Recent weeks have brought reporting in The Times (April 29, “Uber makes waves on Martha’s Vineyard,” May 21, “Uber revs up for summer on Martha’s Vineyard,” and May 27, “West Tisbury puts taxi regs, fares and Uber on future agenda”) of the arrival of Uber, an international transportation network company or TNC, operating on-demand ride services on Martha’s Vineyard. Separately, The Times has also reported (Feb. 25, “Airbnb lands on Martha’s Vineyard”) on the growing Island presence of Airbnb, a room- and home-sharing service.
For those unfamiliar with these inscrutably named consumer businesses, they are among the best-known website- and smartphone-based consumer interfaces which instantly connect service providers (transportation, lodging, and virtually anything else you can imagine) with customers. Uber and Airbnb don’t own cars or homes — they simply own the software and back-office infrastructure which match supply and demand.
For instance, when you want a ride, you click an Uber app on your phone and you’ll instantly see a map showing locations of potential drivers in their personal autos, estimated time to a pickup, and exactly what the ride cost will be, tip included. It will also display the driver’s name, and the rating his services have secured from other customers. You click again to accept the ride, and a clean, courteous driver in her privately owned car will appear, and all costs will be automatically and paperlessly handled by credit card.
You might use it to get to the boat, or to a dinner reservation, or to a doctor’s visit. And as those who use it elsewhere would testify in legions, the system works. With occasional glitches, some outstanding insurance and public safety issues to address, and even rare but serious problems (including the sometimes loutish style of founder and CEO Travis Kalanick), Uber does what old-fashioned taxi systems used to do, but better, more conveniently, more comfortably, and at least in some categories of service, less expensively for individual customers.
Airbnb uses the same approach to matching supply and demand, in this case for short-term lodging. Homeowners interested in turning a spare bedroom (or in many cases a guest house or investment property) into revenue post their property with Airbnb. A potential Vineyard visitor queries the Airbnb website or phone app, and enters Martha’s Vineyard and the dates of interest. Instantly, listings and descriptions of available properties, including peer ratings of property and host, are shown. This past weekend, there were 72 rooms and 242 homes available to rent on Martha’s Vineyard through Airbnb. As with Uber, there are some operating issues to resolve, and a few insurance, inspection, and tax issues to address, but Airbnb has gained worldwide satisfaction on both sides of the transaction.
But if Uber and Airbnb and other similar services frictionlessly matching supply and demand for goods and services among Islanders and visitors offer better experiences, they can also bring important unintended consequences to be wary of. If Uber’s services don’t generate new customers but simply cannibalize existing in-season ones, and taxi companies lose viability and disappear, will Uber drivers stick around the rest of the year? Will Uber drivers serve the wealthy and the well-paved, but refuse attention to the hard-to-reach? If we regulate, tax, and inspect Airbnb hosts beyond reason, will the pressure on existing lodgings simply raise prices? Will we benefit from denying neighbors with extra rooms the chance to earn enough so they can avoid moving out altogether for the season?
In the end these digital challenges to our existing order are going to be sorted out by market and lifestyle choices and compromises, and not by town and state regulation. Zoning and regional planning tools may have been sufficient to block offices at Nobnocket and McDonald’s on Main Street, or stalemate Stop and Shop, but they are powerless to significantly alter or, worse, attempt to block the entry of web-based services underpinned by vast cultural change.
At its heart, the challenge of Uber and Airbnb (and of course Google and Amazon) is that we are made to confront our loss of control over the accessories of lifestyle on the Island. We lose control seemingly every day, not so much to clueless visitors and wash-ashores who don’t adhere to the vain and arrogant idea of a single “correct” Vineyard style, or to villainous overreaching and overspending local governments, but rather to the complex of economic and cultural patterns which engulf us and which diminish the protections accompanying our Island status. We will be altered by both coastal and cultural erosion whether we like it or not, and we should relieve ourselves of the conceit that we should figure out how to remain web-commerce-free.
The remarkable cultural and market attributes of our Island life — everything from locally sourced food, exclusive restaurants and shops, a robust market for expensive real estate and construction, handcrafted wooden boats, expensive art, a rich and varied cultural scene, along with enormous tax and philanthropic support for public and private community resources -— comes to Martha’s Vineyard courtesy of the larger economies which surround us. We may be seven miles offshore, but for good or bad we are definitely on the grid, and couldn’t be more a part of the world around us.
