Airbnb hosts hit back: "I'm really sick of being scapegoated"

A Highland crofter says a housing association would collect just 20% of the income his property generates as a short-term let — the sharpest number in a wave of host pushback against a Guardian column that called Airbnb "a soulless rip-off."

Arwa Mahdawi's piece of 28 October, which reported that hosts are "revolting" against the platform, has drawn a coordinated defence from small-scale operators across Britain, France and Australia. Their shared argument: the platform's problems belong to corporate landlords in saturated cities, not to crofters, pensioners and rural gîte owners.

What does the economics of small hosting actually look like?

Alasdair Wright, who runs two self-catering cottages on a family croft in Poolewe, Wester Ross, put the arithmetic bluntly. As part of a community application to the Scottish Land Fund for affordable local housing, his group asked housing associations for the average annual rent on a two-bedroom house.

"The figure we were given is 20% of the income achievable from the same property as a short-term let," Wright wrote. "Anyone offered five times the money for the same work would take it."

Wright has volunteered as a community councillor for 25 years and says that without the cottage income he could not afford to live in Wester Ross. He has just taken a February booking from a group of five who will each pay £25 per night — roughly the cost of a takeaway dinner.

He also attacked Airbnb's new checkout guidelines as "nonsensical." If guests are no longer expected to wash up, he asked, must he supply enough crockery for every day of their stay? And if he washes their dishes himself, "it's expecting hotel-like service for a self-catering fee." The takeaway: the rules contradict the product being sold.

Who depends on the income?

Mary Blair, in her 70s, and her partner have let a spare room through Airbnb in Belfast for 20 years. "The stream of people through our house in Belfast has been a joy to us and keeps us young at heart," she wrote. Some guests have become friends who return regularly.

Blair said the extra income, kept within tax limits, funds occasional holidays and treats. She and her partner have looked for alternative platforms but "cannot find one that works so smoothly." That dependency cuts both ways — the platform's convenience is also its lock-in.

Jill Cadorath of Exeter wrote from the guest side. As a single traveller, she finds few hotels offer single rooms, so she pays nearly double-room rates alone. Staying in an owner-occupied home, she said, has partly financed hosts' mortgages and care costs in her experience. She noted the platform's name promised an "airbed and breakfast" and called it "a shame that it hardly reflects those ideas these days."

What do the new checkout rules mean outside cities?

Paula Chatlani Davidson has let rural gîtes in France for 15 years and says Airbnb's blanket checkout changes give her "serious pause." She meets guests personally, cleans after them, and most stay for weeks rather than days.

Her concrete complaint: under the new rules, guests cannot remove rubbish off-site, even though the hamlet bins sit 50 metres away. She has had to order a general waste wheelie bin and three recycling bins — "ironically resulting in even more plastic products."

"I am not a hotel," she wrote. "I do not collect rubbish daily or provide dishwashing services. Whatever happened to the traditional self-catering holiday where common sense prevailed?"

Bruce Hartican, writing from Bega, New South Wales, highlighted a mechanism the column ignored: reputation. Over more than 20 years as both host and guest, he said a well-reviewed guest is quickly accepted worldwide, and disputes over misrepresentation or property damage have been "quickly and efficiently dealt with by Airbnb."

The letters concede the critics' core point — mass tourism has inundated cities — while insisting the blame sits with multi-property operators. Whether Airbnb can write rules that distinguish a crofter's cottage from a corporate apartment block is the question these hosts say the platform has so far failed to answer.