Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- Here's The Local on Spanish holidaying habits. Nothing very unusual. Lying on a beach basically. Occasionally getting up to join the throng walking backwards and forwards along the strand.
- For the first time ever, there are now more women doing the camino de Santiago than men. Fine if they are in pairs or groups but, as I've said, I do worry about the singletons. A sign of age? This development, by the way, is said to reflect the increasing number of foreign females on the camino. Mostly Germans, in my experience.
- Naturally, numbers on the camino are way up on last year and another new albergue ('pilgrims' hostel) is opening in Pontevedra. A private one, as the council can't keep up. Too busy making a very wide bridge pedestrian-only. But at least it's on the camino.
- The locals are still complaining that summer has yet to arrive in Galicia. But the funny thing, says a local paper, is that the average temperature this year so far is higher than in the last 2 years. Perhaps there was more variation back then, whereas this year is consistently 'cool'. Around 'only' 25 degrees.
- Along our coast, in Arousa, a brothel owner came up with the idea of having churrasco (ribs) served by topless prostitutes and provided free of charge. Naturally, it was a huge success and, equally naturally, the local council is trying to put an end to it. But will probably fail. Only in Spain?
- I said recently it must only be a matter of time until Pontevedra's wide pedestrian-only streets are given a dedicated cycle/e-scooter lane. Perhaps a harbinger of things to come is a new 'cycle path' between nearby Campaño and Alba. That said, this seems to be a rather more rural than urban facility. A false dawn . . . ?
- I wonder if, once I have my Irish passport, I'll be welcome here. Assuming I do something about my accent. Return to Scouse, at the very least. A relation of the Dublin accent.
- In case. You hadn't already guessed . . . Hosts with multiple listings now dominate the Airnbnb website. As a result, blocks of flats and whole streets in the UK’s biggest cities are becoming de facto hotels. See the first article below. Not the original concept, of course. But, then, neither was the even bigger problem of excessive tourism.
- I've touched on the subject of 'corporate wokeness' in the context of non-credible TV ads . . . Below is a nice comment on this. A taster: It’s probably a rule — the more a company pleads its wokeness, the more damage it is actually doing. The more sanctimonious, the more venal. I think reader María has said much the same.
- So, 20 more senseless deaths in yet another mass shooting. I wonder if Fart will mock this crime. Or do anything about the causes of it. Or even the factors that facilitate it. Or even reduce his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Or if pigs will finally take to the air this week.
- Word of the Day: Cascarrabias, or curmudgeon. Another nice one.
- A British columnist would like to see the word 'vibrant' banned, because it has come to mean 'rioting, 'thieving' or 'unemployable'. As in: “Well, Huw, it’s a vibrant community, as you can see from the fact that most of it is on fire.”
- My neighbour's son has returned from 9 months in the Mid West of the USA. Trouble is, he now thinks he's a cowboy addicted to Country and Western music. Loud Country and Western music. Accompanied, it seems, by him on a set of drums. Until after midnight. Naturally, not the electric pads connected to you via earphones. This is Spain, after all, and any noise you make is no business of anyone else. Live and let live is the principle. Though I might have to kill him.
1. Sunday Times Investigation: how Airbnb has been hijacked by agencies making a huge profit
Live like a local? You’ll be lucky. Tom Calver and Melissa York report on whether the home-sharing site is doing enough to stop your street being invaded by strangers every weekend. Plus, what you can do as a landlord or outraged neighbour to stop your street becoming Airbnb bedlam
Airbnb guests hoping to live in the spare room of a local might be disappointed. Data analysed by The Sunday Times reveals that hosts with multiple listings now dominate the short-stay website, and blocks of flats and whole streets in the UK’s biggest cities are becoming de facto hotels as a result.
In 2007, as the fabled story of Airbnb’s humble origins goes, the site’s three founders couldn’t afford the rent on their San Francisco flat, so they charged guests to sleep on an air mattress in their living room to “make a few bucks”.
Fast-forward more than a decade and the tech giant has revenue of more than £2bn from listings in almost every country in the world, including North Korea. On any given night, 2m people sleep at a property they found on the site. In the UK, its hosts — the name given to those who offer their rooms for rent — receive more than 8m guests a year.
Yet the days of Airbnb being solely a service for homeowners to let their single spare rooms are long gone: the majority of its active UK listings are entire flats and houses, with only 41% private rooms.
Analysis by The Sunday Times also suggests that more than half of Airbnb properties in large cities in the UK are now let by people with more than one listing. Stay at an Airbnb in the capital and there’s almost a one in five chance that it’s being let by someone — or some company — with 10 or more listings.
The biggest hosts now draw in income from vast empires spread across the country. Veeve, a professional short-stay and holiday rental agency with nearly 2,000 properties worldwide, is the host with the most listings in London. It offers “hand-picked homes” with the option of added extras such as concierge services and private airport transfers.
Not all of its listings, however, are under the Veeve name. Tom, a host of 177 properties at the time of writing, describes himself as a “lifelong Londoner” who loves “having the opportunity to share these spaces, my knowledge and personal recommendations about this great city”. The fact that he works for Veeve was buried at the bottom of his profile until The Sunday Times contacted the company for this article — the name at the top of Tom’s profile is now Veeve.
“We understand Airbnb is working to make it visibly clearer to guests whether a property is managed by an individual host or by a third-party company,” says Jonny Morris, CEO of Veeve. “All communication with guests booking through Airbnb clearly comes from Veeve.”
While the property management company accounts for a sliver of the capital’s 80,000-strong Airbnb market, it’s far from the only one sharing the spoils. Of the capital’s 20 biggest hosts, at least 17 are short-stay holiday rental companies.
Twelve of those were listed under personal names, rather than companies: Tom was joined by Sally, Emily, Veronica and Alice. Sally, with more than 250 London listings to her name, works for Onefinestay: the agency claims to “visit and vet every home”, and each booking includes “a personal welcome, luxurious sheets, towels and toiletries”. She also claims to speak five languages.
A spokesman for Onefinestay told Home that Airbnb’s terms and conditions currently stop the company from displaying its name in the listing title or home description, but it has asked Airbnb for the ability to be more transparent with guests.
Emily has lived in London all her life and looks after “other people’s homes” — 136, to be exact — through her company, Air Peace of Mind, while Veronica, who lives in a “beautiful house surrounded by parks and trees in Muswell Hill”, moved to the capital to follow her love. The company she set up, Hello Guest, has about 200 London listings and offers visitors and hosts “guest communication, check-in and out, cleaning and laundry”.
Turning residential properties into unlicensed hotels has consequences, because people tend to treat hotel rooms with less respect than they would a friend’s apartment. Similarly, tourists seeking a more authentic experience may be disappointed: instead of the resident homeowner handing over the keys, it’s an ambassador from a large company.
This isn’t just a problem in London, either — Edinburgh is also feeling the strain. The increasingly common sight of barnacle-like key boxes stuck on the side of listed period buildings is a sign that short lets have taken hold of the Scottish capital; as of June, the city had more than 13,000 properties listed on Airbnb. That number will soar even higher this month, as the population swells to accommodate the festival and the Fringe.
By far the biggest host in Edinburgh is BnBbuddy, a short-let management company that offers cleaning and linen, professional photography, “price optimisation” and guest management for its 120-plus listings in the city, some of which are let specifically for Fringe performers and attendees.
Yet Edinburgh has thousands more multi-listing hosts, and their intrusion is causing a headache for residents. The city centre is full of co-operative tenement buildings — big blocks of flats designed like large private homes, with small flats extending from stairwells. Residents live in close proximity to one another, separated by thin internal walls.
James Reid, 70, a resident of the city’s Old Town, says there were three separate Airbnb businesses operating in his tenement a short distance from Edinburgh Castle. Each of them regularly accepted up to four guests, although one evening a single flat welcomed 11. The residents of his building went from having about 20 people coming and going in any given year to more than 700.
“None of the hosts live anywhere near here,” Reid says, adding that each of them ran many properties across the city. On the roof terrace that backs onto his window, guests socialised, drank and had barbecues, filling his flat with smoke. “They would climb over my window boxes and take photos of my interior while I was inside,” he says.
Because of these intrusions, Reid suffered shock, sleep deprivation and asthma attacks.
A spokesperson for Airbnb says: “We have zero tolerance for disruptive or antisocial behaviour and take action on issues brought to our attention, including removing users from the platform.”
Reid’s noisy neighbours have now left the building: all three Airbnb hosts were ordered by the council to stop operating following a prolonged campaign by residents and councillors. Yet one of the hosts still runs several Airbnbs in similar flats a few miles away.
The hosts in Reid’s block had bought their flats. Increasingly, however, some Airbnb hosts don’t even own the spaces they profit from. Letting agents have complained about tenants running multi-listing rackets, subletting multiple properties on the website without informing their landlords.
According to James Robinson, general manager of Lurot Brand estate agency, the problem is rife. His company, which specialises in sought-after London mews properties, has had neighbours complain about prostitution, sex parties, raucous hen weekends and the constant rumble of wheelie suitcases over the cobblestones at all hours. “I know of one girl who’s subletting 10 homes, and her profile changes from property to property,” Robinson says. “She’s renting them out for £250 a night on average, but she’s paying £500 a week. When you go for inspections, there are ribbon-tied towels on the bed, with a little lavender bag on the pillow.”
Reference checks often don’t pick up on these individuals because they have respectable jobs, he points out, citing one subletter who had a reference from the BBC. Agents are also prevented from sharing names and previous addresses of rogue tenants under the EU’s GDPR data protection regulations.
Even when letting agents do catch them subletting, tenants will often post pictures of a previous property they’ve rented, Robinson says, and tell the guest they are double-booked. They then make a deal with the guest to put them up in one of their similar properties nearby. If anyone knocks at the door, guests are told to say they are friends of the tenant, visiting for a few days.
Airbnb verifies users by asking them to submit government ID such as a passport or driving licence, and restricts lettings to 90 days a year in London to comply with regulations introduced in 2017. The company has supported proposals for a registration system in the capital, as long as it is “clear, simple and host-friendly”. It has also contributed to a consultation on short lets held by the Scottish government.
It doesn’t ask hosts for proof of permission to let their property, but it has a “responsible hosting” page on its website that encourages hosts to follow local rules and regulations. If it is made aware of subletting without permission, it says it can forward on communications between the parties involved, but otherwise it encourages them to resolve disputes privately. This often means landlords have to pursue unruly tenants through the courts to get them to leave, which can be costly.
Hema Anand, partner at the law firm BDB Pitmans, says she has encountered a growing number of landlords seeking advice on how to evict subletting tenants: “We also have clients who have sublet with the landlord’s consent, then found [the property] on Airbnb. Airbnb guests are subletting on Airbnb — it’s just an endless chain.”
What to do if...
You’re a landlord
■ A leaseholder may require permission from the freeholder to sublet — if this is the case, leaseholders could get the freeholder to start an action against a wayward subletter.
■ Any subletting is also likely to be in breach of mortgage terms, council planning rules and the home insurance policy, as it would be considered an unlicensed change of use from residential to business.
■ Hema Anand, partner at the law firm BDB Pitmans, recommends writing cost-recovery clauses into tenancy agreements, as many tenants have been persuaded to stop hosting once they receive a legal letter outlining the cost of an eviction.
■ Tenants have security of tenure under an assured shorthold tenancy agreement of six months, but landlords can serve a section 21 eviction notice after the fourth month without cause or reason — although the government has pledged to abolish this clause.
■ A section 8 notice can also be used to take back possession of a property, usually if the landlord wants to use it as a main residence or if the tenant is in rent arrears.
You’re a neighbour
■ Call the letting agency or landlord to notify them about disruptive behaviour or subletting.
■ Contact your local authority to make a noise complaint. Enter your postcode at gov.uk/report-noise-pollution-to-council to find out how.
■ Report antisocial behaviour to the police on 101 or (in London) online at www.met.police.uk/ro/report/asb/asb/report-antisocial-behaviour.
Or report criminal behaviour anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.
■ Report the offending listing to Airbnb via its neighbourhood tool at airbnb.co.uk/neighbours.
2. Google your carbon footprint, Prince Harry, and you can kill a few more polar bears: Rod Liddle, the Times
Were you invited to Google’s climate camp, in Sicily? Ah, I see, you’re a nobody. Sorry. Wonderful occasion, costing £16.5m, with 300 rich and famous people, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry — and maybe that Swedish girl, who knows? — all attending a conference on climate change.
Prince Harry was there and addressed the throng barefoot, because he’s a totally chilled dude. Google sent a private jet to pick him up and the last leg of the journey was done by helicopter.
In fact, an estimated 114 private jets brought in the guests. I don’t have all the figures about what that sort of carbon footprint extravagance does to the environment and thus to climate change. It may have, by itself, increased the temperature of the world by a degree or two. It’s something like the equivalent of personally strangling 6,290 polar bears to death. But the happier news is that they all felt much better about themselves for having attended, and that’s the important thing. Not only filthy rich, but dead “woke” too.
I wonder if, while they were there, they talked about one of the fastest-growing contributions to climate change — the internet? I suspect not, because it’s something about which Google declines to talk and for which it has refused to release figures. It is estimated that a single Google search could power a low-energy light bulb for an hour. There are 2 trillion Google searches per year, 63,000 per second. Close down Google and you’d save half of Antarctica, but I don’t suppose that was on the agenda.
As the German newspaper Der Spiegel described the computer companies: “It is a world built on real-world data processing factories that, when it comes to power consumption, are reminiscent of the early days of industrialisation. Computing with electrons is just as physical as the melting of steel or rolling of sheet metal. In both cases, no one cared much about resource consumption in the early phases.”
Being lectured to about woke stuff by Harry, Leonardo and lots of other exceptionally privileged people who know four-fifths of sod all is, of course, irritating. But not half so infuriating as when the big companies do it. We live with welfare capitalism because it is probably the best system available, but we are still aware that the big multinational companies are venal, grasping, amoral bastards who would flog their own grannies twice over for a penny share dividend. Fine, we get that, it’s how the mercantile world works. But corporate wokeness rubs our noses in it and it has become terribly au courant.
It is partly the staggering hypocrisy that rankles and partly the knowledge that these smug, gilded monkeys are doing it solely to improve their brand image with deeply gullible young people. They really care no more about the environment, racism or gender issues than does a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
It’s probably a rule — the more a company pleads its wokeness, the more damage it is actually doing. The more sanctimonious, the more venal.
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