Not much has yet been said about it locally, but the so-called “sharing economy” and its impact on tourism is a hot topic in various holiday destinations, including Anguilla (see Tuesday paper) where there are already 287 properties listed with AirBnB and more than 300 with a similar company. One of the concerns is that many of these are not regulated and don’t collect taxes on behalf of government.
Earlier this month Aruba even signed what some dubbed an historic cooperation agreement with AirBnB. The thinking was apparently “if you can’t beat them, join them,” as there were already 1,360 such listings there.
In Curaçao too several information sessions on the phenomenon were held recently.
The island was already dealing with the reality that especially visitors from by far its biggest source market the Netherlands are increasingly staying at apartments and other alternative accommodations instead of more traditional hotels and resorts, a worrisome development that has now been accelerated.
During the International Shared Ownership Investment Conference in Miami last October a call was made to engage AirBnB and Home Away. That seems like good advice also for St. Maarten, which had only 130 listings at the time but is particularly vulnerable due to its many non-resident vacation-home owners, some of whom rent these out without paying a dime in taxes on the income.
Efforts to introduce a so-called Condo Tax to tackle this situation several years ago failed, so working with the “new” providers appears to be the best remaining option. As usual, regulating rather than prohibiting is probably the most productive approach.
