With the presentation of operational plans for the future, an intense weekend of sharing, which began on Friday 15 October with the General Assembly, has closed for the Fair Bnb Network cooperative. During three days of debates and workshops, members from over 10 different European countries participated and contributed to a collective reflection on how to put cooperative principles into action along the path towards building active and sustainable communities.

For Fairbnb.coop the road was immediately downhill, with the ratification of the entry into the company of key institutional investors who, joining the first major institutional investor CFI and other European investors including the polish Leonardo, ensure essential resources for growth and entry into new markets: the investments collected by the project fairbnb.coop amount to one million euros in just 12 months.

New members for the Fair Bnb Network cooperative

Great testimony of trust and concrete financial support also came from SEFEA Impact, an asset management company founded with the objectives of spreading ethical and impact finance and generating positive changes in the welfare of communities, following criteria such as environmental sustainability, social innovation, cooperation, participation, and transparency.

The Fairbnb.coop project is now more solid, and not only in terms of financial capital. It is even more solid from the point of view of team spirit and humanity, the true cornerstones of an initiative that has cooperation and communities at its heart and as drivers.

More than 40 members, workers and representatives of the Local Nodes of the platform, from Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia, as well as from various regions of Italy, attended the meeting on the premises of the former Sympò church in Bologna. These were joined by other members connected remotely from even more European countries.

Sustainability and transparency, drivers of change and social innovation

With this capital and these people, it will be possible to deploy the full potential, also recognized by the European Commission, and promote the growth of a social economy that effectively pursues sustainability: the model of Community Powered Tourism of Fairbnb.coop can represent a social innovation and a systemic change in the economy of the tourism sector, extending its benefits to the entire host communities and avoiding that the added value it brings is extracted by a few economic giants.

Why is fairbnb.coop sustainable?

• Because it donates half of its revenue to local community projects.
• Because it’s free to join and only accepts registered hosts.
• Because it’s a tax-paying cooperative booking platform that doesn’t hide in tax havens.
• Because with Fairbnb.coop, most of the value stays in the community that produce it.

Fairbnb.coop, like other booking platforms, charges a 15% commission on each booking. It differs from other platforms, however, in how this commission is used: half is used to cover operating expenses, while the other 50% goes to fund social projects in the travel destination community. In this way, Fairbnb.coop offers travelers the opportunity to participate in a more sustainable and equitable model of tourism, and local social projects to benefit from crowdfunding.
Fairbnb.coop’s tourism model is a social innovation not only because most of the value remains on the territory, but also because it is a cooperative and transparent platform. While waiting for European and local institutions to prevail over the lobbying of tourism giants, fairbnb.coop promotes a self-regulatory mechanism in the tourism short-let sector that aims to create a balance, if not even a positive exchange, between travelers and local communities.

Fairbnb.coop’s regenerative tourism and social innovation put into practice

Already active in many cities and regions of Europe, where it supports projects in favor of the most vulnerable, housing, sustainable development, social innovation, and accessible tourism, fairbnb.coop has recently launched partnerships at the national level to extend its operations to entire countries.

Those traveling in Italy, for example, booking accommodation on fairbnb.coop will have the opportunity to contribute to the crowdfunding campaign Breeding Hope+ launched by Legambiente together with Enel, through the platform planbee.bz, to support several family-run farming and ranching activities and small accommodations in the Apennine areas of Central Italy, after the terrible earthquakes recorded between the summer of 2016 and the winter of 2017 and the Covid-19 emergency.