Regency Square , Brighton
“ We provide all hosts in the UK with Host Protection Insurance which provides insurance coverage for up to $ 1 million in the rare event of an injury ”, the Airbnb website says .
However , it is not clear if this insurance applies , if a claim will be allowed and if so , if it will succeed . Even if it did , the $ 1m limit applies to the total claim and all legal costs – which is unlikely to be enough for adequate compensation to four badly injured victims and to reimburse their legal costs .
Many travel and tourism industry commentators are hoping that a case will come to court to test Airbnb ’ s claim to have no responsibility in such circumstances .
Early last month , B & B Association CEO David Weston was speaking at a Policy UK event alongside Airbnb ’ s head of policy , Patrick Robinson ( inset ), and asked him directly whether , when a Fire & Rescue Authority ( FRA ) requests for local premises let to paying guests to be identified ,
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Airbnb provides the identifications necessary to allow that FRA to do its duty given by Parliament . Robinson admitted that Airbnb would refuse all such requests without a court order .
With 50,000 premises in London alone now let to paying guests through Airbnb which are beyond regulatory enforcement - because only Airbnb can identify the premises owners - this is clearly a very urgent issue .
Richard Nye of the Policy Group within London Fire Brigade believes that FRAs already have the power to demand data from Airbnb - though this may be academic because he also admits the LFB have not used them - basically they don ’ t want to ‘ discover ’ vast numbers of new premises they may have to inspect , when they have not sufficient resources even to inspect the ones they already know about !
All this leaves our members in an anticompetitive situation as regards compliance costs , compared with our “ collaborative economy ” competitors , who can avoid compliance and costs without any penalty .
Our lobbying continues - watch this space !