2 September, 2014

Dear Sir,

Shame on you for the Airbnb article (The Royal Gazette, September 2).

What Bermuda Tourism needs more than anything (except smaller cruise ships operating long stay itineraries into St George’s and Hamilton) is more visitor beds in small properties. And we need them yesterday.

We have hundreds, if not thousands of unused or underused beds in private hands, when these premises are rented to visitors nearly 100 percent of the income goes directly into Bermudian hands. In most cases it pays Bermudian families’ mortgages.

These things cannot be said of our larger resorts, and certainly will not be true of our next generation of ‘integrated casino resorts’. Added to this is the fact that visitors staying in these private rentals usually simply prefer them to more ‘formal’ hotels, and may not come here at all if that is their only option. Finally, these visitors, for a large part, spend much more ‘outside the fence line’ than typical resort guests and thus add even more to the Bermudian pie.

So why would our only newspaper highlight regulatory technicalities, and jeopardise this essential, productive sector’s contribution to the revival of a desperately needed sector of our economy? No sign of understanding the sector, or the issues, just the worst kind of Gotcha piece.

The Bermuda Tourism Authority is well aware of the tension between the old regulatory approach and the new trend. They are also well aware of the excellent ‘fit’ between the type of visitor who favours these small, semi-private, accommodations and our Bermuda brand. In the bad-old-days when the Department of Tourism was full of civil servants who could think of no response except to license and tax, the answer was just what the article described. We were lucky that the maximum number of guests was set at five and not two. In today’s environment the issues of standards and quality assurance are nowhere near as cogent as they were back-in-the-day. All of the peer-to-peer rental sites have first-class feedback systems. If a property is not up to snuff the very first place it will become apparent is on the feedback rating. Once that happens; no more money.

Should the BTA be keeping an eye on things?; of course. Should the BTA host an ‘approved and endorsed’ list on their website which renters could apply to join?; of course. Should the BTA systematically approach third party peer-to-peer website operators to link to their rating site?; sure. Should no one be allowed to rent a place unless they have a License and a Government Inspector has come and checked it out recently and they have paid a tax or fee or both?; absolutely not!

The BTA know all this, but sadly they don’t have the authority to change the regulations so that the limit is (say) the maximum of 10 units or 25 guests. Lets see how long it takes Tourism to fix this — my guess is it will take longer than it took them to renege on the Gambling Referendum.

Yours Very Truly,

JAN CARD