The hotel lobby’s effort to stop Airbnb rentals, says Tucker Martin, is like the horse-and-buggy lobby trying to stop the car industry.
Martin—a political consultant doing work for Airbnb, which enables homeowners to make a little extra money by renting out rooms for short periods—could have cited many other examples: Record companies trying to stop music downloads and streaming. Taxi companies trying to stop Uber. Newspapers trying to stop the Internet.
Such attempts (some of which have taken place) would be fools’ errands. Technological and business innovation—the “gales of creative destruction,” as Joseph Schumpeter called them — can’t be stopped. Nor should they be.
Last year Virginians arranged 133,000 stays through Airbnb, which represented a 160 percent jump over the year before — even though Airbnb rentals are, in many localities, illegal. That’s the case in Richmond, which nevertheless saw several hundred transient rentals during the UCI road cycling championships, writes A. Barton Hinkle.
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