Armed with cameras, case files and witness tips, Frankfurt city inspectors track down covert Airbnb-style apartments that are squeezing an already tight housing market.
Tag: airbnb
With an 80% market share in the house-swap space, and explosive growth, HomeExchange, bought and reinvented by two Frenchmen, has become the undisputed champion of house swapping. Will it undercut the American giant’s hold on the market.
👋 Yumalundi!* Welcome to Tuesday, where Israeli forces kill at least 27 Palestinians in another deadly confrontation near a food distribution site in Gaza, Mount Etna erupts, and we’ve got one sour quiz question for you. Meanwhile, for La Stampa, Stefano Stefanini looks at Ukraine’s recent long-range drone strike deep inside Russia — and what […]
Despite sometimes heated debates and increasing regulations, the king of short-term rentals has never performed as well as in this post-COVID period. The announcement this week of a whole set of new features shines the light on one of the digital era’s great success stories.
Gardening, cooking sweets or binding books are tasks associated with monasteries. But today, a growing number of Spain’s contemplative communities have turned to activities such as gourmet products, tourist rentals through digital platforms, astrotourism and even sushi making to achieve economic sustainability.
Four decades ago, there were 9,000 dance clubs in Italy. Today, there are just 3,000. Where is everyone going instead, and why?
In the bohemian Australian seaside town of Byron Bay, rents are now higher than Sydney or Melbourne. And as Airbnb takes its toll, this small town has almost as many homeless people as Sydney.
Consumers are convinced. Wall Street is buoyant. Demand around the world for app-based services is booming, with entire nations stuck at home during COVID-19 lockdowns and the prospect of goods and services at their door with just a click. As the so-called “Gig Economy” spreads alongside the pandemic, society has struggled to keep up. • […]
Countries like Argentina, Chile and Mexico have begun charging a value added tax (VAT) on digital purchases. But that may just be the tip of iceberg, especially if governments can reach a regional consensus.
-OpEd- MUNICH — We are making the world a better place: That has been a central promise that helped Silicon Valley’s Internet giants seduce the public, on their way to gaining unprecedented power over our lives. That vow remains at the heart of the message of Mark Zuckerberg and his company Facebook. The goal, as […]
When a freshly inaugurated Donald Trump issued his infamous travel ban exactly one year ago, the message was clear, not only to Muslims but to the entire world, that the United States was suddenly a very different place. But in some way, the policy can be viewed as just an official confirmation of a disturbing […]
PALMA — You live in one of those special places where people travel from all around the world to visit. A dream? More like a neverending tourist hell, says Venice resident Elisa Crepaldi. “Some of the most beautiful areas in the city are no longer accessible to locals. We have to renounce living in some […]
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Legal Services Go “Uber” In France
PARIS — Technology is changing the way people secure legal services, turning clients into “consumers” by allowing them to bypass traditional law firms. Need help drafting that shareholders agreement? There’s an app for that — at just a fraction of the normal cost! The past few years have seen a boom, in France, of “legal […]
-Analysis- RIO DE JANEIRO — Andrew Zimbalist’s Circus Maximus is a book well worth a read. In it, the author — a U.S. economist specialized in the sports industry — argues that there’s a growing consensus among economists that playing host to a mega-event like the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup is a […]
To understand why design is important, take a look at Silicon Valley. Forty-two design firms in the U.S. technology hub have been bought up since 2004. About half these acquisitions were made this past year alone. The 25 startups that got the most venture capital financing were founded by designers. Google snapped up the two-person […]
PRAGUE — Czech Republic was the first country I visited that wasn’t either Latin or Germanic. Czech, as I found out the hard way, is a very tricky Slavic language, one of those that rarely lets you deduce the meaning of a word and in which entire sentences seem to have been written by somebody […]
User ratings systems on service apps and websites are making some people obsessive about their online reputations, even as customers. Where is all this headed?
STOCKHOLM — If you’re not careful, the so-called “sharing economy” can turn your home into a temporary brothel. Swedish police report a growing number of pimps and prostitutes in Stockholm using long-term rentals on the home-sharing website Airbnb without the owner’s knowledge.”We estimate that there are currently about 200 apartments in Stockholm that are used […]
BOGOTA — The significance of Uber goes well beyond its specific function, which is to connect willing drivers with people who need to move around in a safe, comfortable and punctual manner. The deeper message of the controversial digital application — and others like it — is in the changing way labor and service markets […]
MOSCOW — If you happen to produce widgets in Russia and sell them in foreign currency, your time has come. Konstantin Babkin, president of a company that produces tractors, is convinced that the ruble should have been devalued long ago. “An excessively strong ruble already killed our airplane construction, food and light manufacturing industries,” he […]
For Renaud Laplanche, it all began with a credit card statement that seemed all wrong. Now, after helping to bring banking into the digital era, it’s time for a major IPO for his SF-based firm.
The digital economy promised to create markets that were fluid by definition. But even in the so-called “sharing” economy of mobile applications, there are bound to be winners and losers.