Airbnb Inc yesterday protested against the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ proposed tighter regulations on home-sharing services, but said it hoped to work with the government to craft a policy that would create a win-win situation.
The ministry on March 26 proposed changes to Articles 55 and 55-1 of the Act for the Development of Tourism (發展觀光條例) that would raise the maximum fine from NT$500,000 to NT$2 million (US$16,195 to US$64,779) if hotel operators or home-stay service providers operate without a license or registration certificate.
Under the changes, Airbnb and other Web sites promoting the services of room-leasing operators would face fines of NT$60,000 to NT$2 million, with repeat fines possible.
The ministry’s amendments would hit the operations of Airbnb in Taiwan and its local partners, Singapore-based Airbnb public affairs manager Marvin Ma (馬培治) told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of an event in Taipei.
Airbnb plans to submit a protest to the ministry before the consultation period ends and most of the company’s local partners would also voice their concern, Ma said.
The company would try to open a dialogue with the ministry, Ma added.
“Airbnb is willing to discuss the regulations on home-sharing with the Taiwanese government,” Ma said, adding that they have been successful in 550 regions and cities worldwide, including Japan, Mexico and Denmark.
“Those countries adopted new regulations to cover Airbnb. The rules are different from those that regulate the conventional lodging industry,” Ma said.
Since 2016, Airbnb has faced regulatory challenges in Taiwan, as the ministry has implemented increasingly tougher penalties for those offering rentals on Airbnb, but for the first time the regulator is planning fines that target Airbnb, Ma said.
“It is a pity that Airbnb was excluded from discussions held between ministry officials and the conventional lodging industry on the regulatory changes,” Ma said.
“We did not ask for deregulation, as even this new style of home-sharing needs oversight, but the government should not impose the same regulations on us as on traditional accommodation providers,” he said.
It is difficult for Airbnb partners to obtain hotel licenses in Taiwan, as the rules are cumbersome, he said.
For example, hotels are required have parking lots and access-free facilities, and roads in front of hotels must be wider than 8m, which is not possible for most Airbnb rentals, he added.
Airbnb has seen its business in Taiwan steadily grow, with the number of inbound guests totaling 1.6 million last year, of which 1.05 million were foreign tourists, company data showed.
The global giant had about 11,000 partners and 35,000 listings in Taiwan as of the end of January, the data showed.
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
RSS