October 2016
Supplement
HBS Case Collection

Airbnb in Amsterdam (B)

By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:12

Abstract

In December 2014, Amsterdam and Airbnb announced an MOU to promote responsible home sharing and to simplify the payment of tourist tax for hosts in the city. It was the most comprehensive agreement that Airbnb had with any city in the world. Its final provision read, “The parties trust that theirs will be a fruitful cooperation.” However, both sides were uncertain about how the agreement would be received. Molly Turner, Airbnb’s global head of civic partnerships, and Tanja de Coster, an Airbnb lawyer in Europe, were unsure how Airbnb’s hosts would react—as were their Airbnb colleagues. Laila Frank, who had been an advisor to the Deputy Mayor in Amsterdam, heralded the reputational gains from the agreement for the city, “We were worldwide news. In that way it worked out really well.” But she acknowledged that there were also skeptical points of view. “The only immediate result was the tax agreement, which we were really happy about. But the rest had to be proven.”