Tourism Squamish and the Squamish Chamber are inviting past, current and future operators of short term rental units in Squamish to share their experiences to better understand why people rent units short term and what they do with their units when they leave the market.
Short term rentals (STR) are units that are rented for less than 30 days, often using a platform like AirBNB or VRBO. The survey will run from May 16-30, 2022 and can be found at www.politikosresearch.ca/str
Tourism Squamish has hired social science research firm Politikos Research to conduct an online survey of Squamish residents who have ever rented an STR unit, whether an apartment, a house, a bedroom in a shared home, a secondary suite, a carriage house or accessory dwelling.
Any residents considering renting a property as a short term rental in the next two years are also asked to take the survey.
The District of Squamish changed regulations in 2020 to ban the use of secondary suites and carriage houses as short term rentals in Squamish. Owners can rent an entire house or apartment as a short term rental, but only if it is their primary residence. The regulations do allow for bedrooms to be rented in homes shared with the owner – like traditional Bed and Breakfasts – and there are now no limitations on the number of such bedrooms allowed.
“The new regulations were motivated by a wish to protect and increase long term rentals in Squamish. This is an understandable motivation given the current labour crisis, which is driven by a lack of affordable housing options.” explains Louise Walker, Executive Director, Squamish Chamber. “However, there is a lack of data to establish whether the new regulations improved the long term rental inventory or whether Squamish simply lost tourism inventory, hence the need for this data collection exercise.”
Tourism Squamish and the Squamish Chamber recently shared an analysis of short-term rental market data from 2016-2021, which demonstrated that the largest group of Short Term Rental owners on AirBNB and other sites made less than $10,000 per year prior to regulations. After the District’s regulations, this group of lower revenue operators largely left the market, leading to a shortage of tourism accommodations during summer peak times.
“Given the low returns that many STR operators were making, we suspect that many operators took part in the tourism accommodation industry for reasons other than maximizing profit,” explains Tourism Squamish Executive Director Lesley Weeks.
“We would like to learn more about people’s motivations and also their experiences with the market and the District’s regulations in order to better understand and engage with STR operators and the District on this issue”
The survey will run from May 16-30, 2022 and can be found at www.politikosresearch.ca/st
