Airbnb Sets Up Clash With Expedia Over Number of Legal Rentals in San Diego
Skift Take
Room for a compromise seems to have emerged between Expedia, Airbnb, a hotel union, and the city council over short-term rental limitations in San Diego although bad blood looks to exist between Airbnb and Unite Here Local 30. Going it alone with a referendum doesn't seem like a viable stance for Airbnb.
Airbnb conducted a Zoom meeting with San Diego hosts about a potentially precedent-setting agreement to limit the number of legal rentals there, and told them it plans on lobbying the city council to raise the number of allowed properties, Skift has learned.
Facing an outright ban from the city a couple of years ago, Expedia Group and a hotel union, United Here Local 30, signed a memorandum of understand that would allow for around 4,836 properties and permits. That would mean around 70 percent of the estimated 16,000 short-term rentals in the city would be barred in exchange for obtaining legal status for the rest.
But in the virtual meeting Thursday, John Choi, an Airbnb policy manager, told the hosts that Airbnb will lobby the council to accept 8,000 permits, or properties, which would be only a 50 percent reduction in the number of allowable short-term r
