Airbnb ad attempts outreach to minorities | Crain’s New York Business
▻http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20180515/POLITICS/180519937/airbnb-ad-attempts-outreach-to-minorities
Airbnb is taking to the airwaves.
The tech firm launched a new ad Monday featuring a “home sharing” Bronx couple—a message that seems aimed at building support for Airbnb among black voters and lawmakers. The TV spot follows a marketing assault from the hotel industry, organized labor, activist groups and city Comptroller Scott Stringer that produced and publicized findings that the online rental service has accelerated gentrification by illegally converting apartments to short-term lodgings for travelers.
The ad, titled “Meet Mike & Sharon,” features an African-American father, mother and images of their home and children.
“I love being an Airbnb host because of all the people that I meet,” Sharon tells the camera. “It helps people who are struggling.”
Mike takes a more aggressive tack, seeming to push back on claims by Stringer and the industry-backed ShareBetter coalition that Airbnb has made New York more expensive.
“Airbnb has allowed me to pay my mortgage when I lost my job,” he says. “The big hotels are trying to take away our right for us to be able to share our homes. They’re making it impossible for us to be able to live here.”
ShareBetter is pushing a proposal by Manhattan Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal that would obligate Airbnb to disclose to local law enforcement the addresses of all apartments listed on its site. This would make it easier for the union- and hotel-friendly de Blasio administration to crack down on apartments rented for fewer than 30 days without the primary tenant present.
It would not, however, affect homeowners like Mike and Sharon who remain on-site with their guests.
Airbnb, for its part, has advanced a bill with Brooklyn Assemblyman Joseph Lentol that would ease the state occupancy law to allow for the renting of apartments for a less than a month so long as the host registers the unit with the state. The spot released Monday is the second part of a seven-figure ad buy targeting New York City and the Albany area.
A spokesman for ShareBetter note that a new City Council bill mirrors Rosenthal’s Assembly proposal, and would obligate Airbnb to share the addresses of its listings with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement.
“We’re taking action to do what they have failed to do—protect affordable housing from shady operators,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson, a close ally of the Hotel Trades Council, told Politico.
The hotel workers union’s political director, Jason Ortiz, indicated in a February interview with Crain’s that his organization would push for such a bill this year.