On Monday this week, Tanzanian authorities told "short-stay" accommodation operators to register their facilities with the government within the next 50 days or face arrest according to Reuters. This move, definitely, affects hosts on Airbnb.
“There are many individuals who are operating these facilities," said Rosada Musoma, assistant director of licensing and control in the ministry of tourism. Adding that they "want them to be recognized officially by the government and pay required license fees.”
"When the 50-day period expires at the end of next month, the government will go from “house to house” and arrest any operators who have failed to register," Reuters wrote.
As one of the pioneers of the sharing economy, Airbnb - like Uber - has met a lot of resistance from the authorities. Yet, it has always pushed back in some countries. That is not likely to be the case for Tanzania. Partly because the market is still small thus insignificant.
Yet, some African countries will likely jump at the opportunity to tax the industry. The way they did after the Ugandan government started taxing social media. In the end, this will come back to bite Airbnb as their service gets adopted widely across the continent.
Also read: Taxido is the latest to join Africa’s ride-hailing space
In the period between September 2016 and September 2017, there were 100,000 hosts on Airbnb spread across the African continent. These welcomed a total of 1.2 million guests according to the report released last year by Airbnb.
Airbnb also pointed out that it has had hosts in the East African country from as far as 2011 and as of September 2017, there were 2,300 active listings by hosts in Tanzania on Airbnb. This made it Airbnb's fifth African country in total guest arrivals. Each of these made an annual average of $1,000 in revenue which was lower than $1,500, the average for the continent.
Last year, in October, Airbnb committed $1 million towards promoting and supporting community-led tourism projects in Africa. They seem to be ready to fulfill that promise.