Airbnb Inc yesterday announced plans to tighten control of short-term rentals advertised on its Web site in several French cities including Paris, by throwing out those without formal registration numbers.
France is one of Airbnb’s top destinations, but the online letting marketplace has faced criticism in Paris and other cities, including Amsterdam and New York, over concerns that its short-term rentals make housing shortages worse.
Airbnb said that it would take extra measures against people who let out properties in France for short-term stays without registering with authorities.
Photo: Reuters
Listings without a registration number in Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux would be blocked from taking reservations as of this year, Airbnb said, adding that the plan would be rolled out in other cities too.
Under existing rules in Paris, people are not allowed to rent out their entire homes on Airbnb for more than 120 days and are obliged to declare the rentals.
The new measures follow an appeal from France’s housing ministry for platforms such as Airbnb to work more closely with local authorities, including by sharing data and information.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the tourism and travel industries hard. Airbnb, which in December last year listed on the New York stock exchange, has suffered a blow to revenues as reservations dwindle.
The group said that it would take part in new campaigns in France to promote travel, including in ski resorts in the French Alps and the Haute Savoie region.
The French government has extended ski lift closures because of the pandemic, dealing a blow to local business owners who depend heavily on the winter season.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained