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Alojamento Local - Airbnb has a solution for noisy neighbours

airbnb2As the government's working group takes its time in unpicking the current Alojamento Local, short-term tourist rental, rules and regulations, in an effort to create something workable, Airbnb has its own solution to one of the trickier aspects of this booming market. 

In July 2017,  the Socialist Party had the idea that if a rental licence was applied for in a building covered by condominium rules, the other property owners could decide whether or not their neighbours AL license could go ahead. This is fraught with problems.

Airbnb has a solution to the problem of noise and bad behaviour affecting neighbours. Complaints can be registered on the Airbnb website and after three incidents in any one year, the rental property will be removed from the website listing. 

Airbnb's head of global policy, Chris Lehane, commented that, "the problems with neighbours is the fact that they are negatively affected because there are guests who do not know how to behave, they make noise and party all the time. We do not want neighbours to be affected by guests who do not know how to behave, and so we have created a tool that makes it easy for the government to remove the houses from the Airbnb platform if there are too many complaints."

Airbnb already has experience in the use of this policing tool, "we have worked like this in a number of American cities, Europe has never been very interested in this but Portugal could be the first country where we implement it," said Lehane, adding, "to put this into practice, we typically need the government to work with us and tell us where there are complaints. It works because people are encouraged to behave. I do not want to speak for the Portuguese government, but we can do this and are available to talk about it if necessary."

 

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Comments  

+2 #1 Elsa 2018-02-28 11:04
This guy is American and describes what works in more developed societies - including the UK. A complaint to the Local Authority or Police (anonymous to the landlord) reminds most airbnb landlords they have a Duty of Care to neighbours as well as their renters. Anonymous whistle blowing is anathema in the ex-Fascist Graeco-Roman societies because of the bad old days when the elites used it with impunity to have lower strata removed from their path.
So no doubt entirely genuine landlords without any hint of disturbance will fall foul of jealous neighbours. Unless airbnb adds a rider that complaints to them must be backed up by formal complaints by identifiable individuals to the authorities that airbnb can cross reference to.

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