STR platform economy

Jamaica closed 2019 with record-breaking tourism numbers — approximately 4.3 million total visitors including 2.7 million stopovers — while Airbnb surpassed seven million global listings and reported full-year revenue of nearly US$4.8 billion. The island’s short-term rental sector was a significant but entirely unregulated participant in that boom.

Jamaica’s tourism sector entered 2019 on record-breaking momentum, with short-term rental demand strong across Montego Bay, Negril, and Ocho Rios as Airbnb continued expanding its Caribbean inventory. Meanwhile, European cities were pioneering the STR regulation frameworks that Jamaica had yet to consider — a contrast becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Hurricane Irma’s catastrophic passage through the northern Caribbean in September 2017 devastated the British Virgin Islands, St Maarten, and the Turks and Caicos while largely sparing Jamaica — a geographic fortune that gave the island a competitive opportunity as displaced tourism sought alternative Caribbean destinations. Airbnb activated its Open Homes disaster relief programme; Jamaica’s STR sector closed 2017 with approximately 2.35 million stopover visitors and no regulatory change.

Jamaica’s tourism sector posted another half-year of solid growth in the first six months of 2017, as Zika fears that had suppressed Caribbean travel in 2016 faded from the foreground of traveller decision-making. The island’s Airbnb listing count continued to expand, the STR sector’s contribution to tourism accommodation grew, and the regulatory vacuum that had characterised the sector since Airbnb’s Caribbean arrival remained entirely unaddressed.

The second half of 2016 saw Airbnb pass three million global listings and Expedia complete its integration of the HomeAway acquisition, reshaping the Caribbean STR platform landscape. Jamaica recorded approximately 2.2 million stopover visitors for the full year despite Zika-related headwinds, while the absence of any regulatory framework for the island’s flourishing vacation rental sector remained conspicuous.

The first half of 2016 brought Zika virus advisories that cast a shadow over Caribbean tourism planning, a rapidly growing Airbnb presence in Jamaica and the wider region, and the beginning of Expedia’s integration of the HomeAway family of vacation rental platforms following the landmark December 2015 acquisition. Jamaica’s STR regulatory framework remained absent as the platform-economy accommodation market entered its most complex period yet.

The second half of 2015 ended with a transaction that would reshape the Caribbean vacation rental platform landscape: Expedia’s US$3.9 billion acquisition of HomeAway in December, creating a combined group controlling both the leading online travel agency and the largest dedicated vacation rental platform. Jamaica’s tourism growth continued, Airbnb passed two million global listings, and the STR regulatory debate remained theoretical for the island.