Airbnb pledges to take measures to reduce illegal letting and noise nuisance

Airbnb claims it will remove Dutch adverts without a registration number after a new holiday rentals law comes into force in the Netherlands. The housing brokerage platform, which plans to float this year, has written to the Dutch housing minister – in English – pledging to ‘share more data to cities on the impact of home sharing’ and introduce ‘new tools to combat noise and nuisance’. A bit late In Amsterdam – where high levels of nuisance from more than 20,000 such ‘host’ locations mean the city is planning to ban Airbnb-style letting in certain districts – head of housing Laurens Ivens told the NRC that this apparent change in attitude was ‘a bit late, but a good thing.’ From January this year, when Amsterdam had imposed a new limit of 30 days of holiday rental per property per year, Airbnb had refused to remove rentals exceeding this period and said privacy regulations meant it could not share rental data with the city. As a result, it said in its new letter, it will also introduce a ‘24/7 neighbour rapid response hotline’ for residents to report nuisance as well as a three-month noise detector pilot programme ‘to help hosts detect and deal with noise nuisance problems’.