Anyone else received a call from Air to record a statement about why you think home sharing is great?

[Garden1Gnome]

Just received a call from an extremely ditzy sounding woman. It took me a second to realize it wasn’t’ a robo call.

She wanted me to record a brief statement about why I enjoyed staying in New York Airbnbs and why I think home sharing is good for the city.

I just said no thank you, and hung up.

Honestly, she sounded like a “valley girl” or whatever they call them nowadays. Also, I don’t like being put on the spot like that. Maybe if it had come in email instead of a call expecting me to just talk off the cuff.

[sandy2]

Nope, and that’s weird.

[Maggieroni]

How do you know it was from Airbnb?

[Garden1Gnome]

I don’t for sure. That’s just what she said.

[Maggieroni]

Maybe some kind of survey company.

[Carmen]

I got one this afternoon and recorded it for them. They told me they might use it for a TV ad. Also it was for the airbnb action committee.

[Xena]

I received this call a few days ago, and the guy was so robotic I thought at first I was talking to a computer! I figured out the call was part of AirBnB Action, asking me to give a quote about why I think homesharing is important. It may be because I live in a city where the city council is trying to regulate short term rentals.

I declined to give a statement because I am not the demographic my city council is going after. The city council is going after hosts with multiple listings under the belief this is taking housing off the market for city residents, and they’ve stated repeatedly they have no quarrel with hosts who live on site. We do have a rental shortage here, and anecdotally I know of people who have not been able to renew their lease because their landlord wants to run an AirBnB out of the rental property, but I suspect AirBnB is just one variable in the rental shortage. My impression is that AirBnB Action is trying to use those of us who are small-time hosts, renting the spare room to help pay the mortgage or fund hobbies (like those in the advertising campaign), to represent the bigger hosting community.