The accomodation rental site Airbnb has registered a lobbyist in order to attempt to persuade the provincial government to relax is rules on renting out accommodations.
Airbnb lobbyist Martin Geoffroy will have the mandate to “make interventions with public office holders to change the act respecting tourist accommodation establishments.”
The Airbnb service aims to persuade the government to change the definition of tourist accommodations to include “shared housing,” which would fix what it describes as the “legal vacuum.”
Former PQ Tourism Minister Pascal Bérubé created an advisory committee to study questions of the law on hotels and paid lodgings last January. An external consultant was hired to analyze the situation.
Current Quebec law requires anybody renting out accommodations for less than 31 days to first obtain a $250 license.
Violators face fines ranging from $750 to $2,250 per day for first offences and between $2,250 and $6,750 fines for subsequent offences.
According to statistics from one year ago, Montreal is home to 102 registered bed and breakfasts and home to 3,000 unregistered counterparts.
The hotel industry throughout Canada and the United States has opposed the incursion of Airbnb because they consider it a threat to their revenue base.
The Airbnb service was founded in August 2008 in San Francisco and now offers lodgings in around 600,000 homes in over than 34,000 cities in approximately 190 countries. It has an estimated valuation of $10 billion.
-With files from The Canadian Press
