Recently I received a letter from a reader named "Chaley" who complained about the negative impact of Airbnb in his neighbourhood, which he referred to as "the misery" of this new business.
His letter was very long, suggesting the deep trouble he suffered for a long time. At such length, his letter did not fit in PostBag, but it contained valid points I think I should share with readers.
In short, Mr Chaley and his family had enjoyed a tranquil life in their beach-front house in Pattaya until his immediate neighbours for 10 years, a polite and pleasant couple, moved out and the place was turned into an Airbnb facility. Mr Chaley said that from the first day of operation, "all hell broke loose". His family had to put up with rowdy renters of different nationalities, who were often very noisy and generated huge amounts of waste. He described it as an 18-month nightmare, with no end in sight.
Ploenpote Atthakor is editorial pages editor, Bangkok Post.
My sympathies indeed. But this, I have to insist, does not really mean all the Airbnb platforms are bad. Mr Chaley's "nightmare" has nothing to do with the place being old, or a new type of business, as he tried to convince me to look at the other side of the story regarding the rental platform, citing a court ruling against Airbnb operators in Hua Hin.
Frankly speaking, I am baffled by such a ruling, which saw the court give weight to the fact that people were renting out their rooms without a licence to run a hotel business under the 2004 Hotel Act. It's fine for the court to stick to the letter of the law. However, as long as there is no registration system for Airbnb operators -- and there likely won't be one for a very long while -- their business will continue to be branded "illegal".
At issue is the way the court linked the legality of the service with the length of stay. It said, "only rentals of 30 days or more would be legal". I wonder what the Hua Hin ruling means for homestay operators nationwide. These operators, with support from the state, open their properties to tourists, who mostly only spend one or two nights there. Will they have this legality problem?
But it's not my intent to discuss the legal aspects of this new, disruptive business. For some time, I believe, this type of app-based platform, like Uber or Grab (formerly Grab Taxi) and other disruptive businesses, will be a challenge for our lawmakers and the government, with so much talk about "startups". They will have to tackle legal grey areas and issues such as registration and taxes. Dilemmas will linger if the decision makers stick to the old mindset and laws that cannot cater to an economy that is being disrupted.
But don't forget that even a conservative society like Japan is open to this new business in the wake of rising accommodation demand, resulting from the country hosting the 2020 Olympics. I am sure Japan, where the rule of law reigns supreme, can avoid problems.
Having said that, I still think Mr Chaley's nightmare is more about a lack of law enforcement on the part of local authorities. I am not sure if he has ever filed a complaint with the authorities, but I would not be surprised if he had, without anyone paying attention to his problem. Local authorities can easily turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to problems like waste and noise pollution.
Mr Chaley's nightmare could have been fixed within an hour if local officials had done their job properly rather than adopting a mai pen rai attitude and granting some residents the luxury of being a nuisance to their neighbours. That would seem to be a case of dereliction of duty as a situation like this clearly is pen rai (a problem).
This lack of law enforcement make some take matters into their own hands.
Remember the axe lady case, when a woman lost the plot after years of being tormented by market visitors in her neighbourhood? Her nightmare was much the same as Mr Chaley's. She resorted to violence, literally taking an axe to one car parked in the wrong place, and her problem drew much attention from the media and the state. It was lucky nobody died. Due to her de facto vigilantism, we learnt how her complaints were ignored by district officers who also thought the situation was mai pen rai.
Such cases are numerous. Dog owners who allow their pets to disturb their neighbours by going to the toilet on their property, for example. Is this trivial? No, issues like these have caused neighbours to fight -- if not kill -- each other. I'm not making this up. Their stories can be found in newspapers or online.
Mr Chaley should know there is no need for a comprehensive law to put an end to his problem. What is needed is for one authority, or authorities, to take people like Mr Chaley's complaints seriously and do their job.