Newsletter Q3 2017 UK

Newsletter Q3 2017

THE SHARING ECONOMY – NOW ALSO MOVING INTO THE OFFICE

In the wake of the business success of e.g. Airbnb and GoMore, several sharing-economy ideas and concepts are gaining ground in the office letting market.

By René Faaborg Greve, Consultant, Sadolin & Albæk

Airbnb has continued to draw headlines in recent weeks. Not long ago, the company released a report showing an almost 50% increase in Danish peer- to-peer home lets in only 18 months. In addition, the report shows that 31,000 Danes use the service to rent out their home or a room. One of the hot topics of debate is whether Danish politicians should intervene and limit the possibilities of landlords engaging in private hotel operations and how to report the rental income to the taxation authorities. Airbnb. According to Bloomberg, in the span of only nine years, Airbnb has managed to make more rooms available worldwide than the three largest hotel chains, Hilton, Marriott and InterContinental, combined. In 2014, Airbnb outperformed Hilton in terms of market value – not bad for a brand that does not actually own the rooms. One of the reasons why the sharing-economy concept is gaining ground is the explosive market entry by

Unlike ‘traditional’ economics, the starting point of the sharing economy is not scarce resources, but rather surplus resources, or surplus capacity. It is all about gaining access and right of use to more of the objects that we surround ourselves with rather than obtaining ownership to them. The sharing of private homes, cars, music, etc. has been greatly facilitated by the advance of digitalisation. This also applies to the sharing of offices and workplaces. Today, there are numerous websites where landlords offer office workplaces or entire office leases to let, whether on an hourly basis or on multi-year leases. Originally, the concept of shared workplaces targeted business start-ups, freelancers and small businesses. How-ever, major companies have also started to recognise the advantages of shared workplaces/offices.

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