An open letter to all AirBnB operators in the Queenstown area

by Amanda Mulqueen Chairperson Citizens Advice Bureau Queenstown

I understand that, to many people, the opportunities that AirBnB has presented since its inception a few years ago have been hard to resist. The option to rent out a room or self-contained flat for a few nights here and there for good money, when hotel rooms in this town were in high demand, made sense. However, this concept has blown itself out of all proportion, and in the current climate you need to ask yourselves where the line needs to be drawn.

I’m sure that most people are aware that Queenstown (and many other areas of New Zealand) are in an unprecedented housing crisis. If you are in any doubt of that, please feel free to come and do a shift at the Queenstown Citizens Advice Bureau, where you can try to explain to numerous people on any given day why there is no emergency accommodation available to them here and that they are going to have to either sleep in their car or buy a tent. We had a client seeking assistance a few days ago who has been living in Queenstown with his wife for 16 years, both in full time employment, with a child at Queenstown Primary School, who are now homeless due to being unable to meet the increased rent where they were living. They have been unable to find any other accommodation and are at a loss as to what to do, and we have no solution for them. We are also seeing situations where people in shared flats are being confronted with their landlords renting out rooms in their flats to short-term visitors with little notice and no consideration given to the tenants’ privacy.

We are seeing so many cases where people are losing their accommodation due to the potential for landlords to make more money from short-term holiday rentals. I can understand when, as a homeowner in this area, it makes sense to make some extra cash from the likes of AirBnb for your spare room and maybe a cooked breakfast, and you get to meet some new people. However it is the allocation of properties and rooms which were previously being used as rentals for our vital worker population, to accommodate short-term holiday rentals such as AirBnB which is seriously impacting on our workforce and community infrastructure. I implore you all to look past the short-term financial benefits that you can personally gain and look at the bigger picture for our local community. If we all turn a blind eye to this problem, there will be no-one to cook you a meal when you go out in the evening.

There will be no-one to provide the services that you expect on a daily basis. The people who need the living space that is at such a premium right now are the very people who contribute to making this place work, so please, let’s look after them first.