\u201cPeople are buying up properties, becoming a kind of hotelier, developing these businesses that are taking apartments out of the local market,\u201d outgoing Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo fumes over lunch in City Hall\u2019s ornate dining room. Hidalgo, whose term expired in March, describes how she, together with the mayors of Barcelona and Rome, spent years pushing the 27-country European Union to crack down on Airbnb. Beginning this May, a new EU law will require hosts to register properties on a Europe-wide database, aimed at allowing cities to quickly check listings they suspect flout local laws. \u201cThe problem is not just Paris,\u201d Hidalgo adds. \u201cIt is all of Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Airbnb has assumed the role of villain in this saga, since it dominates the market, with about 44% of the short-term rental industry in 2024, according to travel data firm Skift Research<\/a>. There are about 9 million Airbnb listings globally, and Paris estimates about 75,000 short-term tourist rentals in its metro area.<\/p>\n 75,000<\/p>\n Tourist rentals in the Paris area<\/p>\n 44%<\/p>\n Airbnb\u2019s share of global short-term rental industry, 2024<\/p>\n ~50 million<\/p>\n Number of tourists who visited Paris in 2025 When three twenty-something friends launched Airbnb in 2008, villainy was hardly the fate they foresaw. They had cast their startup as a relaxed way for strangers to connect: Their idea was hatched when they plopped air mattresses on the floor of their San Francisco apartment and charged people to sleep on them. \u201cBack then, 100% of people were more than skeptical,\u201d cofounder and chief strategy officer Nathan Blecharczyk tells me. \u201cThey almost violently rejected the idea, saying, \u2018How can you trust a stranger in your home?’\u201d<\/p>\n The world got used to the idea, of course, and now Airbnb is a Fortune 500<\/a> business with a valuation of nearly $80 billion and listings in more than 200 countries. Last year it booked 121.9 million stays, earning $12.2 billion in revenue, up from $11 billion the year before. Dictionaries define \u201cto Airbnb\u201d as the verb for short-term renting\u2014a catchphrase for the entire business it invented.<\/p>\n Even so, Airbnb\u2019s share price is about 10% below where it was when it went public in 2020<\/a>\u2014and investors believe that local pushback is a real obstacle to its growth. The company strongly rejects the idea that it\u2019s to blame for any housing shortages: Airbnb \u201cjust doesn\u2019t move the needle in terms of impacting housing prices,\u201d Blecharczyk says. Still, for its execs and investors, the question now is how much they will need to change their strategy going forward\u2014or whether the model that built the company into a travel giant can endure.<\/p>\n Today many Airbnb listings are operated as full-time rental businesses, rather than by people allowing strangers to stay in their homes. That fact has only stoked the sense in some cities that the soaring number of short-term rentals has robbed them of badly needed housing stock, even as affordability becomes a pivotal political issue. As Motley Fool stock analyst Lawrence Nga wrote last September, \u201cAirbnb\u2019s most significant long-term risk isn\u2019t competition. It\u2019s regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n The call\u00a0to rein in Airbnb is strongest in Europe\u2019s centuries-old tourist-magnet cities. Across Europe, the number of tourist rental nights booked nearly doubled between 2018 and 2025, to 398 million, according to EU statistics. Locals accuse Airbnb of pricing them out of their neighborhoods and turning their communities into tourist hubs disconnected from their cultural environment. Across Europe, walls are spray-painted with graffiti reading \u201cAirbnb out!\u201d In Barcelona, one person has painted, \u201cYour Airbnb was my home.\u201d<\/p>\n Few cities have captured the sense of grievance as keenly as Paris\u2014the world\u2019s most visited city, by some measures. The city drew nearly 50 million tourists last year, with the single biggest group being Americans. There are more than 1 million short-term rental listings in France\u2014the industry\u2019s biggest market outside the U.S.\u2014with Paris as the country\u2019s biggest hub. \u201cAirbnb bears real responsibility in France\u2019s housing crisis,\u201d editors of French paper\u00a0Le Monde\u00a0wrote in November, when it published a damning six-part series on the company.<\/p>\n DANIEL PERRON\u2014Hans Lucas\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n But the push by mayors like Hidalgo for a crackdown has borne fruit. In October 2024, Paris and several other French cities, including Mediterranean sun-traps like Nice and Marseille, restricted<\/a> short-term rentals to people listing their own homes, and then for only 90 days a year\u2014a marked change from the 180-day rule it replaced. Second homes, meanwhile, can be rented only to students or visiting businesspeople, and doing so involves extensive paperwork and higher property taxes.<\/p>\n In January, France\u2019s supreme court ruled<\/a> that Airbnb and other platforms were legally responsible for listings that flout the new laws. And in February, two Paris property owners who failed to register their Airbnb listings were fined \u20ac80,000 ($93,000) and \u20ac150,000 ($174,500) respectively. \u201cIt\u2019s the end for impunity,\u201d one official said at the time. \u201cNo more illegal Airbnbs.\u201d<\/p>\n Paris officials admit that the regulation\u2019s real value is to slow Airbnb\u2019s investment property market to a crawl. \u201cWe won\u2019t be able to sue everyone,\u201d says Emmeline de Kerret, who heads Paris\u2019s city authority overseeing tourist rentals. \u201c[But] we want to show that from now on, it is not a great investment.\u201d<\/p>\n In Paris, that is already clear, says Anne-H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Gutierres Requenne, a business consultant who put her one-bedroom apartment near Montmartre on sale in March, after two years of listing it on Airbnb. \u201cThe legal framework is more and more cumbersome,\u201d she says. Her final Airbnb customer was a professor from Cornell University spending a semester in Paris.<\/p>\n As the rules\u00a0have tightened, and as other markets threaten similar actions, Airbnb has raced to adapt and expand. The company\u2019s growth markets\u2014measured by nights booked\u2014are no longer in Europe: They are middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where apartments rent for less. Last May it relaunched its \u201cexperiences\u201d vertical after a two-year pause, and added \u201cservices\u201d\u2014such as massages, guided tours, even cooking classes\u2014in addition to rentals. Now, when you book an Airbnb in Paris, you can add an Airbnb pickup from the airport, and Airbnb daily itineraries with Airbnb tour guides, and have Airbnb shop and deliver food to your rental.<\/p>\n The goal, cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky told investors in February, was to make Airbnb\u2019s app a hub for a vast array of options<\/a>, much as Amazon<\/a> became an app for anything that could be shipped in a cardboard box. \u201cThe unifying idea for me is the trip,\u201d he said. And the offerings create new revenue streams for Airbnb without requiring the company to add new home listings or risk violating regulations. Indeed, Parisians themselves are beginning to reserve Paris features, without booking a place to stay.<\/p>\n Increasingly, the company is negotiating with cities hosting major events like the FIFA World Cup, which takes place across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in June and July. The model for Airbnb was the 2024 Paris Olympics<\/a>, when the city suspended its rental regulations to accommodate millions of visitors; 700,000 of them stayed in Airbnbs, says chief business officer Dave Stephenson. At crucial moments when cities need extra lodging, Chesky told investors in February, the company goes from \u201ca problem cities have to deal with, to a solution to the problem \u2026 Hotels cannot accommodate everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephenson argues that Airbnb guests tend to boost the local economy, perhaps more than traditional hotel guests. \u201cThe money stays with the host, in the community,\u201d he says. \u201cIt gets spent in the coffee shops, in stores down the street.\u201d In its charm offensive, the company has donated to the restoration of old churches and other buildings in France. (It has also eased conditions for guests worldwide, instituting more flexible cancellation policies and eliminating annoyances like cleaning fees and lists of checkout chores.)<\/p>\n
Sources: Apur, Skift Research, City of Paris Tourism Office<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2230011745-e1774022545179.jpg\"\/)
A poster in Paris denounces the flood of short term rentals for tourists.<\/p>\n