came from the cooperative ecosystem, but we understand that we have to establish ourselves as a credible player before all the local administrations will see fairbnb.coop as a great opportunity to promote a more sustainable touristic model.

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.