Further consolidation: Wimdu in the headlines, Postbus merges

Berlin. The two-year grace period is over since last Sunday, May 1, 2016, it will get really expensive. Now the Alienation Prohibition Act for Residential Space is effective in the city of Berlin – and a fifty-percent-rule for tourism. Airbnb and Berlin could not agree with each other and therefore the platform now published own figures.

Augsburg. The new trend movement of "Collaborative Consumption" - collective sharing - has provided an immense impetus to private room portals worldwide. As a result, a market segment has blossomed; the professional host classifies it as a "grey market". If private individuals rent one or several rooms online for a small amount of money, they are subjected neither to the same operational nor legal or taxation requirements as hotels and pensions. Airbnb, Wimdu and 9flat belong among the leading bed communities. The German Hotel Association has taken them up in criticism. Private accommodations with less than nine beds generate 87 million overnight stays per year – although not all throughout the country have yet been recorded. Of course, the private room portals do not share the IHA criticism: This is a purely German discussion and is directed toward the wrong.