ROSE HALL, St James — Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) President Robin Russell has reiterated a call for greater oversight as it relates to Airbnbs, given that some smaller resort properties are facing unfair competition.

Russell, who has long been lobbying for regulations in that segment of the tourism industry, explained that his advocacy stems from the trend of some properties changing their business models to Airbnbs, even though they have the physical structures of small hotels and villas.

“That’s the big challenge now; no longer is the Airbnb market where somebody is renting a couch or somebody renting a room in their house, it is persons with massive amounts of rooms, it is now a big business, and as such it needs to be regulated and it is hurting the small player,” Russell said at the Jamaica Centre of Tourism Innovation (JCTI) career expo in Montego Bay on Thursday.

“It’s no longer a little man on the side; these are mega businesses doing business under the table and it’s about time that we not only regulate but we bring some normalcy to the market; we need to level the playing field,” he insisted.

He said that it is becoming standard practice for several vendors of accommodations in the local tourism to use the Airbnb concept to attract guests to their properties.

“There are some places with 100 rooms, there are some management properties that manage different Airbnb complexes, and so and they have more rooms than some small hotels and they are selling it as such,” he said.

Jamaica has been benefiting from accommodations linked to Airbnb arrangements over the last few years. In 2023, it was reported that more than US$100 million had been earned from that segment of Jamaica’s tourism product. It also accounted for 29 per cent of stopover visitors at that point.

Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett had previously stated that regulations were coming for Airbnbs but not much has happened in that regard.

However, for Russell, what this delay has meant is that there are some traditional operators who have been circumventing the process by switching, which doesn’t bode well for certain standards in the industry.

“We need to regulate and, again, we are advocating for it because I can’t own a villa where I am licensed and I am doing everything in standard to Jamaican laws and the person next door to me, the same type of villa, is not licensed, nor paying any taxes and I have to compete against them. Obviously we are in two different playing fields,” he argued.

“When we talk about regulation, we are just talking about simply standards, simply safety standards that need to be upheld — a fire certificate, a food handler’s permit,” he said.

Further to that, he said regulations will be beneficial to the people working in that sector as it will ensure that they are paying taxes and other statutory deductions “because you have a lot of staff that are working in these industries that will never get a National Housing Trust benefit or National Insurance Scheme benefit”.

These properties, he said, are able to charge a bit less than their counterparts because the costs associated with the maintenance of certain standards are not a feature of their operations.

“It’s hurting the small players who attract the same market as the Airbnb person. We’re seeing it in places like Negril where you are just seeing these pop-up of Airbnbs and they are doing well, but the villa beside you is not and there is a simple reason, a dollar when you book a room means a lot. [If] you see something for $50 and you see something for $48 and is the exact same thing, you’re going to take the $48-room,” Russell said.

However, he made it clear that his call is not about fighting that segment of the industry, but instead, it’s about making things fairer in a place where loopholes are being used.

“I think that’s where we need to get to, where we are able to level the playing field that small operators can survive,” Russell said.