Airbnb is Letting the Air Out
For more crisp and insightful business and economic news, subscribe to The Daily Upside newsletter. It's completely free and we guarantee you'll learn something new every day.
Airbnb started in 2008 to facilitate a quintessential digital-age side hustle: Users renting out their homes for a weekend or two to secure the next month's mortgage payment. But it soon became a gateway for creating real estate empires, turning neighborhoods into tourist zones and mom-and-pops into wannabe J.W. Marriotts -- and upending entire housing and rental markets in the process.
Now the industry starts a new chapter: Workers are increasingly being ordered back to their offices. Meanwhile, cities and municipalities are passing sweeping laws to clamp down on your average multi-property owning mavens. Airbnb's most recent earnings report included a less-than-rosy outlook for the rest of the year, and the company has launched a suite of new features that suggest it realizes it's no longer the no-brainer cheaper alternative to traditional hotels it once was.
Source Fool.com
