Did you know that a new version of the fairbnb.coop platform will be released soon, with many innovative features and many more destinations? Several medium and large cities are joining us, as well as naturalistic holiday resorts, entire regions and countries. You will find all the details and other news from our ecosystem in this first issue of the Fairbnb.coop Digest : enjoy your read and be the change!

At the end of the new business plan process, the Board of Directors approved a new functional unit, the Fair Lab. It’s a workspace with an open and inclusive team, aimed at elaborating new models for social projects and new schemes to activate local nodes and boosting communities.

Google for Startups SDGs Program

We’re happy to announce that Fairbnb.coop has been shortlisted as one of the 60 Startups to qualify for Google for Startups, an Advisor mentoring program for United Nations Sustainable Development Goals-oriented startups in 2021.
The Startup Advisor SDG program aims to take Google’s support for SDGs to the next level, leveraging Google employees and resources towards startup engagement at scale, empowering an ecosystem of entrepreneurs to build and scale sustainable social impact companies to solve the world’s most relevant issues.
This accomplishment for us is a great occasion to grow as a team & coop, but it represents also a recognition of the value of the work we are carrying out thanks to the activity provided by our Advisory Board Lead, Trebor Scholz, who applied us for the mentorship. This program will allow our team to participate in both 1:1 and group mentoring sessions on key areas of expertise that will greatly benefit us as a team and boost the growth of our project.

Fair Lab: addressing sustainability

1. Emil Banca partnership to develop Fairbnb.coop in Emilia Romagna;
2. Addressing Sustainability.

Sustainability is a fundamental topic for us: social projects, activism in our local nodes, host requirements, tourist (good) practices, are all permeated by Sustainability.
The Fair Lab is going to develop the topic with its internal team to start an inclusive process with our local ambassador and all possible qualified stakeholders.
At the same time, the team will support joint initiatives with no-profit sector and the consumers world: partnership with Assoutenti (Italian representative of consumers) will develop the Forum of Sustainability, aimed at identify good practices for citizens (that will, hopefully, enrich our local nodes and worldwide activism).

Jan De Bock new Worker Member + Flanders Key Partner

We are delighted to officially welcome Jan de Bock both as a working member of our cooperative with the role of Product Manager and as a Funding Member / Key Partner for the Flanders. In his words:

“I’m Belgian, with a deep interest in social topics, a fair way of living, climate change, sustainability and nature. I just ended a 27-year career in Oracle as a post-sales services director, with a focus on balancing people and customer satisfaction and profit. Leaving behind this long international career in IT, I want to use my skills, knowledge and experience in activities supporting the above-listed areas. Already active in some local communities, part of a civil platform against climate change, active in the local nature guide organization, etc … Now willing to launch Fairbnb.coop Vlaanderen (Flanders) to help in creating a sustainable touristic experience.”

Every month starting now we will publish a short report of all the main activities of our organizational areas. Let us remind you that all our managers are available for questions, so if you need some details or if you want to discuss some opportunities with them please don’t hold back: mail to info@fairbnb.coop.

General Direction – Lead: Alessandro Rocchi

• Biennial Cooperative Audit: done! Fair BnB Network resulted fully compliant with legal requirements and standards.
• University of Catalunia: the legal team of fairbnb.coop has been selected to produce a report on short term rentals legal framework on the main European cities.
• Co.Co. Farm 2021 project: we have signed an agreement with Cooperative Terre del Magra for Co.co. Farm 2021 Project Sustainable development Project in the area of La Spezia (Liguria, Italy), to be funded by fairbnb.coop.

Community – Lead: Domenico Di Siena

We are convinced that the community is one of the greatest assets of our project and the Ambassadors (our local partners with direct relation in the active and activating destinations) represent the heart of that community. We have finally managed to activate a calendar of activities with weekly sessions in English and bi-weekly sessions in Spanish with all of them.

This is allowing us to activate that most valuable asset which is the capacity to generate energy, collaboration and solutions directly with and from the community. We continue to work to improve this process.

• We are moving forward with the development of the new Community Website with the new local node pages.
• We are thrilled to announce that we have been selected to be part of the most important accelerator specialised in tourism in France and promoted by the City of Paris: the Welcome City Lab.
• These are the new destinations for which our new Local Ambassadors have already signed an agreement and that we are implementing on our platform: MADRID, MALAGA, CUNEO, LISBON, PARIS, GENEVE, BERLIN.

Marketing – Lead : Emanuele Dal Carlo

• Ambassador Interviews: in tight collaboration with the Community area, we have run a series of in depth interviews to our current Local Ambassadors and Key Partners with the goal to better understand their needs. The results were used for an ambassador workshop in which we brainstormed further ideas and solutions for a better activation process.
• Fairbnb.coop on Spotify and YouTube: we seek to motivate our followers to listen to our travel playlists, enjoy the local music of our communities and get inspired for their next holidays.
• In collaboration with the Community Area, we have launched a series of monthly Webinars: the idea is to inspire and motivate people to be the change they wish to see. Therefore, Fairbnb.coop meets innovators, change makers and experts from all areas of knowledge to promote a more sustainable and regenerative economy.

Co-op Ecosystem – Lead : Jonathan Reyes

We continue with the work and discussions on how to evolve our Cooperative to a more complex and rich structure capable to involve in our governance all the stakeholders of our ecosystem, including national nodes, as a tool for democracy and to fully comply with local regulations. As part of this work and to learn from other experiences, every week we are holding a series of meetings/interviews with other established Cooperatives Platforms worldwide.

• Chart of rights for digital platform workers: We are working as a pilot case in the European PLUS project to test the implementation of a Chart on digital workers rights. The aim of this project is to to address the main features of the platform economy’s impact on work, welfare and social protection through a ground-breaking trans-urban approach.
  

  Through this chart the PLUS project aims to define a set of policies to challenge the way the current digital platforms treat their workers, and set the conditions for a fairer future. We as a pilot will test some of the proposed rights and will collaborate on the fine-tuning and improvement of the chart itself.

• Platform Alternatives Project: We are involved in a research project with the Oxford Internet Institute called “Platform Alternatives” that aims to derive Corporate Governance Principles for digital platforms that seek to distribute collectively created value more fairly.
  

  The goal of this project is to define the European alternative principles for a fairer future with the digital platforms.

Product – Lead : Emanuele Dal Carlo

We are close to release the new iteration of our platform: ETA mid to late March 2021.

Our goal is to give our hosts and guests an overall better user experience and create the condition for a quicker growth; the new platform will include calendar synchronization with other platforms, full calendar for availability with special/seasonal prices during the year, possibility of multi rooms for B&B and small Hotels, and much more.

Among these features, a very important one is the possibility to have National and Regional social projects on top of the already existing local ones. This will allow us to activate hosts that are not part of any active Local Node by connecting them immediately to a National or Regional project of their territory, thus speeding up the growth and the presence of our platform worldwide.

The eventual clustering of scattered Hosts in a specific area will prelude to the establishment of an effective Local Node, as soon as a good number of hosts and social projects will be scouted locally. This is also a powerful strategy to support the growth of National Cooperatives in the context of the bigger design of a complex and democratic multi stakeholders platform cooperative.

Content Digest

This month we focus on how to implement the historical principles of the cooperative movement and on how making tourism more sustainable, by giving our cities back to residents, after the hangover of overtourism, or by supporting community projects in our destinations.

Responsible, Regenerative and Sustainable Tourism: which term suits us best?
After being included among the organizations on Global Shakers’ 40 Leaders in Sustainable Tourism, we were asked to clarify the differences in terms and practices between responsible, regenerative and sustainable tourism. This has stimulated an internal discussion between our ambassadors and experts based in different countries, which we now want to extend to the audience of our supporters all over the world.

Tourists disappear but residents are gone: short-term rentals have emptied the cities?
When the overtourism is over, cities empty out  . The consequences of the pandemic will not be enough to return cities to their inhabitants, if we do not regulate a tourism market that is just waiting to return to the status quo ante. But normality was a problem! The solution could come from the networks of communities who propose self-regulating sustainable tourism models, like Fairbnb.coop.

Cooperative principles in action!
How can we make sustainable development, and not financial rent, the goal of the economy? And that the future of work is dignity rather than precariousness? In the new book by Ariel Guarco, president of the International Co-operative Alliance, the historical principles of the cooperative movement still prove useful in finding answers to the urgent challenges of the contemporary world: not only the pandemic, but also sustainability, women’s rights, future work and peace.

Holidays in Granada? With Fairbnb.coop it’s child’s play!
In Granada Fairbnb.coop supports the “Placeta Games” project, which aims to revitalize the city’s neighborhoods and facilitate social inclusion by organizing traditional outdoor games, so that both adults and children, including travelers, can enjoy them. Fun with a little outdoor exercise: the healthiest cocktail!