Maine is a wonderful place to go on vacation. Many homeowners in Maine have big houses, with spare bedrooms. Now, thanks to an online service called Airbnb, it’s easy for homeowners to make some extra money by renting out rooms in their homes to vacationers. It’s also easier for travelers and vacationers to find a place to stay that’s affordable and close to where they want to be.
Everyone wins, right?
Nope. As with most consumer-friendly innovation, there are incumbent businesses that lose out. In the case of Maine, it’s the innkeepers. And as typically happens when incumbent industries are threatened by smaller competition, the big guys are turning to government, asking for more regulation.
Greg Dugal of the Maine Innkeepers Association testified last month in favor of a bill to regulate Airbnb more stringently, in a way that would surely be too burdensome for most homeowners — thus shutting down these competitors.
Our concerns with unlicensed nightly rentals are for the safety of the guest, the sanctity of zoning laws in communities and the unlevel playing field of making someone adhere to strict and cost-prohibitive rules, while the person across the street is just renting rooms without the appropriate insurances and adherence to the laws of the state….
Maine Gov. Paul LePage was struck by this appeal to a level playing field, and so he offered to level it: “A senior health policy adviser for Gov. Paul LePage said the governor wants to remove all licensing requirements for lodging businesses.”
This, of course, was not the leveling of the playing field the industry lobbyists wanted. They wanted the playing field built atop a plateau, unreachable by the little guy. The innkeepers were caught off guard by the idea of deregulation, the Portland Press Herald reported:
“Greg Dugal, president and CEO of the Maine Innkeepers Association, was surprised by the announcement, but said he was not prepared to dismiss the idea without knowing the details.
“It’s a new idea — I’d not heard it before,” he said. “There were no specifics given to me.”….
Dugal said deregulation was not something for which his organization has been lobbying.
“As far as I know, nobody has asked for that,” he said. “Currently, the industry is lobbying for more licensure.”
He said an impromptu poll of innkeepers at Monday’s legislative hearing found a roughly even split between those for and against deregulation.
The lesson: Regulation is often the tool incumbent businesses use to protect themselves from innovation and competition.
