Airbnb gives Paris luxury hoteliers fright


Nowhere in the world has more accommodation available on Airbnb than Paris. Now the home-sharing website that has transformed budget travel to the French capital is giving its super-deluxe hotels a fright too. "The Paris market is going to get very difficult," said Didier le Calvez, managing director of the Bristol Hotel. Along with bosses of the city's other "palaces", he denounces Airbnb as a menace that enjoys an unfair advantage. A trawl of the Paris region's 50,000 Airbnb offerings suggests le Calvez and his colleagues have reason to worry. Airbnb offers between 380 and 400 Paris properties at over 500 euros a night. Of those, about 40 charge over 1,000 euros ($1,090). And that puts them potentially in competition with the 1,000 euro a night Bristol and half a dozen other high-end Paris hotels.