Airbnb guests allegedly stole thousands in electronics, jewelry and clothes from their hosts in two separate locations in Williamsburg, including one apartment that experienced a burglary earlier this year, according to the police…

A Montreal judge has made a decision that could make local tenants think twice before renting out their pad to tourists…

Kelowna is tackling the regulation of short-term vacation rentals like Airbnb to ensure fairness for local hotels and a better experience for tourists. The city says it’s concerned that, with no regulation, the providers of these short-term rentals have no standard to be held to…

Come September, San Diego’s smaller hotels, motels and home sharing hosts like Airbnb will no longer have to pay a special room surcharge for tourism marketing, the City Council agreed on Tuesday. The move to eliminate the fee, which is over and above the city’s 10.5 percent room tax, is expected to cost the city’s tourism marketing effort at least $2.4 million a year. Effective Sept. 1, only lodging establishments with 70 or more rooms will now be assessed a marketing surcharge of 2 percent. Hoteliers, who oversee the tourism marketing effort, said they had no choice but to change who pays the fee because of complaints from some home sharing operators who felt they had no say in who was controlling the funds. “It became problematic for us to have an organization where our board is voted on by the (district) members in a weighted vote but we can’t establish how much of a vote these people should get,” said San Diego hotel owner Bill Evans, who chairs the hotelier-run board of the Tourism Marketing District….

Airbnb has emerged in recent years to become a popular option for both those seeking accommodations and those looking to provide their homes and apartments as a place to stay for travelers. A common feature of most Airbnb rentals is WiFi access, but providing that connectivity might well come with risks for both the person providing the space and the guest, according to a Black Hat USA talk scheduled for Aug. 4 in Las Vegas. In an interview with eWEEK ahead of the talk, titled “AirBnBeware: Short Term Rentals Long Term Pwnage,” security researcher Jeremy Galloway from Atlassian provided details about the risks that he sees for Airbnb WiFi users….

It’s not just Rio de Janeiro hotel prices that are soaring ahead of the Olympics. The Summer Games have turned Rio into the world’s priciest destination on lodging platform Airbnb Inc. In a new Bloomberg index released Wednesday, Rio de Janeiro lodging on Airbnb cost $206 per day on average, exceeding that of No. 2 Miami and No. 3 San Francisco. A stay in a private Rio dwelling was more than twice as costly as Paris, according to the index of global cities with at least 100 local listings. It took average prices for two blocks of time that are six months apart and include part of the Olympics — Aug. 1 to 10 — as well as Feb. 1 to 10, 2017. Data were collected between May 1 to May 10, 2016….

Originally a way for those with spare space in their homes to rent out these rooms to travellers looking to ‘live like a local’ on holiday, Airbnb has rapidly risen to become a way for professional investors to generate income through short-term rentals. Since launching in San Francisco in 2008, Airbnb has grown to have “hosts” in over 34,000 cities throughout 191 countries. While homeowners do make up a substantial number of these hosts, professional full-time property investors are taking the opportunity to buy property specifically for use on Airbnb, especially in highly popular markets such as London….

Starting this week, Santa Fe vacationers who find lodging through the website Airbnb must pay a local bed tax, adding a source of potential revenue that has for years eluded city coffers. Homeowners who list rooms on the online marketplace will be required to apply for permits by Aug. 9, according to Randy Randall, the city’s tourism chief. People who host in residential areas will need one of 1,000 residential permits, while those in commercial zones will need to apply for a business license. Those who continue to rent out their property without a permit will be subject to fines. Officials hope the new regulations will help legitimize a rogue market that has long frustrated local hoteliers who say they’re being punished for following the rules….

The number of suites available for rent in Vancouver could increase by almost 50 per cent if all AirBnb units that are rented out for more than three months a year were converted into rental housing, estimates show. But there’s an alternative: making all homes identified in a city report as “empty” available could more than quadruple what’s available. Both of those factors are contributing to the hollowing out of Vancouver’s rental supply – and are both being targeted by city council as they try to provide more places for Vancouverites to rent, and to rein in rapidly escalating prices….

Law360, Los Angeles (August 1, 2016, 5:09 PM ET) — User-based room rental service Airbnb has sued the city of Anaheim in California federal court, saying a new city ordinance barring short-term rentals and imposing fines on websites that do so is a violation of the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act. The San Francisco-based company filed suit on Thursday, claiming that Anaheim’s new law, which passed on July 12 and goes into effect Aug. 11, flies in the face of the CDA since it treats online platforms such as Airbnb as the publisher of third-party content. Anaheim had previously allowed short-term rentals for homeowners with a permit but the new law bans short-term listings altogether, with permitholders receiving an 18-month grace period. “By imposing civil and criminal penalties on Airbnb for publishing and for failing to screen and remove listings that lack a permit or do not comply with other city law, the ordinance treats Airbnb as the publisher or speaker of those listings, whose content is provided by third-party hosts,” the company said in a 20-page complaint. “The ordinance therefore violates and is preempted by the CDA.” In addition, Airbnb asserts that the new law violates the First Amendment since it’s a content-based restriction on speech….