No matter how much you criticize them or their practices, the fact is that Airbnb has an excellent concept and a business model which makes them a lot of dough without putting in much effort. But does having an excellent concept in place make up for an incompetent management and administration? Nah, for when you involve people and their pads with your business, you have got to be extremely cautious, and you can’t treat them as just another assets in your big American dream. Then there are tons of laws which you have to consider before you let any John Doe rent dwellings of some other John Doe.
It seems Airbnb isn’t quite following the law for the NY AG appears to be ready to go after Airbnb’s business and all the ‘illegal activities’ that take place in the name of p2p lodging service.
New York’s Attorney General is a vocal opponent of Airbnb, as evident by the statement in which he accused the Internet based lodging provider of making more than half of its money 
by running illegal hotels. He previously asked them to provide information on almost all of their hosts in New York, which Airbnb provided.
Well, they didn’t provide the AG with exactly what he was looking for, because they claim that the data they provided was totally anonymous (not sure what they consider as anonymous data) and did not contain any individual markers. The data, I’m sorry, the anonymous data about 16,000 Airbnb hosts was provided to the Attorney General after some ‘legal wrangling’.
Now the AG has asked them for some specific info related to 124 individuals, and Airbnb will be providing unredacted personal information about those hosts to Mr. Schneiderman. They have notified those ‘targeted hosts’ individually. Airbnb’s official update about the matter could be found here.
If you cared to visit that link, you clearly would have noticed that Airbnb is trying to distance itself from those hosts. The post says that most of them were not on their site anymore, and the number represents a tiny fraction of their total NY brethren, which in hindsight, is true.
I’m a fan of Airbnb, and as stated previously, the concept of p2p lodging is fantastic. The company is not too bad either, but their policies, at times, can be a pain in the ass if you are a host.
Remember the squatter twins of California and how they caused a lot of trouble for their host? Remember all the cases of vandalism reported by a large number of hosts? Oh, and what about that apartment which was rented for an orgy by a comedian? Issues are numerous, response is negligible.
Have you ever rented your pad via Airbnb? Did that cause you trouble?
Veenga 