Airbnb’s Data ‘Portal’ Promises a Better Relationship With Cities
The company is piloting an information-sharing platform in 15 cities that it says will help local leaders monitor the effects of the home-sharing giant.
Barcelona is among the cities that have been dramatically affected by the rise of Airbnb. Can a new data portal improve the relationship between the home-sharing company and the municipalities that host it?
Photographer: Paco Freire/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
When startups go public, a big part of the process is opening up their books and being more transparent about their business model. With global short-term rental giant Airbnb moving towards its own IPO, the company has introduced a new product that seeks to address recent safety concerns and answer the data-sharing requests that critics have long claimed make the company a less-than-perfect partner for local leaders.
The Airbnb City Portal, which launched on Wednesday as a pilot program with 15 global cities and tourism agencies, aims to provide municipal staff with more efficient access to data about listings, including whether or not they’re complying with local laws. Each city, including Buffalo, San Francisco and Seattle, will have access to a new data dashboard as well as a dedicated staffer at Airbnb. Like so many of its sharing economy and Silicon Valley peers, Airbnb has had a contentious, and evolving, relationship with municipalities and local government ever since launching (an especially fraught situation in Europe, as an EU court just ruled in favor of city regulations of the site).