airbnb travel down

Advertisement

Supported by

The Future of Airbnb

Home-sharing’s challenges aren’t only about social distancing and hygiene. Overtourism, racial bias, fee transparency and controlling the party crowd are also in the mix.

• Share full article

By Elaine Glusac

In the travel wreckage caused by the pandemic, home-sharing has emerged as battered, but with a steady pulse, as rental houses became social-distancing refuges for the travel-starved.

Home rentals have outperformed hotels in 27 global markets since the onset of Covid-19, according to a report by the hotel benchmarking firm STR and the short-term rental analysts AirDNA. As leisure travel ticked up this summer, average daily rates were higher for rentals in July 2020 versus July 2019 in the United States — from about $300 to $323 — thanks to the popularity of larger homes.

Still, global restrictions have squeezed every aspect of the travel industry, including vacation rentals. Across home-sharing platforms, according to STR and AirDNA, occupancy fell by almost half between mid-March and the end of June to between roughly 33 and 36 percent, depending on the size of the rental (hotels by comparison fell to an average of 17.5 percent occupancy).

The biggest player in the short-term rental market, with more than 7 million listings in over 220 countries, is Airbnb . Over the years, its rampant growth and lack of transparency have made it a target for everything from charges of fueling overtourism and turning formerly residential neighborhoods into tourist zones to enabling raucous parties despite complaints and virus-related restrictions on gatherings.

After laying off a quarter of its work force in the spring, Airbnb jettisoned some new ventures, including forays into transportation and entertainment, and hunkered down to focus on its core strength, lodging, even as its valuation fell from a high of $31 billion to, recently, $18 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Now, as Airbnb prepares to go public , we talked to Airbnb’s co-founder and chief executive, Brian Chesky, along with other industry experts, about some of the company’s challenges and the ways it is changing travel.

“People want to travel, they just don’t want to get on airplanes,” Mr. Chesky said. “They don’t want to go for business. They don’t want to stay in the really big cities as prevalently as they used to. They don’t want to be in crowded hotel districts.” But, he said, “they do want to get out of the house. And so we think demand is going to be strong in the future. I’m very optimistic, actually, about the industry.”

Lifestyle vs. vacation

Airbnb has touted privacy and guests’ control over their environment — including having your own kitchen in lieu of patronizing restaurants — as safeguards during the pandemic. It instituted new cleaning guidelines and indicated in late August that more than 1 million listings had earned the “ Enhanced Clean ” certification, which involves training in new guidelines that detail how and what to wash and sanitize. The procedures recommend 45 minutes of cleaning per room. Some listings guarantee a 72-hour vacancy window before check in.

The company says its offerings are aligned with the way people are traveling now, in family and friend groups to less populated destinations. Over Labor Day weekend, 30 percent of its bookings — double the previous year — were in remote areas, though classic vacation spots like Hilton Head Island, S.C., and Palm Springs, Calif., were among the most popular. Urban bookings remain down.

“We’re seeing a little blurring between traveling and living,” Mr. Chesky said. “Before the pandemic, you lived somewhere 50, 51 weeks of the year, and if you were so fortunate, you’d go on your once-or-twice-a-year vacation. Now the pandemic is changing how people want to work, travel and live.” Remote school and work unbind families from their homes. “People are living differently and people want to live anywhere,” he added.

Whether travel truly turns into nomadism remains to be seen, though the average length of stay since May 1 increased 58 percent to more than four days, and fall bookings are stronger than usual, according to AirDNA.

Overtourism, rising rents and housing shortages

Cities around the world, from Barcelona to Vancouver, are looking to curb Airbnb and other short-term rental companies, which many blame for hollowing out neighborhoods as real estate managers took long-term leases and listed them as more lucrative short-term rentals.

“You can earn more renting out apartments and houses on Airbnb than renting to locals,” said David Wachsmuth, an associate professor in the School of Urban Planning at McGill University in Montreal. “What’s happened on their platform is that actual home-sharing is a fraction of the activity. It’s dominated by commercial interests.”

Research published in the Harvard Business Review found that as listings rise in a city, so do rents. Analyses by the Economic Policy Institute , a nonpartisan think tank, found the costs to local communities of having Airbnb listings, including rising housing prices and shrinking availability, likely outweigh the benefits.

“The problems of overtourism were in the making for a long time,” said Makarand Mody, an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University. “Airbnb came along and made it worse. It was seen as one evil that needs to be sorted out, but there are much deeper societal and economic issues. Airbnb is just the supply side. But demand has increased so much.”

By 2019, the rise of the middle class globally contributed to expanding tourism above the rate of worldwide economic growth for nine years in a row, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. In Airbnb, many travelers found affordable accommodations that allowed them to stay in neighborhoods rather than business centers.

Now that the pandemic is the ultimate overtourism disrupter, Mr. Chesky believes travel has been redistributed in a lasting way to places beyond bucket-list capitals. “It’s kind of redeemed our vision,” he said. “What I would love is to be able to help spread out travel to as many communities as possible rather than over-concentrating them in any one place.”

“My speculation is that the world does not quickly snap back to the way it was,” he added. “I don’t think travel will ever, ever look like it did in January. The world can’t change so dramatically like it has and then one of the industries that’s been hit hardest just looks exactly like it did before.”

Communities aim to ensure that. Last summer, Oahu enacted a law to restrict rentals without permits on the Hawaiian island, enforced with fines. In Europe , cities like Lisbon and Dublin are buying back leases or forcing landlords into long-term rentals in an effort to ensure that when tourism rebounds it won’t overwhelm them again.

Enforcement remains thorny, and Airbnb has been accused of looking the other way when it comes to illegal listings. Last year, Los Angeles limited rentals to owner-occupied properties registered with the city, though many illegal units remain on the site, according to the Los Angeles Times .

In response, Airbnb just launched a new City Portal that it says will allow governments to more easily identify listings that don’t comply with local regulations, such as unregistered listings.

Before the launch, the company shared the new tool with San Francisco’s Office of Short-Term Rentals . “They’re pretty positive about it and hopeful this will definitely improve their ability to get bad actors off the platform,” said Jeffrey Cretan, a spokesman for the city’s mayor.

Perhaps because of these scofflaws, Airbnb says it has not lost significant listings. According to AllTheRooms Analytics, among popular cities in Europe, only Rome and Lisbon have shed listings, about 2,000 each. In Lisbon, the crackdown still leaves just above 14,500 listings, the same figure as in January 2019, but down from the peak in July 2019.

The effect of more regulations may show up in the future, posing a threat to a robust portfolio. “For a platform like Airbnb, they’re not just worried about the demand side, but the supply side,” Mr. Mody, of Boston University, said, noting the travel freeze may convince hosts to put their units in the long-term rental market, shrinking the platform, and worrying potential investors. “When you’re living on venture capital, profitability is not as important as growth,” Mr. Mody added. “Shareholders will be a lot less patient.”

The music stops at party houses

During the pandemic, Host Compliance , which tracks legal compliance among short-term rentals for 350 cities and counties in the United States, said noise complaints about so-called “party houses” tripled.

“A lot of people have been at home for a long time and they have to let some steam off and can’t jump on a plane to go to Europe or Cancún to party so they are renting out short-term rentals in driving distance from their homes,” said Ulrik Binzer, the founder and general manager of Host Compliance.

Often, these rentals are in residential neighborhoods, triggering noise complaints and health concerns about large gatherings.

In Miami Beach, short-term rentals were closed this summer, though those within condo and apartment buildings were allowed to reopen, with capacity limits, in August. That month, the city of Los Angeles cut the power on a house (not an Airbnb property) rented by prominent TikTok stars during a large party.

In August, Airbnb pulled the plug, too, announcing a global ban on party houses , defined as those that persistently generate complaints from neighbors. The company says 73 percent of listings already ban parties, though hosts often allow small gatherings like baby showers and birthday parties. Occupancy is now limited to 16 people.

Airbnb imposed a similar restriction in Canada earlier this year after a party in Toronto ended in three shooting deaths, according to BBC News .

“We want to do everything we can do to preserve the character of the communities and not allow these parties to get out of hand,” Mr. Chesky said.

It’s too soon, say observers, to know if the ban is working.

“The issue with Airbnb party houses is enforcement,” Mr. Binzer said. “It’s a little like having the fox watch the henhouse.”

The $52 rental with a $125 cleaning fee

On Sept. 14, a Twitter user wrote , “Found a cheap @Airbnb for 52 dollars. Cleaning fee for 1 night, 125. Nonsense.”

It’s a typical complaint about the platform, which lists attractive nightly rates, but buries the fees until users begin booking. Cleaning and service fees can be modest — zero to $25, say — or add $450 to a booking, reflecting a mix of mandatory and optional host-applied fees. Sometimes there are additional occupancy taxes. And in some countries, Airbnb applies a Value Added Tax on its service fees.

Under Airbnb’s pricing structure , hosts pay the company 3 percent of the booking subtotal, which includes the nightly rate plus any cleaning fee and fees for additional guests. Most guests are charged a service fee of less than 14.2 percent of the booking subtotal, which goes to Airbnb. (If hosts elect to cover the fee entirely, they normally pay Airbnb 14 to 16 percent of the subtotal.)

Because of their variability and lack of transparency, fees are the latest financial facet users have fixated on after the company created its extenuating circumstances policy during the pandemic. It said that travelers who had reservations made on or before March 14 could cancel and not be subject to cancellation fees, even if, in their rental agreement, they were in the penalty period. The policy has been extended several times, now to Oct. 31. (While most guests were happy with the resolution, many hosts were not and Airbnb later apologized to hosts for not consulting them).

Airbnb said it aims to introduce a redesign of price displays this year. “We’re trying to partner with hosts to create clear standards and change the search line, so if someone has higher cleaning fees, that affects their placement” in search results, Mr. Chesky said. “We’ve heard from travelers that they want a simpler way for us to show more of the price up front.”

Reckoning with racial bias

Four years before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, igniting this summer’s protests for social justice, the emergence of the hashtag # AirbnbWhileBlack called attention to a spate of racist incidents that users said happened at rental homes. Some Black renters were reported by neighbors as thieves. Others were subject to abuse by racist hosts rejecting their bookings. Complaints by Muslim, transgender and other groups followed.

Airbnb worked to purge discrimination from its platform by hiding guest’s profile pictures until a booking is confirmed; hiring anti-discrimination specialists to audit the platform; and creating a reporting channel to identify listings not complying with its nondiscrimination policy . The company said it has removed 1.3 million offenders.

This month, Airbnb plans to launch Project Lighthouse , a research initiative in the United States that aims to measure bias through perception based on names and photos, to determine where and when bias happens on the platform, from booking through reviews.

According to the company, the study has been in the works for two years in partnership with the racial justice organization Color of Change , with input from several social justice nonprofits, including Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People .

“It’s really hard to change what you can’t measure,” Mr. Chesky said. “Then hopefully we will use this data to continue to evolve our platform and reduce the bias.”

Its tech focus — on the platform rather than the in-person experience — won’t address incidents of in-person bias. Through its existing Open Doors policy , Airbnb offers to find a guest an alternative place to stay if they feel they have been discriminated against by a host.

“In a departure from its peers in Big Tech who pass off structural problems on the behavior of individual users, with Project Lighthouse, Airbnb is attempting to take responsibility for how tech platforms create the opportunity for harm at scale,” wrote Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, senior campaigns director at Color Of Change, in an email.

Experiences in the digital age

Airbnb doesn’t just rent lodgings. Through its Airbnb Experiences branch, it offers classes in mole making with an Indigenous cook in Mexico City, a music and cultural tour of Havana with a D.J. and walks among penguins with a conservationist in South Africa.

During the pandemic, many of its Experiences went virtual . Now, via Zoom, armchair travelers can visit an animal rescue farm in Connecticut, follow a plague doctor through Prague and sit in on a songwriting session in Nashville.

After Airbnb’s layoffs, many wondered whether Airbnb Experiences, long rumored to be losing money, would be shelved, too. In January , it had 50,000 Experiences in 1,000 cities. During the pandemic, the division was shut down, and later transitioned, with a fraction of its offerings, online. Today, it has 700 virtual Experiences generating $2 million in bookings over the past five months. In-person Experiences have resumed in more than 70 countries with restrictions on group sizes, though the company declined to say how many Experiences are available in person and how much money they are making.

“I would be surprised if they drop it completely,” Mr. Mody, of Boston University, said. “They don’t want to be just a home rental company. Travel is about experiencing the destination in its entirety and they want to play a role in that.”

The company said it stands by Experiences, even waiving its take — which is normally 20 percent — for its Social Impact Experiences , which include playing with shelter cats in Osaka, Japan ($25) and learning beat-making with an organization devoted to teaching underserved youth ($75).

“Experiences was hit hard by social distancing,” Mr. Chesky said, maintaining that the online transition has been successful. “In a world where there’s not a lot of things to do, we think there’s a window for Airbnb Experiences,” he said.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation.

Airbnb forecasts fewer bookings, lower prices in Q2; shares slump

• Medium Text

Sign up here.

Reporting by Priyamvada C in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. New Tab , opens new tab

Technology Chevron

Crypto firm Consensys sues US SEC over Ethereum regulation

Consensys has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) tied to the regulation of the Ethereum blockchain, the crypto firm said on Thursday.

The Bearish Outlook for Airbnb — and Why It’s Wrong: Analyst

Dennis Schaal , Skift

January 8th, 2024 at 3:51 PM EST

Bernstein emphasizes a non-standard measure, customer growth rather than room night growth, to assess Airbnb versus rivals. That's because Airbnb has more multi-bedroom properties than it did pre-Covid. That's out-of-the-box thinking.

Dennis Schaal

If you are bearish about Airbnb because its room night growth has slowed considerably and rivals such as Booking.com have narrowed the gap, then your downbeat assessment of Airbnb would be wrong.

That’s the message in a Bernstein research note released Friday, which concludes: “Airbnb is not over earning and is well set for future growth.”

Bernstein lays out the following bear analysis so it can show why this is the “the wrong conclusion.”

A Bearish Airbnb Outlook

Bears are downbeat on Airbnb — erroneously in Bernstein’s opinion — because:

• Airbnb’s room nights climbed merely 8% on a compound annual growth rate since 2019, and the company relied on 9% per year price increases to produce strong revenue growth.
• Prior to Covid, Airbnb relied on increased volumes rather than higher prices. But the consensus is that volume growth estimates (12%) are too optimistic, and that prices will “correct back more than expected,” Bernstein said as part of its summation of the “bear” argument.
• Airbnb’s average prices are 40% higher today relative to 2019, leading bears to conclude that Airbnb has lost its edge as a hotel alternative when guests are shopping for bargains.
• Booking.com, which offers both hotels and short-term rentals, has closed the room night growth gap against Airbnb. That’s because Airbnb grew its room nights at an 8.2% CAGR in the 2019-2023 period compared with 5.6% at Booking. In contrast, in an earlier period, 2017-2019, Airbnb’s room nights grew 32.6% while Booking’s jumped 12%.

Bullish on Airbnb

However, these are some of the reasons why Bernstein dismisses the bear arguments and is more bullish on Airbnb:

• Airbnb has outperformed the global lodging industry at 8.7% annually in room growth in the 2019-2023 period compared with the lodging industry’s 2% decline.
• Airbnb’s pricing growth is partly responsible for what some point to as sluggish room night growth, especially compared with the pre-Covid years. “If pricing had been lower, then room night growth would have been higher,” Bernstein wrote. Airbnb’s gross bookings increased 17% on a CAGR basis in the 2019-2023 period, outpacing the global lodging market by 14%.
• Airbnb isn’t the same company it was in 2019; properties on average are “far bigger” than in 2019 as Airbnb had added more multi-bedroom listings. “If Airbnb reported on a per-customer basis — it would show 10.4% volume growth, well ahead of all peers …”

“Airbnb has outperformed on volume and will continue to do so,” Bernstein concludes.

The research shows that while Airbnb expanded its customer base 10.4% per year while Booking.com and Expedia combined grew customers only about 3%, and the market as a whole was relatively flat.

“This is because hotel supply has been constrained and the more elastic Airbnb supply has filled the demand/supply gap,” the research note stated. “This dynamic continues in future years and will see Airbnb continue to grow faster than the wider lodging market.”

Dwell Newsletter

Get breaking news, analysis and data from the week’s most important stories about short-term rentals, vacation rentals, housing, and real estate.

Have a confidential tip for Skift? Get in touch

Tags: airbnb , alternative accommodations , booking holdings , booking.com , expedia , expedia group , online travel , online travel newsletter , vacation rentals

Photo credit: A home listed on Airbnb in Brazil that the company designated a guest favorite. Source: Airbnb

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

• Credit cards
• View all credit cards
• Banking guide
• Loans guide
• Insurance guide
• Personal finance
• View all personal finance
• Small business
• Small business guide
• View all taxes

You’re our first priority. Every time.

We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. And while our site doesn’t feature every company or financial product available on the market, we’re proud that the guidance we offer, the information we provide and the tools we create are objective, independent, straightforward — and free.

So how do we make money? Our partners compensate us. This may influence which products we review and write about (and where those products appear on the site), but it in no way affects our recommendations or advice, which are grounded in thousands of hours of research. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. Here is a list of our partners .

Airbnb Is on the Outs — Or Is It?

Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. However, this does not influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own. Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money .

Has the Airbnb bubble burst?

According to one recent viral tweet, Airbnb hosts have seen bookings evaporate since the busy summer travel season.

My recent story about Airbnb hosts getting sick of Airbnb made its own little splash, based on the number of emails I received in response. And anti-Airbnb sentiment has bubbled up everywhere, from Reddit to the Wall Street Journal.

Yet the so-called #Airbnbust, like most social media phenomena, seems to inaccurately reflect what’s actually happening in the real world. Total demand for short-term rentals actually rose 24% in September compared with the same month last year, according to a recent report by AirDNA, a vacation rental data platform. Average daily rates rose a staggering 31.9% compared with 2019.

So, based on social media, everyone is fed up with Airbnb. Based on what’s happening in the real world, Airbnb is doing better than ever. What gives?

The Apple effect

Remember Apple’s “Batterygate” scandal? Back in 2017 (roughly 5,000 years ago), the company was accused of “planned obsolescence” with software updates for its iPhones. Basically, Apple was sued for intentionally slowing down its older phones in an effort to get more customers to upgrade to newer models.

Social media was filled with vitriolic backlash at the time, with iPhone users proclaiming that they would switch to Android devices in droves. Did that happen? Well, Apple was a $671 billion company in 2017 and has more than tripled in value to $2.5 trillion since. So, um, no.

The problem for Apple users and Airbnb guests is that, while they might not like everything these companies are doing, they like the alternatives even less.

Switching to Android means learning a new interface and becoming a possibly dreaded green bubble on iMessage. And switching from Airbnb means either going “back” to hotels, which have their own drawbacks, or using Airbnb’s competitors , which aren’t much better.

Someone trying to book a house with friends in Palm Springs or backpack through South America on a shoestring is still likely to turn to Airbnb. There simply aren’t many good alternatives.

At least, not yet.

Hostel takeover?

I chatted with Lee Gonzalez, who, with her sister Lauren, is trying something daring: Building hostels in America. Their company, L&L hospitality, opened a new hostel in New York City in 2014, and another in Portland, Oregon, in 2021. She says they struggled with the word “hostel” early on, but have since come to embrace it.

“Many travelers categorically reject hostels in the U.S. — they think of the YMCA,” Gonzalez says. “In the end, we like the word. We want people to come with that hostel attitude.”

Their Portland property — called Lolo Pass — bucks the stereotypical hostel image of grimy dorms with an even grimier guy noodling on guitar in the common room (at least, that’s my image). The rooms at Loss Pass are minimal but stylish. And the emphasis is on connecting guests with each other and the surrounding area.

“We make sure our programming is plugged into the neighborhood,” she explains. “The spaces are just as much for the neighborhood as for the guests.”

The hostel model thrives in Europe, but will North Americans ever come around? (Photo courtesy of L&L hospitality)

When I asked why her hostels could snatch some of Airbnb’s market share, Gonzalez gave me a laundry list of reasons. Her properties are affordable, clean (but no cleaning fees !) and run by professional, on-site hosts. Even little things, like being able to leave your luggage after check-out, make hostels more convenient than Airbnbs.

The biggest hurdle, as mentioned, is getting over North Americans’ aversion to the idea of hostels. Yet Gonzalez believes that Airbnb has itself set the stage for this transition, especially among younger travelers.

“I’ve realized that Aribnb has actually paved the way for hostels to work in the U.S. by introducing the idea of shared spaces,” she explains. “Because Gen Z was raised with Airbnb, they don’t have the preconceived notions about hostels that older people do.”

» Learn more: Nerdwallet's guide to hostel safety

Competitive opportunities

Hostels only challenge part of Airbnb’s business model — the part that attracts low-frills travelers looking for a cheaper alternative to hotels . And legacy hotel brands aren’t ready to go down without a fight. Hilton hotels recently aired a commercial squarely aimed at disgruntled Airbnbers, featuring a creepy vacation rental full of talking dolls, while extolling the reliable virtues of an old-fashioned hotel room.

And maybe Airbnb needs some disruption of its own. After turning the entire travel industry on its head after launching 15 years ago, the vacation rental behemoth is no longer the young upstart. Maybe a new model is ready to emerge. What happens next depends on what we — the paying guests — decide to do.

How to maximize your rewards

You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2023 , including those best for:

Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

No annual fee:   Bank of America® Travel Rewards credit card

Flat-rate travel rewards:  Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card  

Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express

Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

on Citibank's application

1%-5% Earn 5% cash back on purchases in your top eligible spend category each billing cycle, up to the first $500 spent, 1% cash back thereafter. Also, earn unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases.

$200 Earn $200 cash back after you spend $1,500 on purchases in the first 6 months of account opening. This bonus offer will be fulfilled as 20,000 ThankYou® Points, which can be redeemed for $200 cash back.

on Wells Fargo's website

2% Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases

$200 Earn a $200 cash rewards bonus after spending $500 in purchases in the first 3 months.

This type of vacation rental cancellation is on the rise. Are you next?

A few days before flying to Bali, Indonesia, I received an unexpected email from Airbnb: My host had sold my vacation home.

"We’re reaching out with the unfortunate news that your reservation was canceled," it said. "Your refund is on its way."

But wait – I didn't want my money back. I needed a place to stay while I was in Indonesia. Airbnb assured me I had nothing to worry about. It would find a new rental and cover my extra expenses. But, as always, some restrictions applied.

Check out   Elliott Confidential , the newsletter the travel industry doesn't want you to read. Each issue is filled with breaking news, deep insights, and exclusive strategies for becoming a better traveler. But don't tell anyone!

Sales cancellations are on the rise

Selling a vacation rental out from under a guest is becoming a big problem, insiders said. There are no statistics on the number of vacation rentals with active reservations that are currently for sale. But Justin Gordon, who runs the rental price comparison site HiChee , says more hosts are putting their rentals on platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo while they wait to sell their properties. He's seen the disruption it causes guests who are about to leave for vacation. 

"I felt so sorry for the guests," he said.

Did I mention the Indonesia rental? That wasn't my first cancellation. I rented a condo in Oahu, Hawaii, a few years ago through Vrbo. A week before I checked in, I got an email saying my stay had been canceled because the property was sold.

"Many homeowners are investors, buying properties low and selling high or holding them for a set number of years as a part of their financial strategy," explained Matthew Deal, managing director of Element Vacation Homes , a central Florida vacation rental company.

A cancellation can have consequences for the seller. For example, if you list your home on Vrbo, you might have to pay the platform a cancellation fee, which gets higher as your arrival day approaches. 

"In addition to financial penalties, repeat offenders may see limited search visibility on the Vrbo app and site, temporary suspension, or revocation of their Premier Host status," said spokesperson Nola Lu.

Airbnb has similar restrictions. "We expect Hosts to honor accepted reservations," said spokesperson Aaron Swor.

What are your rights when your vacation rental is sold?

If your vacation rental is sold before you arrive, you have some rights – though not as many as you'd assume.

• For rentals booked directly through the owner, your rental contract will outline your right to a refund. If you're dealing with a host who has only one rental or can't accommodate you at a different property, you'll get a full refund, but you'll have to start over and find a new vacation rental. Pro tip: Use a credit card to book. If the owner flakes out and tries to keep your money, you can always dispute the charges.
• For rentals booked through a popular vacation rental platform like Airbnb or Vrbo, the platform will offer a full refund or or accommodate you at a different rental property. If there's a price difference – and there usually is – then the platform may offer to cover the extra cost.
• If you booked through a property management company, your rights may not be spelled out in your contract, but chances are the company will have a plan "B" ready. For example, Element Vacation Rentals has a policy to promptly present multiple options to displaced guests, including comparable properties from its portfolio and those of its competitors. Ask about the policy before you make a reservation.

At least, that is what's supposed to happen if there's a cancellation. But let's talk about what actually does happen.

'Expensive in every way': What travelers should expect this summer

Flying cars are coming! Here's how they could change the way you travel.

What if an owner sells a vacation rental?

When an owner sells your vacation rental from under you, you'll probably feel confused and upset. And even as you're processing the loss of your rental, your host may ask you for a favor.

When the owners of Gerri Detweiler's Airbnb rental sold their place, her host asked her to cancel the rental. The reason? The host didn't want to incur a fee from Airbnb. So Detweiler, a personal finance expert from Sarasota, Florida, canceled the stay. 

"I didn't bother booking another rental with Airbnb," she said.

For both of my cancellations, I had no choice. I was only days away from checking in. 

To their credit, both Airbnb and Vrbo helped me. Vrbo found a new rental in Hawaii and covered the price difference. Airbnb offered a coupon and sent me a few options for a replacement rental in Bali. The only one available on such short notice was thousands of dollars more than my original rental, so Airbnb increased the amount of the coupon to cover the extra cost.

The difference between the platforms was in their approach to the situation. Vrbo transferred me to a special team that took care of everything quickly. With Airbnb, it felt like more of a negotiation. But in the end, I was grateful to have the protection of both vacation rental platforms.

'Flying feels different': Here's how air travel has changed recently

Air travel smells worse than ever. Here's how to fix it.

This could happen to you

This isn't an abstract issue. Two of this year's hottest housing markets – Orlando and Tampa, Florida – are popular with vacation renters and likely to have lots of homes that are also on the market. 

But that's not the real problem. It's that most vacation rental customers don't know their rights when they rent. They either assume they have no choice but to take the refund and that they're on their own. Or they believe the vacation rental company must find them a comparable rental and cover any price difference. 

But you're not on your own unless you rented directly through an individual – and even then, the previous owner may be able to refer you to another rental. And your vacation rental platform won't automatically find you a new place and pay for it. You may have to negotiate.

The best solution is disclosure. Vacation rental owners should tell you if their property is for sale. Then you can make an informed decision about whether you still want to rent the place – and take your chances.

Elliott's tips for avoiding a vacation rental cancellation

Getting surprised by a vacation rental sale is preventable. Here are a few strategies:

• Talk to the owner : Before you rent a vacation home, ask if the place is for sale. If it is, ask what would happen if the unit were to be sold. If it's sold, talk to the new owners," said hospitality consultant Steve Turk. "See if they'll honor your reservation."
• Read the reviews – all of them : If you're renting on a popular platform, don't just skim the reviews. Read them. Sometimes, hosts will stop caring about their rental unit if they know they're going to sell. "Check to see if recent guests have posted any negative reviews," advised Pete Evering, a business development manager at Utopia Property Management , a rental management company.
• Do your research : If you have the address of the rental, run a quick online search. If it shows up on Zillow or Realtor.com , you know you have a problem. Gordon from HiChee is considering developing technology that would notify travelers in case their booked rental shows up for sale on the internet.

Christopher Elliott  is an author, consumer advocate, and journalist. He founded  Elliott Advocacy , a nonprofit organization that helps solve consumer problems. He publishes  Elliott Confidential , a travel newsletter, and the  Elliott Report , a news site about customer service. If you need help with a consumer problem, you can  reach him here  or email him at  [email protected] .

Skip to main content

Airbnb 2023 fall update

On May 3, Brian asked the Airbnb community what improvements they wanted to see, and based on nearly 3,300 responses, these were their top suggestions: 

• Lower cleaning fees
• Better search & filters
• Verified listings
• Better customer service
• Guest loyalty program
• Total price with taxes
• Better review system 
• Lower prices

We spent the summer working on these, alongside other improvements aimed at making the end-to-end experience on Airbnb even better, and today we’re sharing an update on how we are addressing five of the top suggestions:

Lower prices and lower cleaning fees

We know affordability is important, especially during economically uncertain times. Over the past year, we introduced several initiatives aimed at fostering affordability on Airbnb, from new pricing tools for Hosts, to making pricing even more transparent for guests. 

• Today, four out of every five Hosts use one of our pricing tools. Almost 680,000 Hosts have used our new tool to compare their prices with similar listings nearby, while almost two thirds of Hosts offer weekly or monthly discounts. 
• Against the backdrop of increasing prices industry-wide, and with an average nightly rate of $127 in July 2023, the average nightly price of a one-bedroom listing on Airbnb is 1 percent lower than it was in July 2022 – while hotel prices have gone up 10 percent to $163 over the same period 1 .
• Since we launched it, over 8 million guests have booked travel on Airbnb using total price display, which made fees even more transparent. 
• This year over 260,000 listings lowered or removed their cleaning fees 2 – on top of nearly 3 million listings that currently don’t charge one. 

Improvements to search and filters

We know how important it is to find the perfect stay in just one search. One of the top suggestions from our community was to expand our search capabilities. 

• Starting today, if search results are limited, we’ll automatically display a carousel at the bottom of search results so guests can review more great homes available over similar dates. 
• We’ve also added two new search filters by popular demand: pet-friendly homes and king-size beds. This should come as no surprise as there have been over 6 million pet arrivals on Airbnb in the past year 3 . The top ten most popular countries for pets in the past year include the USA, France, UK, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Australia, Mexico and Germany 4 . With over a quarter of listings across the platform welcoming pets, it’s now even easier for guests to narrow their search by those that welcome furry friends.  
• And with king-size beds featured in over a million listings, the new king-size bed filter will help guests easily find the homes that offer them.

Listing verification in our top five countries 

We firmly believe guests shouldn’t have to worry about whether a listing is fake or isn’t located where it says it is. 

• Later this year, we’ll begin verifying every listing in the US, Canada, Australia, UK and France with verified icons appearing on listings from February. Starting next fall, we’ll begin verifying listings in 30 more countries.
• This complements our ongoing work to implement tools to help prevent fraud, remove bad actors, and increase trust in our community. This year, we blocked 157,000 fake listings from ever joining the platform, and removed an additional 59,000.

Customer service improvements

We want all of our guests to have a great experience on Airbnb, which includes providing timely and seamless support when they need it. 

• This summer, we answered 94% of calls in English within 2 minutes. We also extended this 2-minute response time to 9 more languages. 
• From November, we’ll start making additional improvements to customer service so that when guests call, they’re going to be matched with the best agents to resolve their specific issue, faster.

Coming soon

We’ll have even more exciting updates to share during our 2023 Winter Release.

Planning a staycation? 8 Waterfront Airbnbs perfect for your Jersey Shore getaway

Heading out of state for a family vacation can be costly.

According to the OnlyInYourState.com travel blog that publishes content from expert travel writers, discovering what's in your own backyard could be the Jersey Shore escape families crave.

When choosing the right vacation that suits your family, factors such as the cost, accommodations and amenities can create the perfect family trip.

OnlyInYourState.com says that these 8 Waterfront Airbnbs in New Jersey are the best for spring and summer travel.

Their data found the best properties with excellent ratings and reviews, desirable amenities, nearby attractions and hidden gems that can accommodate the entire family, or a romantic getaway for two.

Waterfront Airbnbs in New Jersey

• Waterfront home in Barnegat : Can accommodate 10 guests (5 bedrooms, 5 beds, 4 bathrooms), three-night minimum. This fully furnished house is only a few steps from the beach and a popular fishing and crabbing spot. It's also walking distance from a full collection of restaurants and nightlife.
• Stone's Throw 2 Beach in Brigantine : Can accommodate 4 guests (2 bedrooms, 3 beds, 2 bathrooms) for a two-night minimum. Situated in a corner lot, this fully furnished condo is pet-friendly and is a half-block from the Brigantine beach. Features fenced-in patio including a state-of-the-art gas grill and a television in every room.
• Lakefront Hopatcong in Hopatcong: Can accommodate 10 guests (4 bedrooms, 6 beds, 2.5 bathroom) for a three-night minimum. This lakeside home is on the largest lake in New Jersey with a private dock ideal for fishing or kayaking, a patio equipped with a grill and scenic views from every window.
• Hillside Lakehouse Cottage in Jefferson: Can accommodate 8 guests (3 bedrooms, 6 beds, 1 bathroom) for a three-night minimum. Hillside Lake is on a private dead end. Guest have access to a private boat launch and dock slip, kayaks and pedal boat, tennis courts, basketball courts and a children's playground right down the street. 
• Beach Front Condo in Atlantic City : Can accommodate 2 guests (studio with 1 bed,1 bathroom), no minimum-night stay. This one is for a quick getaway that offers more privacy and comes with access to free parking, pool and hot tub, and is only steps from the beach.
•   Private Lakeview Cottage Farmstay in Blairstown: Can accommodate 5 guests (2 bedrooms, 4 beds, 2 baths) 3-night stay. This sweet cottage sits on 80 acres for a family farm land with lakeviews, trials and streams that is perfect for guest who love animals and exploring.
• Serenity Waterfall Cabin in Vernon: Can accommodate 3 guests (2 bedrooms, 2 beds, 1 bath). No minimum-night stay. This small cabin is nestled on 18 acres of pristine wilderness and offers a world of adventure like hidden waterfalls, goat yoga, horse riding and hiking.
• Private Beach House in Cape May: Can accommodate 6 guests ( 3 bedrooms, 4 beds, 2 bathroom) 2-night minimum. This peaceful private home is only minutes from the beach and a string of local restaurants. You can spot dolphins from this beachside escape.

About this app

Data safety.

Ratings and reviews

• Flag inappropriate
• Show review history

App support

Similar apps.

Here's when Airbnb will actually issue a refund, according to its updated policy

• Airbnb's new cancellation-and-refund policy will go into effect on June 6.
• The new policy offers cancellations and refunds to guests when they face "unexpected major events."
• That includes government-issued travel restrictions, certain weather events, and natural disasters.

Airbnb is updating its cancellation-and-refund policy to include "unexpected major events" such as natural disasters.

The US-based vacation-rental company announced the update on Thursday in an online press release. The Major Disruptive Events Policy — formerly called the "Extenuating Circumstances Policy" — will go into effect on June 6 .

The new policy will include "declared public health emergencies and epidemics," but that does not include endemic diseases such as the flu, and it does not cover COVID-19.

Related stories

It will also cover government-issued travel restrictions, major essential-utility outages, military actions, and natural disasters.

Though Airbnb does cover natural disasters, it notes that "weather or natural conditions that are common enough to be foreseeable in a given location — for example, hurricanes occurring during hurricane season in Florida — are covered only when they result in another Event covered by this Policy that prevents completion of the reservation, such as a mandatory evacuation order or large-scale outage of essential utilities."

Airbnb added that its new policy will allow guests to cancel reservations mid-trip if the cancellation stems from one of the identified coverage points. Guests will receive a refund for nights they didn't stay at the rental without fees, while hosts will bypass consequences.

Regarding hosts, Airbnb's policy will ask that they cancel guest reservations without additional fees if the rental is "uninhabitable." Additionally, the policy will allow hosts to cancel reservations without any fees or consequences .

There are also certain things the policy doesn't cover, including unexpected illnesses and jury duty. Since the cancellation-and-refund policy doesn't cover all emergencies, Airbnb urges guests to invest in travel insurance.

"The changes to this policy, including its new name, were made to create clarity for our guests and Hosts and ensure it's meeting the diverse needs of our global community," Juniper Downs, the global head of community policy and partnerships at Airbnb, said in the press release. "Our aim was to clearly explain when the policy applies to a reservation, and to deliver fair and consistent outcomes for our users. These updates also bring the policy in line with industry standards."

Representatives for Airbnb did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Airbnb's cancellation-and-refund policy update comes after it banned indoor security cameras this month . Hosts were previously allowed to use indoor cameras if disclosed in the property's online listing, but the ban — which starts April 30 — will affect rentals worldwide.

Indoor security cameras were a contested topic between hosts and guests. While hosts said they installed cameras to protect their properties, some vacationers voiced surveillance concerns.

Axel Springer, Insider Inc.'s parent company, is an investor in Airbnb.

Watch: Marriott International's Tina Edmundson tells Insider that the travel mindset has changed since the pandemic

• Main content

Inspiration for future getaways

• Canmore   Apartment rentals
• Benalmádena   Beach house rentals
• Marbella   Apartment rentals
• Mijas   Vacation rentals
• Prescott   House rentals
• Scottsdale   House rentals
• Tucson   Apartment rentals
• Jasper   Cabin rentals
• Mountain View   House rentals
• Devonport   Cottage rentals
• Mallacoota   Pet-friendly rentals
• Ibiza   Apartment rentals
• Anaheim   Vacation rentals
• Monterey   Vacation rentals
• Paso Robles   Cottage rentals
• Santa Barbara   Pet-friendly rentals
• Sonoma   Rentals with pools
• La Serena   Vacation rentals
• Dubai   Apartment rentals
• Birmingham   Apartment rentals
• Brighton   Beach house rentals
• Bude   Vacation rentals
• Newcastle upon Tyne   Vacation rentals
• Padstow   House rentals
• South West England   House rentals
• Whitby   Cottage rentals
• Fort Myers   Beachfront rentals
• Jacksonville   Apartment rentals
• Kissimmee   Beachfront rentals
• Longboat Key   Vacation rentals
• Orlando   Cottage rentals
• St Petersburg   Pet-friendly rentals
• St. Augustine   House rentals
• The Villages   Vacation rentals
• Dahlonega   Cabin rentals
• Crete   House rentals
• Mykonos   Villa rentals
• Santorini   Vacation rentals
• O‘ahu   Bungalow rentals
• Capri   Apartment rentals
• Bar Harbor   Pet-friendly rentals
• Mackinac Island   Cottage rentals
• St. Joseph   Cabin rentals
• Larsmont   Cottage rentals
• Las Vegas   Vacation rentals
• Madrid   Vacation rentals
• Santa Fe   Condo rentals
• Bermagui   Vacation rentals
• Evans Head   Vacation rentals
• Sawtell   Cottage rentals
• Young   Vacation rentals
• Ocracoke   Cottage rentals
• Florence   Vacation rentals
• Lakeside   Vacation rentals
• Lincoln City   Vacation rentals
• Paphos   Vacation rentals
• Maleny   Vacation rentals
• Stanthorpe   Pet-friendly rentals
• Newport   Cottage rentals
• Glasgow   Apartment rentals
• Scottish Highlands   Vacation rentals
• St Andrews   Vacation rentals
• McLaren Vale   Vacation rentals
• Wallaroo   Beachfront rentals
• Charleston   Pet-friendly rentals
• Hvar   Vacation rentals
• Saint John   Vacation rentals
• Chattanooga   House rentals
• Concan   Cabin rentals
• Fredericksburg   House rentals
• New Braunfels   Condo rentals
• Rockport   Rentals with pools
• Waco   Vacation rentals
• Forest of Dean District   Vacation rentals
• Jersey   Vacation rentals
• Lyme Regis   Apartment rentals
• Manchester   Apartment rentals
• Seaview   Vacation rentals
• Southwold   Vacation rentals
• Staithes   Vacation rentals
• Wells-next-the-Sea   House rentals
• St. George   House rentals
• Benidorm   Apartment rentals
• Barwon Heads   Pet-friendly rentals
• Castlemaine   Vacation rentals
• Healesville   Vacation rentals
• Marysville   Cottage rentals
• Sorrento   Beach house rentals
• Chincoteague   Cottage rentals
• Williamsburg   Vacation rentals
• Hay-on-Wye   Vacation rentals
• Llandudno   Cottage rentals
• Tenby   Family-friendly rentals

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

‘Must love dogs and rude roommates’: the scramble to get around New York’s Airbnb crackdown

Strict rules have led to a wild west of rentals, with visitors choosing between huge hotel bills or word-of-mouth deals

U ntil recently, visitors to New York basically had two options: hotel rooms or short-term rental platforms like Airbnb. But in September 2023, the city started enforcing a 2022 law that banned people from renting their homes for fewer than 30 days (unless the host stayed in the home with guests).

Now the only legit option for people visiting the city is hotel rooms – and they’re unaffordable for many. Most of the Times Square hotels don’t have rooms for less than $300 a night. A search for Thursday 2 May found the Muse at $356, Hampton Inn at $323 and the Hard Rock at $459 (although, because of dynamic pricing, these are subject to regular change). They’re getting more expensive still. Hotel rates have increased between the first quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2023 at twice the rate of inflation, said Jan Freitag, an analyst at the real-estate data firm CoStar Group.

Many visitors and New Yorkers have turned to the black rental market, where Facebook groups, Craigslist posts, Instagram listingsand word of mouth have become the go-to for finding short-term rentals in the five boroughs.

If you have friends in New York, you’ve probably seen the Instagram stories. “Hi guys! Subletting my room in a 5 bed apartment for four days over Easter! Must be good with dogs and rude roommates! DM if interested!”

Other travelers have headed to New Jersey, causing the kaleidoscope of cities across the Hudson River to become the fastest-growing market for Airbnb demand in the nation, according to the analytics site AirDNA. Others have ponied up for hotels, which are only projected to get more expensive in the coming years. For many tourists, there’s no good answer yet to the so-called Airbnb ban.

Yoya Busquets, 56, considered an Airbnb in New Jersey, but really wants to be in the city when she visits from Barcelona in early September with her husband and two teenage daughters. She poked around on Facebook a bit and chatted on Messenger with some people advertising short-term rentals there. The last time she was in New York, in 2012, she stayed in an Airbnb in Brooklyn, and she wants a similar experience. She just might get lucky.

“I’m communicating with a girl who has a place available for one week and it’s posted on Airbnb as in New Jersey, but when you contact them they say it’s in Brooklyn,” she said.

The apartment also happens to be near the area she stayed last time, and it’s within her budget of $160 a night. It’s the best option she’s found, considering the cost of hotels and the space it offers for her daughters to unwind after busy days tromping around. But the setup probably falls foul of the new laws, which is why the apartment is listed in Jersey.

According to AirDNA, which tracks data from short-term rental sites like Airbnb and Vrbo, listings for stays of fewer than 30 days have fallen 83% since August 2023, when the regulations started being enforced. Once there were 22,200 short-term listings available in New York City; there are now just 3,700, according to AirDNA.

While juggling her thesis, finishing classes and searching for a job that will allow her to continue living in the US, Tehsin Pala, 24, has been looking for a place for her family to stay in May when she graduates from New York University’s graduate program for journalism.

“This is their first time coming to New York City and I want to give them a good experience,” Pala, from India, said of her parents and grandmother. “I thought I wanted to do an Airbnb so I can also cook for them,” so she was dismayed to learn short-term rentals really weren’t an option any more.

Pala wants a place where her family has room to congregate. As a show of gratitude and respect, she wants to cover the cost of her family’s accommodations and has budgeted about $200 (£160) a night for their week-long stay.

“I’m kind of stuck about what to do,” Pala said. “Probably a hotel, but I’ll have to pay like $400 a night and I don’t have money like that.”

Now, saddled with the dual stresses of finishing school and facing down hotel rates she isn’t able to float, she’s at a crossroads: does she opt for a hotel and have her parents pay or rent something in New York short term that’s not technically legal?

Without the accountability and protections that platforms such as Airbnb offered, avoiding scams has become a normal part of seeking a short-term rental. Because of that, Pala skipped scanning Craigslist entirely. Now she’s looking into booking an Airbnb in New Jersey, but she fears the slog on the local Path train could be inconvenient for her grandmother.

While the regulations were passed with the intention of curbing rents for New Yorkers by bringing apartment inventory back on to the market, they’ve also cut off an often crucial source of income for New York renters and homeowners who lived in their apartments but listed their places when they were out of town. Some New Yorkers are still finding ways to bring the money in.

Kathleen, whose last name is being withheld for privacy reasons, only recently started renting her East Village apartment on the black rental market. The 29-year-old travels a lot for her work in personal finance and to visit family in North Carolina. She’s out of town about four months a year, she said, and of course still has to pay her $2,600-a-month rent when she’s not there. To make up some of that lost money, she’s started connecting with people via Facebook groups for unregulated stays.

“I really vetted out a lot of the people,” she said, citing concerns about how her space would be treated given that she wouldn’t have the protections that short-term-rental platforms offer to hosts. She has two forthcoming guests – one weekend visitor and one staying in her apartment for three weeks over the summer – who are paying her $50 a night.

“I’m a side-hustle girl always,” she said. “If you can make extra money, why would you not make extra money? I live in a great location. I love my place and I’m very clean and I just figured if someone was new to this city, it would be kind of a nice, cute spot to be.”

It’s the kind of spot that visitors like Juan José Tejada might champ at the bit for. Tejada, a wellness influencer from Bogotá, Colombia, is visiting New York in July for nine days with his best friend. He started his search for a place by scanning hotels but quickly realized they were too expensive.

“I am 25 years old. I’m traveling with my best friend. And, you know, we don’t have that much budget,” he said. On the recommendation of a cousin who lives in the city, Tejada used Facebook to look for a short-term rental. What he found was quadruple his budget of $100 to $200 a night. But that wasn’t the only issue.

“When I was looking for a short-term lease, the payment situation was a little bit hard,” Tejada said, “because the people who are renting say ‘you have to pay me through bank transfer or through Zelle’ or another service that we don’t have in Colombia.”

Tejada and his friend ended up booking at Hi New York City, a hostel on the Upper West Side, which cost them about $55 each a night for a spot in a bunk room with a shared bathroom. Tejada said he had considered an Airbnb with an on-site host but didn’t find any suitable options. It’s not the apartment he dreamed of breezing in and out of as if he were a local, but it’ll do.

People are making their own solutions for short-term stays. On Instagram, there are accounts like Book That Sublet NYC, where over 4,000 followers watch along for sublets often posted on a daily and weekly basis as well as the endless “ book my apartment! ” or apartment-swapping callouts that are shared on Instagram Stories. And then there are the longtime apartment-swapping sites like HomeExchange or HomeLink that offer another way for visitors to get their foot in the door of a city apartment.

Advocates for the new regulations thought that limiting rentals in the short term would bring long-term rentals back on to the market – and perhaps help push rents down in the notoriously pricey city. About seven months in, those effects on a wide scale remain to be seen, said Jamie Lane, AirDNA’s chief economist.

Jonathan Miller, CEO of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, offered an explanation: he said a modest number of apartments had returned to the rental market after the law was modified, but because mortgage rates remain high and have inched back up since the start of the year, would-be buyers are priced out of purchasing for the time being, pushing rents up.

Pala, the NYU student, doesn’t think the regulations are the most effective way of tackling New York’s housing crisis. “I don’t understand how this regulation makes sense, not in terms of lessening the load of how many Airbnbs there are, but in terms of how equitable this decision is for the population of New York City, considering it’s an immigrant city,” she said.

But Busquets, who’s visiting in September, has witnessed first-hand the effects tourism, and short-term rentals, can have on a world-famous destination.

“I’m coming from a city where the craziness of Airbnb is actually taking the locals and people who’ve lived there for years away,” she said. “The owners wanted to keep the people who were there just to rent it short-term because it’s more profitable.”

Busquets said Airbnb made Barcelona unliveable and she herself eventually left for its suburbs. She added: “It’s changed. It’s not the same city as 10 or 15 years ago.”

• Renting property

Most viewed

Money latest: Cost of raising child to age 18 revealed in new research

Crisps are on the menu for the Money blog today as we see where you can make healthier choices for the best value. Elsewhere, the boss of Sainsbury's has insisted customers like self-checkouts - do you agree? Leave your thoughts in the box below.

Friday 26 April 2024 12:37, UK

• New research reveals cost of having children
• Sainsbury's boss insists customers like self-checkouts
• FTSE 100 hits another record high
• Halifax hikes mortgage rates - as entire market moves upwards

Essential reads

• Do smart meters actually save you money?
• How to buy the healthiest crisps  
• The world of dark tourism - what is it, is it ethical and where can you go?
• Money Problem : I have a mortgage offer - will it change now rates are rising?
• Savings Guide : Why locking into fixed-rate bond could be wise move
• Cheap Eats : Michelin chef's secret lasagne tip - and expensive ingredient you shouldn't use

Ask a question or make a comment

The UK could face a shortage of cava due to a drought in the sparking wine's Spanish heartlands.

The Penedes area of Catalonia is dealing with its worst drought on record, with vineyards across the region so parched the roots of 30-year-old vines have died.

It's left shrivelled red and green grapes languishing under intense sun, fuelled by fossil-fuel driven climate change.

Cava is an increasingly popular drink in the UK, with 17.8 million bottles sold in 2023 - an increase of 5% from the previous year, when Britons stocked up on 16.8 million bottles, according to the Cava Regulatory Board.

That makes the UK the fourth-biggest buyer, behind only the US, Belgium and Germany.

Workforce slashed

The problems have been compounded after Catalonia-based cava producer Freixenet announced it will temporarily lay off 615 workers, almost 80% of its workforce.

Under Spanish law, companies facing exceptional circumstances can lay off staff or reduce working hours.

This measure is expected to take effect from May and it is not known how long it will last.

Price rises

One industry source told retail publication The Grocer  that cava shortages would push up prices "certainly for next year" if there isn't enough supply.

This could last for years if the drought persists, they added.

Consumer expert Helen Dewdney told MailOnline the staff cuts at Freixenet can only mean one thing - price rises.

However, she added, supermarkets say they are not experiencing any issues right now.

Parents are being hammered by rising childcare costs, according to a new study that suggests they may spend more than £160,000 raising their child to the age of 18.

Research by Hargreaves Lansdown has found that parents with children pay £6,969 a year more than couples without.

Over 18 years and assuming an annual inflation rate of 3%, that amounts to a whopping £163,175, the investment platform said.

Its study also found that parents were less likely to have money left at the end of the month.

Single parents carry the biggest burden, with the research suggesting they have just £85 left on average compared to £365 for couples with children.

Hargreaves Lansdown also found just 23% of single parents reported having enough emergency savings to cover at least three months' worth of essential expenses, compared to 63% of couples with children.

Parents are also at a slight disadvantage when it comes to pensions, the research found, with only 43% of couples with children on track for a moderate retirement income, compared to 47% without. Only 17% of single parents have a decent projected pension fund.

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at the firm, said "having children is one of the most expensive decisions a person can make".

She adds that as a result of having a child, "financial resilience suffers across the board", and added: "For single parents, life is even tougher, and they face far lower resilience on almost every measure.

"It means we need all the help we can get."

By Daniel Binns, business reporter

One of the top stories shaking up the markets this morning is that UK-based mining company Anglo American has rejected a major $38.8bn (£31bn) takeover bid.

Details of the attempted buyout by Australian rival BHP emerged yesterday  - sending Anglo American shares soaring.

The deal would have created the world's biggest copper mining company - with the news coming as the price of the metal hit record highs this week.

However, Anglo American has now dismissed the proposal as "opportunistic" and said BHP had undervalued the company.

Anglo's shares are slightly down by 0.8% this morning - suggesting investors may not have given up hopes that a deal could eventually be agreed.

However, overall the FTSE 100 is up around 0.4% this morning, buoyed by strong reported earnings from US tech giants Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet.

It's helped the index, of the London Stock Exchange's 100 most valuable companies, hit yet another intraday (during the day) record of 8,136 points this morning.

The winning streak comes after a week of all-time highs on the index - including a record close of 8,078 points yesterday. The score is based on a calculation of the total value of the shares on the index.

Among the companies doing well this morning is NatWest - despite the bank reporting a fall in pre-tax profits of nearly 28% for the first quarter of the year.

Shares in the lender are up more than 3% after its results were better than expected by analysts.

On the currency markets, £1 buys $1.25 US or €1.16, almost on a par with yesterday.

Meanwhile, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil has crept up slightly to $89 (£71).

Self-checkouts - they're like marmite, people seem to either love them or hate them.

But the boss of Sainsbury's has claimed that his customers do  enjoy using self-checkouts, despite criticism that that machines don't always provide the convenience promised.

Simon Roberts told The Telegraph that there are more of them in Sainsbury's stores "than a number of years ago" as shoppers like the "speedy checkout".

But despite this, he said there won't be a time when they'll replace cashiers completely.

"Over the last year, where we've put more self-checkouts in, we're always making sure that the traditional kind of belted checkout is there," he said.

His comments come after northern supermarket Booths ditched self-checkouts at all but two of its sites after customer feedback. 

Walmart and Costco in the US have also scaled back on the systems.

Let us know in the comments - do you love or hate self-checkouts?

We've all heard consumer advice that's repeated so often it almost becomes cliché. So, every Friday the Money team will get to the bottom of a different "fact" and decide whether it's a myth or must.

This week it is...

'Smart meters save you money'

For this one, we've enlisted the help of Dr Steve Buckley, also known as the Energy Doctor and head of data science at Loop...

So do smart meters help you save? 

"The short answer is both yes and no," Steve says.

"Installing a smart meter by itself won't magically reduce your energy consumption. But, by giving you easy access to your energy usage data, smart meters pave the way for savings that you couldn't achieve otherwise."

Before smart meters, most households only found out how much energy they had used when the bill arrived. 

By that stage it's too late to address wasteful usage, leading to what's known as "bill shock". 

"With a smart meter, you can see your usage and costs in real-time through an in-home display or an app provided by your supplier," Steve says. 

"This immediate feedback encourages you to use less energy. If you measure it, you can control it."

In 2022, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero found that homes with smart meters used about 3.4% less electricity and 3% less gas. 

"This might not seem like a lot, but it adds up to a saving of over £50 per household annually," Steve says.  

If all homes in the UK made similar cuts, that would amount to savings of around £1.5bn and a potential reduction in CO2 emissions by about 2.7m tonnes each year. 

"Good for individual households but also great for the planet," Steve says. 

Smart meters are often installed at no extra cost to the consumer - it's effectively free data for households. 

Limitations

Smart meters are more or less what you make of them - a simple, free tool that allows you to see headline figures. 

However, "without detailed analysis, it's tough to identify and eliminate" where you could be wasting money, Steve says. 

Apps like Utrack, Loop and Hugo Energy can help you work out where you might be losing money by offering a more detailed breakdown if connected to your smart meter. 

Those tools are often free, but you may need to register your card details as proof of address. 

The tools give a number of useful insights, including looking at consumption in other households of similar size or monitoring where chunks of your money are going, such as to a faulty boiler or the "phantom load" (energy wasted by devices left on unnecessarily).

Myth or must?

Although smart meters alone don't reduce energy bills, they are a vital tool to help energy efficiency and cost savings. 

By Ollie Cooper, Money team

It can be hard to balance getting nutritious foods that make you feel good without spending a lot.

In this series, which ends today after digging into yoghurt, bread, pasta, fruit juice and plant-based milk, we've tried to find the healthiest options in the supermarket for the best value.

Sunna Van Kampen,  founder of  Tonic Health ,  who went viral on social media for reviewing food in the search of healthier choices, has given his input for the past six weeks.

And for the final part of the series, we're looking at the nation's favourite snack: crisps. 

The series does not aim to identify the outright healthiest option, but to help you get better nutritional value for as little money as possible.

We're a people obsessed: in the UK, we get through six billion packets of crisps a year.

Sunna has three easy tips for finding the tastiest options that are kinder to your body...

1. Understand the fat facts

"Typical crisps can be oil sponges and contain over 30% fat from low-quality vegetable oils that have been fried," Sunna says. 

"What we are on the lookout for those that buck the trend and stay away from the fat." 

So, he says, aim for crisps that contain less than 15% total fat.

2. Fibre up your snack time

"While crisps aren't exactly salad, some can offer more nutritional value than others," Sunna says.

"Check the labels for options that have more fibre or protein."

These help you feel fuller for longer and also keep your digestive system happy.

3. Portion control

"It's easy to demolish an entire bag in one sitting - however, many brands offer multipack bags that are portion-controlled, usually around 25g a bag," Sunna says.

Sticking to these helps to manage calorie intake and stops overindulging.

The big picture

"Small changes might not immediately seem like a lot but if you eat a bag a day with your lunch, we are talking about up to a whopping two litres of oil cut from your diet over the course of the year," Sunna says,

"This is not permission to eat crisps every day (enjoy as an occasional treat) but rather an indication of how small changes add up quickly overtime."

The good news is Sunna's recommendations are all similar in price to their popular, fattier rivals - so you don't need to make a bigger investment to reap some health benefits. 

We've included the prices for the brands' standard multipacks at Tesco - correct as of time of writing. 

Walkers Oven Baked - £1.95 for six-pack

"Around £1.95 for a pack of six, these crisps are baked, not fried, slashing the fat content to 13%, so a great option."

Popchips - £2.25 for five-pack

"These have just 13% fat content as they're popped rather than fried so are a great way to go reducing fat without compromising on the crunch."

And for some non-crisp options...

ProperCorn Popcorn - £2 for six-pack

Often described as "the healthier, lighter option", Sunna says ProperCorn "isn't actually the best option on the market for fat content at 17.4%".

That being said, you do get "double the fibre of standard crisps at 10.9g per 100g". 

At only £2 for a pack of six, it's well-priced, too.

Snack A Jacks - £2.20 for five-pack

"At only 8.3% fat per 100g, it's a great option at £2.20 for a pack of five."

Penn State Baked Pretzels - £1.50 for 175g bag

Now for Sunna's winner.

"The German classic is a great option at only 4.6% fat per 100g," he says.

One downfall is that they are not available in portioned bags, so be careful with the whole 175g bag for £1.50.

Want another option altogether?

"If you want to be even healthier, consider the switch to nuts, seeds or even dried cheese snacks," Sunna says.

"Higher in calories yes, but higher in good healthy fats too and are more satiating which will limit the chance of overeating."

The nutritionist's view -  from  Dr Laura Brown , senior lecturer in nutrition, food and health sciences at Teesside University...

"Baked instead of fried crisps is definitely a way forward as well as the popcorn suggestion," she says.

"We should also be aiming to look at the amount of protein and fibre found in products. For example, lentil and pea snacks are growing in popularity due to their higher protein and fibre values, so the focus should be more on looking for ingredients other than potatoes, oil and salt. 

"I also feel 'crisp' based snacks made in an air fryer are becoming more popular. These can include a wholemeal wrap with a small amount of oil added, and placed in the air fryer with paprika and other seasoning added for flavour. 

"Also, chickpeas in the air fryer make for a super delicious protein and fibre rich snack. They are cheaper than crisps and lower in fat since no oil has to be added."

Read more from this series... 

Halifax has become the latest major lender to up mortgage rates.

They are putting up a range of deals by 0.2%.

BM Solutions also announced increases today.

It follows similar moves by TSB, NatWest, Virgin, Barclays, Accord, Leeds Building Society, HSBC and Coventry last week.

Lenders are responding to swap rates - which dictate how much it costs to lend money - rising on the back of higher than expected US inflation data, and concerns this could delay interest rate cuts there. 

US trends often materialise elsewhere - though many economists are still expecting a base rate cut from 5.25% to 5% in the UK in June.

This is what average mortgage rates look like as of today...

Justin Moy, managing director of EHF Mortgages, told Newspage: "Yet more bad news for mortgage borrowers, as two of the biggest lenders announce increases to their fixed-rate products. 

"As mortgage rates creep up and past 5% even for those with the largest deposits, we seem to be lacking a clear strategy of the government or the Bank of England on how rates will eventually fall. 

"Even 2% inflation may not be enough to reverse the recent trends in rates."

Morrisons has launched two major changes for shoppers – with stores now offering travel money and trolleys featuring advertisements.

Announcing their bureau de change service, Morrisons said customers could exchange currencies in select stores or could place their money orders online at Morrisonstravelmoney.com.

Using the online service means customers can either click and collect their cash in certain Morrisons stores or at any of Eurochange's 240 branches. Alternatively, they can go for home delivery.

Services director at Morrisons, Jamie Winter, said the service "will provide our customers with easy access to a wide range of currencies at competitive exchange rates".

So far, stores in the following areas have travel money kiosks:

• Basingstoke

In other news, the supermarket chain rolled out a new trolley advertising across 300 stores in a partnership with Retail Media Group.

A sweetener used in drinks, sauces, savoury and sweet foods and chewing gum can cause serious damage to people's health, according to a new study.

Neotame, a "relatively new" sweetener, could damage the intestine by causing damage to healthy bacteria in the gut, according to the study, leading it to become diseased and attack the gut wall.

The study by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition, found the negative effect of neotame "has the potential to influence a range of gut functions resulting in poor gut health", potentially impacting metabolic and inflammatory diseases, neuropathic pain, and neurological conditions.

The illnesses this could lead to include irritable bowel disease or insulin resistance.

Read the full story here ...

As we reported yesterday, a pilot programme is coming into force in Venice today that means visitors have to pay a €5 (£4.28) charge to enter the city.

Authorities say the pilot programme is designed to discourage tourists and thin the crowds that throng the canals during peak holiday season, making the city more liveable for residents.

Pictures have been emerging this morning of people queueing to register for a QR code that will allow them to enter after they have paid the charge - and officials carrying out checks on people inside the city.

People found to be contravening the rules can be fined up to €300 (£257).

As detailed in our story , the move has been met with anger among some in the city.

Venice is the first city in the world to introduce a payment system for tourists - but comments from its most senior tourist official suggested it may become a more common practice for major tourist hotspots in Europe.

Simone Venturini revealed the pilot programme was being closely watched by other places suffering from mass tourism - including other Italian art cities and hugely popular weekend-break destinations Barcelona and Amsterdam.

Be the first to get Breaking News

Install the Sky News app for free

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Transportation Department cracks down on airline 'junk fees'

NPR's Leila Fadel talks with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about airlines and consumer air travel concerns.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Air travel can be a headache with flight cancellations and delays. Well, today, the Department of Transportation may be making that hassle a little more palatable. It's got a new rule out that would compensate travelers whose flights are canceled or are changed in a big way. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is with us now to talk about this. Good morning. Thanks for being on the program.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

FADEL: So what's the big change here?

BUTTIGIEG: So the big change here has to do with how and when you get your money back. It is already a matter of policy that you're entitled to a cash refund if your flight gets canceled. But right now, you have to know that. You have to go in. You have to fight for it. Now we are making that the default. An airline is required to promptly return payment to the same way that you paid. If it's miles, they give you your miles back. If it's a credit card, the money shows back on your credit card without you having to ask. We're also defining a significant delay. If your flight is delayed more than three hours domestically, more than six hours internationally...

FADEL: Yeah.

BUTTIGIEG: ...Same thing. If you have that delay, you wind up not taking that flight, you get your money back.

FADEL: Now, what prompted this rule change? Like you said, there are ways that customers have been able to get refunds in the past. But what prompted this?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, let me give you an example of something that would often happen. You would have a major delay or have your flight canceled. And the airline would say, we're going to offer you 5,000 miles, which might sound good. But that might be worth 50 bucks when you're actually entitled to 300. And by taking the miles, you give up your right to get the cash. This changes the default so that you get the cash unless you proactively say as a customer that you'll take some other form of compensation.

It also defines what a significant delay is. This is important because sometimes there'd be a scenario where your flight gets delayed by many hours. You book a different ticket on a different airline that's more expensive just to be able to get to where you're going.

BUTTIGIEG: But you never get your money back on the original flight.

FADEL: That's happened to me before.

BUTTIGIEG: You know, we hear so many of these stories because we've been taking in these complaints. Those have informed this rule. There's also a part of the rule that covers fee transparency, requiring airlines to make it very clear upfront what is included in the price of a ticket. Do you have to pay extra for bags? Will you have to pay a change fee if you try to cancel? It finally standardizes that level of transparency and clarifies that if you don't get what you paid for on one of those - like, you pay extra for baggage, but the baggage doesn't get there, or you pay for Wi-Fi, but the Wi-Fi doesn't work - it specifies for the first time that you're entitled to a refund on that as well.

FADEL: And what happens - well, first of all, how do airlines feel about this rule, these rules that are coming into play? And what happens if the airlines don't comply?

BUTTIGIEG: Look, airlines don't love these expansions of passenger rights, but I believe this is to the benefit of the sector as a whole because passengers will have more confidence that it's worth that ticket in the first place and just have more confidence in the aviation sector. So this is really about making sure that we create a better experience for passengers and a stronger aviation sector in the United States.

If an airline is not living up to this rule or any rule, you can let us know at our website, flightrights.gov. Not only is there information about what you can expect and demand, but also a way to file a complaint with us. If the airline's not refunding you promptly or doing what they ought to be doing, let us know. We'll follow up.

FADEL: Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, thank you for your time.

BUTTIGIEG: Thank you.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.