Airbnb and similar should be required to pay the same room taxation that hotels in this town are required to pay. There really isn't any difference in what's going on.

1, indeed -- this isn't home-sharing any more than Uber is ride-sharing. All the people incensed with the possibility of duplexes in SF zones should get much more incensed about having hotels next door to them.

My sister in law signed a lease for her place and she and her long term girlfriend promptly broke up. Bummer all around as far as that is concerned. She is now Airbnb-ing the additional room in the place that she was on the hook for with no prayer of being able to afford (her turnover is quite low, I think the current renter is there for 3 months).
I'm not saying that it isn't being abused, I'm not saying it shouldn't be regulated, I'm just saying that there are cases where it's being used in a manner that I really believe helps people. My $0.02

Somebody there for 3 months is a sublet, whether it's through Airbnb or Craigslist. But short-term tourist rentals are competing with hotels and should pay the same taxes as hotels. Reading through the Airbnb document, they avoid that topic entirely. If they were collecting the tax and forwarding it to the City, you can bet that would be part of their narrative!

In fact, if we assume that Airbnb guests would otherwise be renting hotel rooms and paying the taxes, then Airbnb is actually costing the City money in lost hotel tax revenues.

Shocked just shocked they didn't include the incremental rent increases passed along to the other 200,000+ Seattleites who rent.

I'd like to hear a story about the reason hotel taxes exist. Feels like an easy income source without real justification.

@3 condos without a cap on owner-occupied units have always had the problem of absentee owners buying units as rentals - even for short term rentals. Airbnb makes it easier, and Seattle's current cache probably has magnified the problem, but for condos and coops, start with your bylaws and house rules, because Airbnb regulation won't stop that problem entirely.

I use Airbnb a lot (mostly internationally), and would hate for it to go away. But the prices people are charging for apartments in Seattle? Yeah, there is a LOT of unlicensed hotel action happening. I like the idea of hotel taxation for units that are rented regularly, and/or where the whole unit is being rented, instead of a room.

If renting out your apartment is an economic engine, then we really are in economic peril

@8 - Why should it matter whether you rent out "regularly"? I don't care if you rent it out once a year or once a week, why should you have a competitive advantage (via lower taxes) over a hotelier who depends on her income to support her operations?

@7 Hotel taxes exist to pay for stadiums. That's why we vote to build them because we don't have to pay for them. Some guy from Boise pays when he comes to see the Hawks.