Airbnb Inc will start enforcing limits to private home rentals in two popular European cities on the home-sharing platform, London and Amsterdam, the company said on Thursday.
The move comes amid complaints from some cities that the booming house sharing sector can lead to illegal hotels and contribute to housing shortages.
Airbnb said it will “introduce new and automated limits to help ensure entire home listings in London are not shared for more than 90 days,” unless hosts prove they have permission to share their space for longer.
The new measures will be in place by spring next year.
The Dutch capital and the online rental service said that they will work together to ensure that homeowners can only rent out their properties for a maximum of 60 days per year.
Amsterdam had introduced its limit earlier, but Airbnb said that from Jan. 1 its site will introduce automated tools to ensure homes are not listed for more than 60 days a year unless the owners have a license.
“A home should remain a home,” Amsterdam alderman Laurens Ivens said in a statement.
“With this new approach we are showing that working together with platforms such as Airbnb gives the city a new and efficient weapon to tackle illegal hotels,” he added.
Airbnb’s general manager for Northern Europe James McClure said: “We want to be good partners for everyone in the city and ensure home sharing grows responsibly and sustainably.”
Since the company launched in 2008, Airbnb has grown to be one of the world’s most valuable private startups by collecting fees when private hosts rent out accommodations listed on the site.
However, it also has run into problems with city fathers and local residents concerned by the rapid rise in rentals.
Barcelona authorities last week said they would fine Airbnb and another rental site, HomeAway, 600,000 euros (US$638,940) each for offering lodging that does not have the necessary permits.
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau told Catalunya Radio that while tourism was an asset for the Spanish city, it had grown too much and was denying locals access to housing.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six