Airbnb Jumps in Bed With Brooklyn Business Owners

The word is out in Crain’s New York on Wednesday: Airbnb has launched a global charm offensive, with Brooklyn as its test case.

How will Airbnb manage to charm Brooklyn, hardened land of discerning homeowners, cynical young folk, anti-gentrification angries and powerful hotel unions, you ask?

Through the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, turns out.

The rental-share company will announce its partnership with the Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday evening at — where else? — a trendy winery in Red Hook, amid a launch party for the chamber’s new ExploreBK website and its new series of Brooklyn drinking tours. (AirBnB has reportedly donated at least $15,000 to the website.)

These “borough-wide booze tours” will allow visitors to sample “the best wines, beers, and spirits in Brooklyn,” according to a press release issued this week by the chamber.

The extent of AirBnB’s collaboration with the chamber will be announced at the party.

However, Crain’s reports that Airbnb hosts ”will be encouraged to promote local businesses to their guests, while business owners will learn how to cater to tourists using Airbnb.”

Airbnb will also reportedly pay the chamber to hire a neighborhood liaison to help build “long-term personal relationships” between Airbnb hosts and nearby business owners.

“We’ve never really done anything like this before,” Molly Turner, global head for civic partnerships at Airbnb, told Crain’s. “The more we can encourage Airbnb hosts to build personal relationships with the businesses in their neighborhood to learn what’s new in their neighborhood, events that are going on, block parties, gallery walks, borough-wide events — the more we can help our hosts get access to local knowledge, the better experience they can provide to their guests.”

(Yes, the global head for civic partnerships at Airbnb just suggested that tourists be alerted to Brooklyn block parties. Consider yourself warned.)

Turner told Crain’s that if the program works in Brooklyn, it will then be launched in other cities around the world.

The Brooklyn partnership, in particular, is bound to inspire some backlash from local politicians, unions and activists who see Airbnb as a Silicon Valley devil coming in to jack up home prices and steal business from hotels.

New York City Councilmember Jumaane Williams, representing Brooklyn, threatened in late July that the city would soon be cracking down on ”illegal” Airbnb rentals “to ensure the Mayor’s Housing Plan does not fall short of its 200,000 unit goal and that New York City remains affordable for all.”

”This fundamental problem has skyrocketed to unacceptable levels,” Williams said, “quickly depleting our city’s affordable apartment stock and rent regulated units.”

But as in the case of Uber, the city’s most popular ride-sharing app, Airbnb hasn’t yet seen a crackdown harsh enough to touch its bottom line: Crain’s reports that Airbnb and its NYC hosts raked in $282 million in 2014.

Patch has reached out to local politicians for an update on the (apparently floundering) Brooklyn battle against Airbnb.

In the meantime, enjoy this fresh-off-the-press PR feature from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce: “A Day in the Life of a Nostrand Avenue Airbnb host.”