> 2. Redistribute the resulting tax dollars to all city residents

One of the result is less and less “true” residents. That’s what is happening with airbnb, where some people prefer to move away and dedicate their appart to tourism, even if it’s only for part of the year.

Or restaurants and other services used by everyone get tourism focused, and while money flows in, quality of life goes down.

I think that’s one case where money doesn’t solve the issue (provided it’s an issue to solve, some might argue)

While I'm sure airbnb accelerated the process, when I visited Venice a decade ago I rented a flat owned by somebody who lived on the mainland. It had been his grandmother's residence, but he had been renting it out to tourists for years at that point.

Venice already does the first part, the 'city tax' component of the hotel bill is quite high. There's no redistribution though.

Presumably the city tax isn't high enough, if overtourism is a real problem.

Europe is the global leader in regulation (I mean this as a pure matter of fact, not some kind of backhanded compliment). If regulating is feasible I'd expect them to be doing it in some capacity. This kind of begs the question as to why they're not doing it.

If someone has an example of a city that manages to use taxes/regulation on tourism to provide for the people who have to live there I'd like to hear it.

You also need to ban Airbnb otherwise people will just Airbnb in the suburbs/residential areas and then Uber to the Touristy areas. Then locals will have to deal with gentrification and congestion during tourist season.

No, you just need to get AirBnB or AirBnB hosts to start paying their share of hotel tax, like they do in some other locales.

That solves one market problem (AirBnB has no level playing field with existing hotels.)

That does not solve the other large problem; most residents do not want to live in a hotel district with other tourists, and especially not as hallway or floor mates. And residents do not want new hotel builds or conversions competing with apartments. With traditional hotels this is solved with permits and zoning, but AirBnB is usable on pretty much all residential units.

This is solved by the hotel tax as well: if you want to decrease the number of tourists, raise the tourist/hotel tax.

Seems like we don't have enough hotels then. Let's build more. It'd make a lot of money for the government.

Governments don't answer to short-term visitors, they answer to residents. Quite frankly, it's a good thing that Venice or Amsterdam or Barcelona are not pursuing a Benidorm-style frantic race to the bottom for tourism.

Indeed. And those residents would be greatly benefited by all the extra tax revenue and business that they recieve from tourists.

They're aware of that. Judging by the article, they also don't really care for it, because it has so many downsides.

You just said the answer to the other problem: require a permit or business license to be an AirBnB host. Alternatively, "the market" offers annoyed neighbors another option: move.

The government responds to the will of residents, not short-term visitors. A ban is just the residents' preference to set the number of permits or business licenses for AirBnBs to zero. A government has no obligation to accommodate AirBnB.

Saying moving is an option trivializes how difficult moving can be, and is about as helpful as saying, "If you don't like the current president, why don't you just move to another country?"

I find banning AirBnB a lazy form of governance, much like open container laws. "This behavior is correlated with undesirable outcomes, so it is illegal irrespective of the actual result of the behavior".

The other argument I see is that it prices out locals. Sure, allowing someone to own a 6-unit building and rent it out as a de-facto hotel will increase housing prices. But allowing locals to rent out their apartment while they're traveling has the opposite effect - it makes property more affordable by increasing utilization.

Living next to tourists is unpleasant and unwanted, and is so because tourists don't really care about anything other than their short-term visit. AirBnB is not correlated with that, AirBnB is a direct facilitator of it.

Allowing people to rent out their apartment doesn't make property more affordable, it allows people to bid up rents with AirBnB income and it prices out people on the margins unable or unwilling to rent out their own home.

Your argument reads like you believe that the proceeds of tourism are equally shared among the population.

I don't get a dime if someone starts renting next door via airbnb to endless parties of nightlife addicted tourists.

He's arguing that that tax dollars should be divided among the city's residents, so even if you don't own an AirBNB or business, you will still benefit economically.

I grew up in a (tourism) town that did this. They had moderate property taxes (moderate property taxes on many multi-million dollar properties = huge windfall). The town squanders it all. The cops have every toy they want, the classrooms are full of overpriced hardware. I guess that's nice. The results delivered by the schools and cops are nothing special (relative to the rest of the state) though.

I shit you not (believe me, I wish I were), the town is looking into running it's own pet cemetery. If that isn't boondoggle waste I don't know what is.

Locals still pay high vehicle excise taxes, town dump fees are sky high (the rust belt city I now live in takes my trash away every week for less $$), there's a big fee for a (local resident) beach parking lot pass, etc, etc so it's not like the town is using it's windfall to ease the burden on everyone else.

I think expecting a suddenly cash flush government to fairly distribute it is a recipe for disappointment. I would be very wary of the "profit centers" (e.g. hospitality industry) achieving something akin to regulatory capture whereby they get whatever they want because they're the money makers for the town.

I'd love for municipalities to be able to make money hand over fist using tourism and then use that money to provide for their citizens (like Norway does with oil money) but I have near zero confidence that can happen without being corrupted by special interests and the well connected.

I have to know which city this is, I need details on this proposed pet cemetery!

I'd love to just so we can all laugh at it but I don't give out PII like where I grew up on HN