Two Years Later: The City Portal

With Hosts in more than 100,000 cities and towns around the world, one of Airbnb’s priorities is to work with governments on fair, balanced short-term rental regulations that both protect the benefits of home sharing and help meet the unique needs of each community. To build on these efforts, we introduced the City Portal in 2020 – a first-of-its-kind resource for local governments and tourism organizations informed by years of work with governments around the world. 

We launched the City Portal with 18 pilot partners. Today, two years later, more than 300 cities and tourism organizations – from San Francisco to Sao Paulo – have partnered with Airbnb to access this unique resource. The City Portal offers local leaders insights into Airbnb in their community, and tools to help enforce their laws and better understand the Airbnb landscape in their communities. Specifically, the City Portal’s technology offers governments and tourism organizations the following: 

• Local and global Airbnb data insights into short-term rental market characteristics. For example, tourism organization partners can see where guests are coming from and adjust marketing accordingly. 
• Remitted tourist tax revenue in places where tax agreements have been established. 
• Industry-first compliance tools to help governments develop and manage fair short-term rental policies and regulations. For example, governments with applicable short-term rental laws can utilize the City Portal to view Airbnb listings within their registration systems.
• Centralized access to the Airbnb Neighborhood Support hotline and Law Enforcement portal. An official who needs to reach our law enforcement support team because of a safety incident can more easily find the applicable tool via the portal.

In addition, the City Portal offers government and tourism partners access to an Airbnb team member that can help provide one-to-one support with the City Portal or issues that arise locally. For example, if an official has a question about our rules against both parties and “party houses,” they can easily reach Airbnb policy staff.

Our ongoing work to support communities

For the better part of a decade, Airbnb has partnered with communities – from the billions of dollars of local tourist taxes we have collected and remitted to governments on behalf of Hosts, to our partnership with destination marketing organizations (DMOs), and work with cities on fair short-term rental laws, the City Portal is the natural next step.

• Collecting and remitting our fair share of taxes: In the last seven years, we have collected more than $4 billion in local tourist taxes globally on behalf of Hosts, making Airbnb the largest collector and remitter of such taxes in the world. In the US, we collected and remitted more than $1.5 billion in local tourism taxes in 2021, in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In Canada, we collected and remitted more than $53 million in local tourism taxes in 2021. We have also delivered more than $365 million in local tourist taxes on behalf of hosts across the EU since 2014.
• Supporting the return of travel: Airbnb’s global footprint also provides a front-row seat to shifting travel trends and how these trends can benefit communities. In 2020, we announced an initiative to expand our work with DMOs, local governments, and community organizations to support local economic recovery. To date, we have 155 partnerships and collaborations around the world.

We are proud of the work we’ve done with cities around the world and look forward to continuing to partner with communities.

Those interested in becoming City Portal partners can visit airbnb.com/cityportal.

About Airbnb

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two Hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 4 million Hosts who have welcomed more than 1 billion guest arrivals across over 220 countries and regions. Travel on Airbnb keeps more of the financial benefits of tourism with the people and places that make it happen. Airbnb has generated billions of dollars in earnings for Hosts, most of whom are individuals listing the homes in which they live. Among Hosts who report their gender, more than half are women, and one in five employed Hosts are either teachers or healthcare workers. Travel on Airbnb also has generated more than $4 billion in tax revenue around the world. Airbnb has helped advance more than 1,000 regulatory frameworks for short-term rentals, including in 80% of our top 200 geographies. In late 2020, to support our continued expansion and diversification, we launched the City Portal to provide governments with a one-stop shop that supports data sharing and compliance with local registration rules. We continue to invest in innovations and tools to support our ongoing work with governments around the world to advance travel that best serves communities.