Airbnb has brought hotel pricing down in many places during holidays, conventions
and other big events when room rates should be at their highest and the industry generates a significant portion of its profits, said Vijay Dandapani, chief executive of the Hotel Association of New York City, which works with the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
In a presentation in November, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, a trade group
that counts Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide and Hyatt Hotels as members, said the federal investigation and the New York bill were “notable accomplishments.”
Both were partly the result of a previously unreported plan that the hotel association started in early 2016 to thwart Airbnb.
But Airbnb canceled his Los Angeles listings from its site in March 2016 after the hotel association argued to local politicians
that Airbnb hosts like Mr. de Kleer were raising the cost of housing in the city by renting out properties for short-term use rather than for long-term tenants.
In New York, the association began working with local affiliates to lobby state legislators and the governor’s office to adopt steeper fines for New York City hosts
that list on Airbnb in violation of local law, a move that hotel operators had hoped would help increase their business.
The main prongs of the association’s plan to constrain Airbnb include lobbying politicians
and state attorneys general to reduce the number of Airbnb hosts, funding studies to show Airbnb is filled with people who are quietly running hotels out of residential buildings and highlighting how Airbnb hosts do not collect hotel taxes and are not subject to the same safety and security regulations that hotel operators must follow.
“Airbnb is operating a lodging industry, but it is not playing by the same rules,” Troy Flanagan, the American Hotel
and Lodging Association’s vice president for state and local government affairs, said in an interview.