Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage - Stay next to a Lighthouse and explore the far North of Scotland

There is a widespread belief that ‘Airbnbs’ are taking affordable housing away from local people. (And, yes, I know not all holiday lets are AirBnbs, but it’s a generic term like hoover, and that is half the problem).

This isn’t new. From the 1980s onwards, residents in Cornwall and North Wales have been priced out of the places where they grew up.

The real problem is not enough new homes are being built. And it’s been happening for decades.

So if the problem is that new homes are not being built, why are ‘AirBnbs’ blamed for the housing crisis?

Let’s start with places and the people who live there

Who is a place for?

Are the Highlands (or Cornwall or Venice) for the people who live and make their livings there?

Or for visitors?

It shouldn’t be a zero sum game: visitors bring money to an area after all. But it’s undeniable that over-tourism destroys communities, buildings and ecosystems.

And then there is the vexed question of people who have second homes, (we called them ‘weekenders’ in the village I grew up in). They buy a home, but don’t rent it to visitors, and don’t stay in it often themselves.

There is no one answer because there is no one problem

For example, 50% of Sutherland’s GVA comes from visitors, but only 11% of neighbouring Caithness’s GVA does.*  The same policy will affect the two counties differently, even though they are neighbours in the Highland Council region.

Back to the housing crisis

Let’s nail the myth that holiday lets are the main cause

As I said, real problem is not enough new homes are being built where they are needed. And this has been happening for decades.

• Things that make it hard to build new homes
  • landowners making land unaffordable
  • complex planning process
  • regulations that choked off the supply of plummeting supply of local authority and social housing
• Things that make housing unaffordable
  • the reduced supply – see above
  • uncoupling property values from income following deregulation of financial services
  • more and more properties being bought by corporate, overseas, and non-resident investors pricing out UK residents

It’s a mess.

So… what about holiday lets and second homes?

More new homes are needed every year in Scotland than there are second homes or holiday lets.

• Scotland needs to build 25,000 homes a year to tackle the housing problem.
• There are approximately 21,000 second homes in total in Scotland  – these are NOT holiday lets, they are private homes and secondary residences.
• In 2022, there were 18,000 holiday lets in total in Scotland – including pods, shepherds huts, and other units not suitable for housing.

Second homes and holiday lets – what is the difference?

• A second home is a ‘spare’ house.
  These are usually in rural areas. Owners may visit every weekend or only once or twice a year. But it’s a house or a cottage that could be a home for people living and working and raising their families in the area. The Welsh government in particular is targeting makes owning a second home owners, and trying to turn them into holiday lets, or return them to local housing stock.
• A holiday let provides accommodation to visitors who spend money in the area.
  Holiday lets are often locally owned, and support local businesses. If they are not locally owned, they will employ local people. Many could never be homes, anyway, because they are pods, tree houses or lodges.
  But cities like New York, Barcelona, Florence and Penang have banned or severely restricted short term lets – they feel tourists have squeezed out the residents. London is restricting them too.

Of course, many places are both. But it is getting harder and harder to do that.

Why are Airbnbs seen as the only problem?

The brand name ‘AirBnb’ has become code for any short-term let. It is easy click-bait for editors who muddy the water by using ‘AirBnb’ and ‘Second home’ interchangeably. And of course, AI picks up that slop and turns it into more slop.

And politicians and councillors blame ‘greedy’ ‘AirBnb owners’ to deflect the conversation away from the complex causes of the housing shortfall, and the fact it’s up to them to tackle them.

Destroying an entire economic sector will not solve the housing crisis

Don’t demonise ‘AirBnbs’.

Destroying thousands of owner-run small business will impact remote and rural economies like Sutherland, where tourism is 50% of the economy.

‘Getting rid of Airbnbs’ is not the solution to housing issues here.

Building new affordable housing is.

* I saw these stats at a tourism conference, but frustratingly cannot find the source

My name is Ben, and I own and run a holiday cottage in Caithness. We bought it in 2017, when it had been standing empty for 30 years. I am proud that has been a temporary home to almost a thousand visitors to the area, and it has supported local businesses throughout that time.

Being human matters. This post was written by me, without the use of generative AI.

Last updated 8 January 2026.