The Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (CHTA) has told its 32 mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions of a new chal­lenge for the sec­tor from the rapid rise of the on­line va­ca­tion home rental in­dus­try and oth­er shar­ing econ­o­my busi­ness­es in the re­gion.

Fu­eled by host­ing plat­form com­pa­nies like Airbnb and Uber, there has been ex­plo­sive growth in short-term va­ca­tion home rentals across the re­gion. Airbnb record­ed more than 25,000 list­ings in the Caribbean as of Feb­ru­ary and is pro­ject­ing sig­nif­i­cant growth this year.

Des­ti­na­tions such as the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Cu­ba, Puer­to Ri­co, Guade­loupe, Ja­maica, Canc�n, Mar­tinique and Bar­ba­dos fea­ture the most list­ings on Airbnb with con­tin­ued growth pro­ject­ed through­out the en­tire re­gion.

St Lu­cia ex­pects a 17 per cent year-over-year in­crease in stays in 2016.Aru­ba saw the num­ber of vis­i­tors us­ing non-tra­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tions (pri­vate homes, apart­ments, vil­las, con­do­mini­ums) in 2015 jump from 24 per cent of vis­i­tors to 33 per cent.

Tak­ing ad­van­tage of new tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms, many res­i­den­tial own­ers around the world are shar­ing in tourism rev­enues by pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions through host plat­forms such as Airbnb, VR­BO, and Home­Away, which have emerged as the in­dus­try's top lead­ers.

In re­sponse, the CHTA has re­leased a re­source guide aimed at cre­at­ing a lev­el play­ing field through tax­a­tion and reg­u­la­tion of the sec­tor.

"As many gov­ern­ments through­out the world have ex­pe­ri­enced, the shar­ing econ­o­my made pos­si­ble by these host­ing plat­forms is hap­pen­ing whether or not we choose to em­brace it and it presents new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the in­dus­try as well," CHTA pres­i­dent Karolin Trou­bet­zkoy said.

"This leaves us with two op­tions: we can al­low it to de­vel­op as an un­taxed and un­der-reg­u­lat­ed mar­ket and lose out on tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties or we can bring all the play­ers to the ta­ble to work out so­lu­tions to the ben­e­fit of all con­cerned par­ties."

Trou­bet­zkoy said CHTA is tak­ing a "pos­i­tive, con­struc­tive and bal­anced ap­proach" to the rapid­ly de­vel­op­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions sec­tor but is al­so call­ing for a fair play arrange­ment re­gard­ing tax­a­tion, as well as stan­dards be­yond those ap­plic­a­ble to res­i­dences.

"CHTA is not call­ing for there to be the same de­tailed and some­times oner­ous reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments for ho­tels, but for a lev­el of reg­u­la­tion be­yond those which sim­ply ap­ply to res­i­dences," she said.

"These are com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es re­gard­less as to how one looks at it and the wel­fare of the guest and health, safe­ty and rep­u­ta­tion of the host prop­er­ty, the host­ing plat­form, and the des­ti­na­tion must be con­sid­ered."

The CHTA guide gives a sum­ma­ry of the key is­sues sur­round­ing the shar­ing econ­o­my, its im­pact on the sec­tor glob­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly, and op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by this emerg­ing sec­tor.

Un­der­scor­ing the un­tapped po­ten­tial for Caribbean tourism, a 2016 Airbnb study es­ti­mates that the 50 largest cities in the US would have col­lect­ed an ad­di­tion­al US$200 mil­lion in oc­cu­pan­cy tax­es in 2015 if tax­a­tion mea­sures and sup­port­ing col­lec­tion and en­force­ment pro­to­cols had been in place.