RoadWarrior - New York hoteliers say Airbnb is costing them millions

NYC hotels say Airbnb is costing them millions The battle between New York hoteliers and Airbnb continues with a study that finds the sharing site is costing the hospitality industry half a billion dollars a year.

The Hotel Association of New York City made the claim based on an estimate of Airbnb’s gross revenue in New York of $450 million in the first eight months of the year.

Airbnb’s position is that many people would not otherwise have stayed in a hotel room and they are increasing visitor traffic.

"Hotels are concerned about losing the opportunity to price gouge consumers," said Nick Papas of Airbnb.

European air passenger grows by 6.2% European passenger air traffic in the first three quarters of the year grew by 6.2 per cent.

Dublin in the Group 2 airport category (10-25 million passengers) had growth of 15.6 per cent. The October figures released this week show European traffic at the highest to date for October at 1.1 million, up 15 per cent.

Overall in Dublin, passenger numbers recorded were 2.3 million in October and 21.5 million for the first 10 months of the year.

EU rules against Estonian Air on state aid The small state-controlled carrier Estonian Air has ceased operations following a European Union ruling on state aid.

The EU had said the carrier must repay about €85 million of state aid as it had given it an unfair advantage.

Expecting a negative EU ruling, the Estonian government has set up a new company, Nordic Aviation Group, to operate flights from the capital Tallinn.

Flights booked from November 11th will be refunded to customers, details are on the website Estonian-air.ee.

Ancillary airlines revenue increases to £59.2bn The CarTrawler Worldwide Estimate of Ancillary Revenue generated by airlines by unbundling fares represents an increase of 163 per cent on 2010.

That year the figure was $22.6 billion and represented 4.8 per cent of revenues.

In the intervening five years, the figure has grown to an estimated £59.2 billion this year and 7.8 per cent of revenue.

That represents a lot of bags, coffees, sandwiches and wifi paid for by passengers by the unbundling of fares.