Since Airbnb officially arrived in Australia in 2012,video lucah wulan gurito the short-term property rental giant has been extending its power and popularity, all with the softest touch.
By accident and design, the company has become the friendly face of the local "sharing economy," being conciliatory with government and recruiting hosts who can act as its champions.
SEE ALSO: Airbnb tries urban planning — and hotels — with 'Samara'Airbnb's reputation in the U.S., in comparison, is more combative. In 2016, it went so far as to sue San Franciscoover host registration requirements. The company is also flexing its political muscle, apparently spending close to a quarter million dollars on its U.S. lobbying efforts in 2016.
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For the moment, a less headline-grabbing approach seems to be working in Australia. That's in contrast to its more pugilistic Silicon Valley cousin, Uber, which hasn't been afraid to punch noses during fights with local regulators.
Still, amid the ads about being "Never A Stranger," it's easy to miss that many of those 75,000 or so Airbnb listings in Australia are still operating in a legal grey area. It's a situation that has found some hosts being threatenedwith heavy penalties and muddling through uncertainties about insurance coverage. As in the U.S., Airbnb has also been accused of being less than forthcoming about properties that may be operating commercially.
Pushing up rents and skirting fire safety requirements? No, it's about belonging.
The nice one, not like Uber
Uber is a "bully" while Airbnb is more affable.
At least that's the view offered by Chris Russell, media advisor to South Australian Deputy Premier John Rau. He told Mashablethe state government found Airbnb to be conciliatory where the rideshare company showed up with fists flying. "Uber was very aggressive in trying to get the government to agree with the way it wanted to run things," he said.
Uber has been legalised in South Australia, but the company remains unhappywith the regulatory burden imposed by the state on drivers. "We have a constructive and ongoing partnership with the South Australian Government," an Uber spokesperson told Mashable.
Airbnb, on the other hand, has called South Australia's regulation of homesharing the "gold standard." As of June, Airbnb hosts can operate in South Australia without fear of being forced to seek commercial development approval.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Airbnb's more amiable approach could be strategic, thanks to the fact it faces a far more complicated regulatory landscape than Uber and far too many fights.
Airbnb has to work through three complex layers of government at once -- federal, state and local council -- while Uber's fight is state by state. For Airbnb, that essentially amounts to more than 570 local governments across Australia, the company's country manager Sam McDonagh told Mashable.
"It's at the local government level that they enforce the planning and regulations, and many of those were put in place last century," he said, "and in many cases, before the internet."
McDonagh suggested Airbnb sees its role as essentially educating government about the benefits of its business model for tourism. Most recently, the company has been scuffling in Tasmania, where the state government has proposeda cap on unlicensed short term rentals. "I think Tasmania was an example where their intent was good, but the information they had wasn't as good as it could have been," he said.
"We want to work with governments because we believe that fair and progressive regulation is really good for Airbnb and good for our hosts, because it provides a level of certainty."
People power
Where possible, Airbnb prefers to use hosts who love the platform, rather than traditional lobbying firepower, to convince regulators.
Like Uber, which is registered with the well-established lobbying firm Newgate Communications, Airbnb also works with outside lobbyists. It is a client of government relations firm Richardson Coutts in most Australian states, including Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania.
"Airbnb works with a professional consultancy to support our efforts with policy makers at all levels of government," Dylan Smith, head of public affairs at Airbnb in the Asia Pacific, told Mashable.
Airbnb also has an in-house public policy team, but avid Airbnb users are obviously more politically appealing.
Avid Airbnb users are obviously more politically appealing.
After a short-term stays inquirywas announced by the New South Wales (NSW) government, it sent an email to local Airbnb users encouraging them to contact lawmakers on the company's behalf. Local hosts also showed up to the public hearing on a short-stay cap in Tasmania.
That's a game plan Airbnb has refined through its U.S. lobbying efforts.
It's definitely a recurring pattern, according to George Rennie, who researches lobbying at the University of Melbourne. "Clearly [at] Airbnb and the rideshare industry, their business model is: let's just accumulate a huge amount of capital, we'll use the early regulatory confusion period to establish ourselves and accumulate a user base as a political force."
According to Smith, the company likes to put its hosts forward, whether on billboards or in meetings with government officials. "Our hosts are proudly front and centre," he said.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable In the U.S., Airbnb is no longer afraid to flex this people power. During the Democratic National Convention in July, it issued a release to lawmakers highlighting its overwhelming popularity with millennial voters. "The vast majority of Americans -- and even more millennials -- want Airbnb to be legal where they live," it claimed.
Airbnb is cultivating its good guy image.
In Australia, Airbnb is not quite there yet, but it is cultivating its good guy image with some well-placed corporate sponsorship and advertising.
In 2014, Airbnb announced partnerships with two South Australian cultural institutions, the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Australian Masters Games. (Russell said Airbnb's support was not a consideration when South Australia made its June statement in favour of homesharing.)
In NSW, where its business model now faces a government inquiry, it was a major partnerof the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for the second time in 2016 and launched an advertising campaignwith the theme "Host With Pride." The ads were ambiguously pleasant, in a similar vein to the "NYC Supports Airbnb" billboards Airbnb deployedin New York during a regulatory wrestle in 2014.
That's subtle signalling of openness, both to regulators and users. "By supporting the gay and lesbian community, you're communicating that you're a progressive, forward-thinking, humanistic brand ... a brand for everybody," Adam Ferrier, global chief strategy officer at media agency Cummins & Partners, told Mashable at the time.
Talking transparency
When talking with government, McDonagh said Airbnb takes an open approach. Of course, for some, that's clarity up to a point.
Carol Giuseppi, CEO of Tourism Accommodation Australia (TAA), told Mashable the dialogue would improve if Airbnb was truly open about the nature of the dwellings listed on its platform.
While the TAA embraces home sharing, she said, it is concerned about the number of homes that don't have a host present and are available year-round. In other words, acting much like the existing short-term commercial accommodation industry, minus the regulation.
"If they were transparent about the types of products they have and genuinely worked with government to identify that type of product and identify how they can have more transparency in their business, we'd all be working together a lot better," Giuseppi said.
Smith, for his part, pushed back on Giuseppi's suggestion, and said Airbnb is happy to share company data in support of good government planning. "That's why Airbnb provides the information they need to make informed decisions about home sharing policies," he added.
According to the website Inside Airbnb, which scrapes data from the platform, 60.3 percent of listings in Sydney are for the whole home and 28.5 percent of listings are posted by hosts that have more than one listing. These are indicators, albeit not overwhelming proof, of listings that may be operating like a commercial property.
The average income earned by an Airbnb host in Australia is just over A$4,600 a year, and according to company statistics, the average booking length is 3.7 nights.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable In other jurisdictions, such as New York, the company now has a one home per host policy amid accusations it was contributing to a housing shortage.
A similar debate is only beginning in Australia. In its submission to the NSW inquiry, Waverley Council said Airbnb was now the largest supplier of accommodation in Waverley and eastern Sydney, with an impact on housing affordability that's not fully understood.
Self regulation, like in New York, is not an approach Airbnb has yet taken in Australia -- or had forced on them by government. While he didn't comment directly on Waverley's issue, Smith maintained Airbnb is committed to partnering with cities to address their individual policy needs.
And despite that uncertainty over its effect on Australian neighbourhoods, Airbnb has been successfully beating the hotel industry to the punch. In South Australia, for example, Chris Russell from the SA Premier's office noted that Airbnb approached the government, not the other way around.
After all, sometimes it's just about being the first to act. "Airbnb, like Uber, has been operating in that unregulated environment. But what Uber did, and what Airbnb is trying to do, is basically getting in first with the lobbying," Rennie said.
He also suggested the boiling frog analogy was apt for Airbnb's gambit in Australia. You know the one: If you boil the water immediately, the frog jumps out. If you raise it slowly, and pleasantly, the frog gets cooked.
Stay tuned to find out who gets served.
CORRECTION: Sept. 1, 2016, 2:40 p.m. AEST Updated to include clarification from Airbnb that it does use outside lobbyists, contrary to the company's earlier statement to Mashable.