Airbnb Urges Barcelona to Rethink Tourist Rental Regulations

Travel

Airbnb stated that it has removed over 7000 listings from its platform in Barcelona since 2018.Airbnb, the global vacation home rental company, has urged the mayor of Barcelona to reconsider a crackdown on short-term rentals that is becoming more widespread, claiming it only benefitted the hotel industry but failed to address the housing crisis and over-tourism.Earlier, the City of Barcelona drastically limited the ability of regular individuals to share their homes by freezing the licensing of tourist accommodations. Advocates stated that this was necessary to address housing and over-tourism challenges.The latest data shows that the number of short-term rentals has decreased, but challenges related to housing and over-tourism are more severe than ever.Sara Rodriguez, head of Policy for Spain and Portugal at Airbnb, wrote to Mayor Jaume Collboni that the hotel industry is the only one benefitting from Barcelona’s war on short-term rentals.To control the high rents for residents, Collboni announced a plan to close all short-term rentals by 2028.Airbnb argued that previous policies made by Barcelona that imposed strict restrictions on licenses of tourist accommodations in the city center since 2014 didn’t prove effective.Other cities have also introduced similar measures.New York, Vancouver, and Tokyo have insisted that hosts must reside in the flats they rent. San Francisco and Seattle restrict the number of properties a single host can list. Dallas has outlawed short-term stay apartments in some neighborhoods. London, Amsterdam, and Paris restricted the number of nights one can rent the house annually.Berlin implemented the strictest regulations out of all cities.It implemented a ban that the entire residences should not be given for short-stay rentals. However, the city later revoked the law and replaced it with more lenient limitations and higher penalties for violating after realizing that complete prohibition was difficult to enforce.According to Barcelona’s urban planning department representative, renting rooms for visitors was already banned in the city.Due to a lack of competitors, which resulted in a near monopoly in Barcelona, hotels have increased their prices to an all-time high.Official data shows that long-term rents have increased by more than 70%. Over the last ten years, the average cost of a hotel room in Barcelona has increased by almost 60%, and the number of short-term rental homes reduced by half to 8842 last year from the 2020 level.Despite a dramatic increase in demand, Spain has built fewer houses in the last ten years than it has since 1970. Official data also shows that vacant homes in Barcelona outnumbered shorter-term rentals eight to one.Airbnb stated that it has removed over 7000 listings from its platform in Barcelona since 2018 and that policies that address this problem of empty houses are more likely to increase the supply of affordable houses than cracking down on Airbnb.The mayor stated that he wants more hotel space in Barcelona but will not allow the building of new hotels in the city center.Exceltur, the Spanish travel industry association representing major hotel chains, travel agencies, tour operators, and airlines, has advocated that they want strict regulation of short-term rental platforms, pointing out that holiday homes have gone out of control in Spanish cities.According to Theo Yedinsky, VP of Public Policy at Airbnb, the Barcelona regulation is not solving the issues but only benefitting the hotel sector, which is rapidly growing and increasing rates. Airbnb is not to be blamed for the historic problems in the city, so the government should reconsider its strategy.Airbnb is willing to collaborate with policymakers on new regulations that will help the local families who host and increase the sustainability of tourism for everyone.Authorities in the EU, Spain, and Catalonia have questioned the rules in Barcelona as not being fit for intended use, raising questions about their necessity, fairness, and effectiveness.Local hosts are arguing in court for these regulations, highlighting the need for a fair strategy that accounts for the interests of all parties involved.
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Meat Business Women forms partnership with Tesco

Business News

Meat Business Women (MBW) has announced a new two-year strategic partnership with Tesco to advance gender balance and inclusion across the meat and wider food industry.

Tesco’s decision to partner with Meat Business Women formalises a shared commitment to build a more diverse talent pipeline across the industry.

Through the partnership, Tesco said that it reinforces its own values on diversity and also sets clear expectations for gender balance among its suppliers.

Meat Business Women

Research by MBW shows women made up 33.5% of the sector’s total workforce in 2023, down from 36% in 2020.

In an industry where gender balance has historically lagged, Tesco is apparently leading the way with a workforce that significantly exceeds the sector’s average for female representation.

Today, women make up two-thirds of Tesco’s Meat, Fish and Poultry (MFP) team, including its MFP leadership team.

Director of Meat, Fish, Eggs and Poultry at Tesco and product commercial director for Onestop, Richard Wood commented on the partnership: “Tesco is proud to be at the forefront of gender representation within the food sector.

“Building a balanced team is not only the right thing to do, it’s essential to creating a stronger organisation and a more resilient industry.

“Our partnership with Meat Business Women is a vital step towards making gender inclusivity a priority, and we’re excited to work together to inspire similar commitment across our supplier network.”

Gender balance

By investing in gender balance and making the sector more appealing to talent regardless of gender, Tesco aims to deliver long-term positive impacts, including increased colleague retention and progression.

Founder and global chair of Meat Business Women, Laura Ryan said: “Tesco join the Meat Business Women family at an extremely exciting time of growth. We are leading the conversation on gender balance and providing practical solutions to partners.

“We are delighted to have Tesco on board and to be working with their teams and suppliers.”

As part of the partnership, Tesco employees will receive access to resources such as global mentoring, monthly development masterclasses, global networking and industry events.

MBW works in partnership with meat businesses and the supply chain to remove the barriers that stop women from reaching their full professional potential.

It does this by focusing on five key areas:

Changing perceptions of the sector;

Moving inclusion up the agenda;

Tackling the broken career ladder;

Strengthening networks and creating visible role models;

Gender-proofing working practices and patterns. 

Meat Business Women is the United Nation’s recognised global professional network for women working across the meat industry.

It was created to improve the sustainability of the meat sector and grow the pipeline of female talent in what has been a male dominated arena.

James Gunn Didn’t Mince Words About The 1986 Howard The Duck Movie

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

Static Media/Getty Images

It’s fair to say that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been on the downslide ever since the release of “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019. The MCU’s many, many fans haven’t seemed as excited about the many installments to have come out since, with some of them even becoming huge flops at the box office (although one of those failures, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” miraculously managed to turn a tiny profit). Even the commercial hits — like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” — have tended to be nostalgic victory laps rather than new, exciting beginnings. From 2008 until 2019, however, Marvel stood astride the pop landscape like a mighty colossus, with essayists and cinephiles carefully examining the history of Marvel movies and why they came to ascend in the late 2000s.

Among the recent successes was James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3,” a very long, very weepy farewell to the eponymous characters. Gunn became one of the guiding voices in the MCU after the first “Guardians” film became a hit in 2014, and his movie did something very unlikely: it dug up some relatively obscure and strange Marvel characters and somehow made a mass audience care about them. The success of “Guardians” was proof that Marvel could, at least at the time, do no wrong. At the end of “Guardians,” Gunn even included a cameo from Howard the Duck (Seth Green) a comedy character from the 1970s.
When Gunn included Howard the Duck in “Guardians,” audiences unexpectedly cheered, happy to see the character. It was an odd response, however, as the last time Howard graced movie screens, it was received incredibly poorly. Indeed, for many years, Willard Huyck’s 1986 film “Howard the Duck” was held up as an ur-example of terrible Hollywood flops.

And, what’s more, Gunn hates it. In 2017, the filmmaker spoke with Yahoo! News and admitted his utter loathing for the movie.

James Gunn was a fan of the Howard the Duck comics, so the 1986 movie disappointed him

Universal Pictures

On the page, “Howard the Duck” first appeared in 1973, kind of as a comedic antidote to the self-serious superhero lore of the era. Howard, created by Steve Gerber, was an anthropomorphic fowl from another planet who became stranded on Earth and frequently found himself in fantastical and/or film noir-like scenarios. He was no hero, however, and typically made snarky meta-commentaries about his situation. “Howard the Duck” was a strange choice to adapt into a feature film in 1986, but Universal and Lucasfilm (!) gave him the star treatment, creating an animatronic suit for the character and granting him a human love interest named Beverly (Lea Thompson).

Upon its release, “Howard the Duck” was roundly panned and barely broke even at the box office, becoming a punchline that’s hated to this day by many, Gunn included. The filmmaker not only disliked the movie, but he was also disappointed to boot. He was one of those rare kids who was a fan of the Howard the Duck character before the film came out, so the alterations the movie made to the source material upset him. In his own words:

“I’m a huge Howard the Duck fan. […] For people who don’t know, I’m a huge Marvel Comics fan. But Howard the Duck was maybe my favorite character as a kid. I loved the Steve Gerber ‘Howard the Duck.’ I went back and I collected all of those comics, I had every comic he was ever in. […] I was young, and I went so excited about it. […] I wasn’t hip with the Caucasian eyelids. That upset me. Because they had the puppet, and it was a duck, and instead of having feathery or white eyelids, he had Caucasian eyelids, and it was creepy.”

As one can see above, Howard has no feathers on his eyelids. Gunn added, succinctly, “That movie sucks.”
Perhaps it became a personal cause, but Gunn kind of rescued “Howard the Duck” with his “Guardians” cameo.

Lawrence Tech in Southfield and Partners Advance Manufacturing Efficiency

Technology

Michigan-based Whirlpool (pictured) is one of Lawrence Tech’s partners collaborating on a $2.4 million federal project to develop lower-energy, greenhouse-gas-free porcelain enamel and paint curing for manufacturing. // Photo courtesy of WhirlpoolLawrence Technological University’s Centrepolis Accelerator in Southfield, along with three industry partners, will collaborate on a $2.4 million federal project to develop lower-energy, greenhouse-gas-free porcelain enamel and paint curing for manufacturing.The project was one of 16 awarded federal funding nationwide, part of a $38 million program of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.In the project, LTU and partners will seek to validate and pilot a lower-energy, laser-based powder coat curing technology for industrial coatings to replace existing inefficient natural gas curing ovens. The technology was identified via Centrepolis Accelerator’s Industrial Decarbonization Innovation Challenge that scouted for best-in-class emission reduction technology for manufacturing operations.LTU and Centrepolis officials state in addition to improving energy efficiency and reducing on-site greenhouse gas emissions, the technology has the potential for improved curing cycle times and reduced cooling requirements, which would improve throughput and reduce the physical footprint of the curing process.LTU’s partners in the effort are IPG Photonics, a fiber laser manufacturer based in Oxford, Mass.; PPG Industries, the Pittsburgh-based paint and coating manufacturer; and Whirlpool Corp., the St. Joseph-based appliance manufacturer.Co-principal investigators on the grant are Robert Fletcher, professor in LTU’s A. Leon Linton Department of Mechanical, Robotics, and Industrial Engineering, and Pedro Guillen, Centrepolis Accelerator chief operating officer. Fletcher has master’s and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, teaches a variety of energy-related courses at LTU, and researches optimization of energy systems. Guillen has a 20-year background in automotive manufacturing and business development.Fletcher said the project came about through the corporate partnership between Centrepolis —one of a handful of manufacturing-focused business accelerators in the nation — and Whirlpool.“When a company like Whirlpool makes a washing machine or a dryer, they have exterior paneling that’s a metal skin, and they either use a powder coat paint or a porcelain coating that has to be cured in place,” Fletcher says.“So they have these giant rooms that are basically giant ovens, heated by natural gas, that achieve the temperatures needed to cure the paint or coating — we’re talking several hundred degrees, and these ovens run almost constantly. That’s a tremendous amount of energy. Our process is basically to use a much more economical energy source, a laser, that sweeps across the exterior paneling of the appliance and cures it very quickly, literally within seconds, so there’s no CO2 production from the giant ovens.”Fletcher says Whirlpool, IPG, and PPG “have done some preliminary testing on small metal samples and the process works great. The idea now is to scale this to a working pilot plant to show that it can function and do the job on a large scale.”The Centrepolis Accelerator, housed in Lawrence Technological University’s Enterprise Center in Southfield, is 6,300 square feet of business assistance for physical product developers and manufacturing companies, a unique niche among accelerators in Michigan.Clients include climate technology firms, manufacturing startups, and existing companies looking to move up to the next level in product innovation. Services include product design, engineering, and prototyping, as well as business planning services, office space, co-working space, workshops, mentors, and events.For more information, visit here.Lawrence Technological University is one of only 13 independent, technological, comprehensive doctoral universities in the United States. Located in Southfield, Mich., LTU was founded in 1932 and offers more than 100 programs through its Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Business and Information Technology, Engineering, and Health Sciences.

SLU computer science department sets Industry Connect lecture

Science and Health

Southeastern Louisiana University’s Department of Computer Science is hosting the third of the fall Industry Connect Distinguished Lectures at 4 p.m. Nov. 21 in the Envoc Innovation Lab, in room 2026 in the Computer Science and Technology Building.The free lecture is titled “Unwavering Persistence to Create a Career – Chase’s Professional Journey.”

Chase Dupre, senior director of cybersecurity architecture, engineering, and Global IAM at Baker Hughes, will deliver the lecture. Dupre is responsible for global identity, access management and cloud security, a news release said.

Dupre became interested in cybersecurity when his previous employer, General Electric, merged with Baker Hughes. He had worked with GE after he earned his computer science degree from Southeastern. He first landed a job with GE Capital in Connecticut and then moved to London.

After earning an MBA from Rice University, he pursued his master of engineering in cybersecurity at the Pratt School of Engineering.Guests can attend in person at the Computer Science and Technology building or virtually via Google Meet. To be added to the RSVP list and receive all event details, email [email protected].

Daytrip joins forces with Travel Compositor to expand geographical reach

Travel

DayTrip will be integrated into technology provider’s systemTravel platform providing private door-to-door car transfers with English-speaking drivers and optional sightseeing stops, DayTrip, has partnered with Travel Compositor, a travel technology platform. As a technology provider for travel and leisure companies, its model is designed to meet the needs of every type of business in the industry. This new venture strengthens Daytrip’s position in the Latin American market, Spain, and Portugal, given Travel Compositor’s significant presence in these countries. Being integrated into Travel Compositor’s system, Daytrip’s offerings now have the potential to reach an even broader segment of travelers through a wide network of travel advisors who use the technology platform to customise travel arrangements for their clients worldwide. “We are excited to have entered into the partnership with Travel Compositor, as they are leaders in the industry,” said Laura Salinas, B2B partnership manager of Daytrip. “Daytrip has long-standing operations in Spanish-speaking markets, and the collaboration with Travel Compositor is a strategic move to further solidify our position in these countries by offering customisable private transfers at a competitive price.” “Partnering with Daytrip means further strengthening our services to offer to the 600+ brands that use our system around the world,” said Antoni Socias Trias, marketing manager of Travel Compositor. “Daytrips is the perfect complement for Travel Compositor to now have the ability to offer a 5th transport method in all our engines. “Offering transfers between tourist destinations that were previously not sufficiently covered in our system.”

Fire burns popular former Maine restaurant, movie rental business

Business News

A fire caused significant damage to a popular former business in Waldoboro Sunday evening.The fire at 268 Jefferson St. burned the building that used to be Pizza Movie Shoppe, a takeout restaurant and movie rental. The business has been closed for nearly a decade.Pictures from viewers shared with Maine’s Total Coverage show heavy fire showing from the building.The cause of the fire was not clear Monday morning, but Maine’s Total Coverage is working to get more details.

WALDOBORO, Maine — A fire caused significant damage to a popular former business in Waldoboro Sunday evening.The fire at 268 Jefferson St. burned the building that used to be Pizza Movie Shoppe, a takeout restaurant and movie rental. The business has been closed for nearly a decade.