Ethical Airbnb Travel

These days it couldn’t be easier to book yourself an Airbnb vacation – there are over 1,000 listings in Manitoba alone! Add a filter for your favourite architecture or location (beachfront? tiny house? mansion?), and scrolling through all the options will have you drooling over your next getaway before you even click Instant Book.

LIfe is hectic and travel can be chaotic, so we really hope for getaways that are as easy as possible. The Instagram version of the ideal Airbnb experience goes like this:

1. You find a cute place online.
2. The reviews look good so you book it.
3. The place is super cute when you finally get there in person.
4. You have a great stay and post cute photos on Instagram.

The reality isn’t always that cute. Lately Airbnbs have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. An unauthorized party at an Airbnb in Rosser, Manitoba, went sideways in February 2023, resulting in injuries and property damage. And the very next month, we witnessed the horrific tragedy in Montreal after a fire broke out in an apartment block housing illegal Airbnbs, killing seven people.

These awful situations have heated up the debate around regulating short term rentals (STRs). Safety, nuisance, property value and erosion of permanent housing are all hot button topics.  And while you might be most familiar with the Airbnb platform, Airbnb is only one of many players in the STR market. STRs can make residents and municipal governments nervous because nobody deserves to be neighbours with a rogue unit.

How can we make sure we get to enjoy the sweet side of the industry and keep the bitter side out?

I can tell you that not everyone agrees all the time about how best to manage STRs (shocker, I know), as evidenced during Winnipeg’s recent foray into STR regulation. There’s always the risk of being either heavy-handed and smothering a vibrant and creative STR economy, or being overly permissive and letting communities suffer the bitter effects.

Regardless of the details and who may be arguing about them, there are some proven best-practices that always bring out the best in the sector.

Who’s Responsible?

The responsibility to develop a safe, thriving and balanced short term rental sector is on everyone involved: booking platforms, hosts, municipalities and even you as a guest.

Of course, guests shouldn’t need to worry about all the behind-the-scenes details – that’s the job for the hosts, booking platforms and municipal planners!

All the same, being an educated consumer can make a big impact. Not only can you make sure to have a memorable trip for all the right reasons, but also that your travel investment will have as positive an impact in our communities as possible.

So keep reading while I dish on the two categories you can watch for as a short term rental guest, if you want to support healthy communities when booking your next short term rental stay!

If you love learning more about all the behind-the-scenes stuff, check out this Canadian Toolkit for Regulating STRs for more about how municipalities are being encouraged to harness the benefits and minimize the harms of short term rentals in our communities.

Ethical Hosting

Since we live onsite right beside our short term rental, we know what it’s like to be both host & neighbour. In 2017, when I first started dreaming of developing my own short term rental out of my guesthouse, our rural municipality of Ste. Anne didn’t have any short term rental regulations in place.

(Our council recently drafted a new zoning bylaw, due to be implemented later in 2023, that includes STR regulations. I’ll be proudly heading over to register my unit as soon as the bylaw has passed.)

Even without a bylaw in place, back when our studio was just a twinkle in my eye, I knew I wanted to run my rental as if we were already regulated. Why wait until someone had to ask me to be mindful of my community?

Committing to an ethical hosting framework certainly doesn’t mean I have it all figured out. It means that I pledge accountability to understanding the intersectional ways the short term housing industry affects people in my community, and putting the experiences of those who are most vulnerable to harm in the centre. It means that I’m learning and practicing what I can, given my resources and unique situation.

I’ve come to see ethical hosting like baking. The more experience I gain, the more complex ingredients, flavours and techniques I learn to work with.

I certainly have learned a lot since those early days, and I’m still constantly learning what it means to run my rental this way! I’ve been inspired and mentored by a movement of ethical hosts all over the world who feel the same, regardless of how far away they live from their rental.

Here are just a couple of examples:

Marilynn Taylor is a host coach who uses Heart-Centred Hosting as her guiding philosophy. She teaches clear communication, unapologetic expectations, and creative hospitality.

I bought Marilynn’s rental contract template two years into my hosting journey after realizing that a straightforward contract is good for the host, the guest, and the neighbourhood!

Hosting with Heart is the world’s first online holiday property directory managed by hosts who give a s**t about people and the planet as much as they do profit. They serve socially-conscious guests in Australia & New Zealand looking for accommodations run by hosts who value inclusivity and social and environmental responsibility.

I use Hosting with Heart’s membership criteria as a map to keep increasing our accessibility, inclusion and environmental sustainability as I’m able.

Benefits of Ethical Hosting

When short term rentals are ‘baked’ with ethical ingredients, with respect and accountability towards the community they’re rooted in, they can bring a house full of benefits to their neighbourhoods.

Housing and Income Security

In cases of family-hosted spaces like mine where the host lives onsite, STRs directly support housing security.

One year into my hosting journey, I became suddenly disabled by a severe chronic illness. I’m so grateful that having a short term rental on my property helped me keep a roof over my family’s head.

Finances can be tight for many different reasons; family-hosted short term rentals are a creative financial opportunity where the majority of the profits go straight to families like ours who need those extra few inches to make ends meet.

Supporting local

Ethical hosts know our neighbourhoods and love to support other local small businesses. We give our guests all the inside tips on local food, shops and experiences.

One study found that Canadian Airbnbs brought in $4.3 billion of direct economic impact to both hosts and local businesses in 2018. That’s just through Airbnb, never mind all the other booking platforms and direct booking rentals as well. Given the fact that the sector has grown exponentially in the last few years, we can make an educated guess that this impact has also significantly grown.

Through ethical hosting, we have a real opportunity to direct this impact towards our own neighbourhoods, supporting more inclusive and abundant local economies.

Check out our Explore Page to see how we connect our guests to our community, and subscribe to our emails to get inside tips on the best southeastern Manitoba gems!

We can go a step further by buying local to stock our property with supplies wherever we can. For example, when you stay at Painted Turtle Lake Retreat you can enjoy the delicious taste of locally roasted, fair trade coffee from Negash Coffee, our neighbours in nearby Niverville.

We’re proud of our community and so proud to show it off to our guests.

A Sense of Connection

Another benefit is having that warm and cozy feeling of home when you travel. When you stay with an ethical host, you’re not just a head in a bed. Your host has picked out every furnishing and amenity with exactly you in mind, and you can feel it when you walk into the space.

Every short term rental has its own unique setup in terms of space, amenities, privacy and interaction with the host, so it’s always important to read the listing to make sure the space is a good fit for your needs. But even better – with ethical hosting, you can be sure that your host is taking responsibility to ensure your investment is making their surrounding community a more connected place too.

Ingredients of Ethical Hosting

Regulated or not, how do hosts nurture the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of short term rentals? Here are the main ingredients that make up the secret sauce of ethical hosting:

• Vetting guests thoroughly before renting, and creating authentic connection with them during their stay. This increases a sense of reciprocal care.
• Removing as many barriers to inclusion as possible, considering multiple forms of accessibility and welcoming folks regardless of skin colour, gender, sexual orientation or religion.
• Offering eco-friendly supplies and amenities where possible.
• Providing clear, thorough house rules and instructions for guests.
• Respectfully monitoring what’s going on with every stay, and having someone available to respond to any issue.
• Being respectful of the community’s needs by:
  • creating relationships with the neighbours
  • encouraging guests to buy local
  • complying with municipal zoning and regulations in support of neighbourhood cohesion

How to Recognize Ethical Hosting

Talking about ethical hosting is all well and good, but if you’re a guest looking for accommodations, how will you know when you’ve found a place that uses these ingredients?

An ethical short term rental exudes a perfect blend of invitation and expectation.

First, the invitation. The listing, booking process and communication will start out by being focused on you, the guest!

• They will invite you into a delicious experience, both in their unique rental space and in the community around it. You’ll be able to imagine exactly what you can do and how you can expect to feel during your stay.
• They will offer lots of information about amenities so you can be sure it’s a good fit for your unique needs. Look for mentions of eco-friendly or locally sourced supplies.
• They’ll have descriptions of any accessible features and a clear welcome for those who may experience further discrimination in their travel, like 2SLGBTQIA+ and visible minority travellers.

Then, the expectation. An ethical host won’t be shy to set clear expectations about how guests must respect the rental and the community. You’re staying in someone’s own home and neighbourhood, after all. You’ll see the expectations outlined in the listing, with more specifics added in the booking process and followed up through clear and thoughtful communication.

• You might notice a mention of an age restriction, a rental contract to sign at booking, and maybe a requirement to provide your ID to secure the booking.
• You might see instructions about parking, local bylaws, and pet rules or restrictions.
• Maybe there’s a disclosure of outdoor cameras, decibel meters or quiet hours.
• Or you might also notice information about how to respectfully use any indoor or outdoor shared spaces, as well as how to explore the surrounding community without disturbing the neighbours.

If the rental is in a colonial settler country (hello, Canada, the USA, and more) you can also watch for an acknowledgement of whose traditional Indigenous territory they live on, as well as how they reconcile with the fact that settler hosts are making our living on appropriated land. 

Land acknowledgement and reparations aren’t commonly-accepted host responsibilities yet, but it’s an important part of that ethical web. As a sector that relies on land for our bread and butter, we have a long way to go in recognizing our potential impacts towards reconciliation and decolonization.

The invitation and expectations of each ethically-hosted rental will always be a little different than the next, with all the flavour notes tailored to their unique setting. The individual ‘ingredients’ your host uses might seem small, or maybe even inconvenient in some cases, but knowing how to recognize them will help you book the yummiest trip, one that leaves a sweet aftertaste for both you and the communities you visit.

Tour our Studio to see how we’re currently mixing up ethical hosting ingredients on our yard. We’d love to host you!