Because the costs of those tourists being is not on the owner of the flat, but their neighbours - who've bought or rented their homes with the expectation of a residential area, not living next to a hotel.
Zoning laws are not arbitrary rent-seeking enablers; they're protection against damaging behaviour that is difficult to enforce on a case-by-case basis.
Who cares as long as the tourists are respectful? I never understood this line of reasoning. You could end up living next to a nightmare neighbour too and the suffering would be long term as you're stuck with them.
They're also am excellent way to separate people out according to social class / lifestyle.
Well, if you are xenophobic then maybe you should buy a farm somewhere nowhere when you won't be seeing strangers.
I wouldn't want to live next to any hotel, including a 5 start resort catering to mostly domestic customers.
Hotels bring a lot of problems -- bursts of foot/auto traffic at weird times of the night, public drinking/drunkenness and loud groups of pedestrians on week nights, etc.
Nothing wrong with any of that -- vacations should be fun! -- but when it's happening every other Tuesday night in the next-door apartment, it can get super annoying.
They're entirely avoidable. I live in central london, and I've never had any issues with neighbours until I moved to a flat where the landlord upstairs decided to just full-time airbnb the place, rather than rent to someone permanent.
Tourists are way more inconsiderate of neighbours. It makes sense - they're never going to meet us, they're just here to have fun. But pretending it has no impact on the quality of the area is silly.
> Tourists are way more inconsiderate of neighbours.
You cannot generalise. If tourists are making noises then there are anti social reporting services that you can use.
Airbnb is not only for tourists, but it is used by people who just moved in and are looking for a place to rent and don't want to spend fortune on hotels or for example it is a great alternative for contractors - having for example 1 month assignment, why spend money on hotel?
This is not my experience. Even in urban areas I've lived places that are not like this.
I'm sure that's some sort of xenophobia.
It's a great solution, until people start defecting and creating things like airbnb.
To put it another way: some people drive while intoxicated, but drinking alcohol is still legal.
Once a replacement solution is implemented, I'm happy to start arguing for airbnb to be legal. Though it seems like it would likely eliminate the price advantage that airbnbs currently enjoy.
(not a rhetorical question)
In the AirBNB situation, the police could be giving a citation to a different person from weekend to weekend. If it were a traditional rental, the landlord could force the offenders out: But I'm not sure if there is much legal recourse for a series of short-term rentals being loud.
And some of the noise isn't such that you can get legal help. Loud vehicles and people banging luggage up and down stairs is one of those disturbing things that is over by the time you call the cops. What then?
I'm thinking of all the annoying neighbor situations I've had over the years. Luggage banging in the hallway at odd hours is mild compared to a modified motorcycle coming home at 2am.
A tenant has a right to "quiet enjoyment" so if everyone is part of the same apartment complex, you can force the landlord to take care of things. However, if you're in a row of single family homes... Didn't they make a couple movies recently about fighting with bad neighbors? Also, I don't think the cops are going to help if the neighbor slams their door when they leave home every morning at 5am or if their yappy dog is lonely most of the day.
I think we should try to create some standards for being a good neighbor. If an AirBnB host can ensure their guests meet that standard, then there's no problem.
Driving up rent is something that's probably unavoidable, but safety is something AirBNB could try to enforce if they wanted to.
Could I have gotten out in a fire? Probably. But it's definitely less obvious and less well-equipped than in a hotel for Directing unfamiliar residents out of the building
You do. See: civil disobedience.[1]
Also, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's wrong. A simple example were the laws against helping runaway slaves in the US. Many today would agree that helping runaway slaves was the right thing to do, but yet it was illegal. There were similar laws against helping Jews in Nazi Germany. Once again, just because you broke the law by helping a Jew wouldn't mean you did the wrong thing.
That's not to say there's any sort of moral equivalence between people (allegedly) breaking laws by participating in Uber or AirBnb and those who helped runaway slaves or Jews in Nazi Germany. They're just examples to show that breaking a law need not automatically be wrong, and that doing the right thing can be more important than obeying the law.
Finally, there are plenty of examples of stupid laws and outdated laws. Laws against sodomy or against dildos over a certain length spring to mind. Both of these existed relatively recently in the US (and possibly still exist), but they were pretty much ignored, and few people would have considered themselves to be in the wrong if they broke those laws.
Huge part of this is actually state over-regulation. People just can't build houses. If local folks can earn some money on the side by renting out their houses, this is a good thing. Why tourists should be forced to pay for over-expensive hotels? Instead of pressing companies like AirBnB, people should press governments to remove regulations that are not necessary only serve to hire civil servants out of family members of ruling parties (not to mention pocketing bribes to give permissions to build) and make the money for the privileged.
By asking for even more regulation, you are just tightening the loop on your neck.