Ikeabnb

As affordable housing becomes increasingly harder to come by, more and more people are being funneled into small-space living, a specialty of Swedish furniture giant Ikea. But now even those opting for lower-cost, sawdust board furniture are facing the vice-like grip of the short-term rental market that has currently got Tampa by the bay.

Tampa, Florida is one of the fastest growing cities in the country by many metrics such as GDP, population, median household income, and number of strip clubs per square mile. However, with available living space in such high demand, the market has become a breeding ground for exploitation by those willing to take advantage of a dire situation for personal gain. Nowhere is that phenomenon more evident than in the Ikea Tampa showroom.

“I don’t know how we didn’t notice right away,” says Denise Parker, a Living Rooms coworker for the Swedish mega-store. “I can’t even tell if that’s because it happened so gradually or because it happened so fast, but just one day we realized it had happened.”

Denise and many coworkers on the store’s upper level now find that many roomset displays are behind metal gates with keypad locks that neither coworkers nor managers have access to. And who holds the codes for those keypads?

“If a customer wants to view the roomset,” says Parker, “they need to book a viewing through Airbnb. People are really annoyed about it, but there’s literally nothing we can do. We hate to have to say it to our customers, but it just depends on how badly they want to see the room.”

“It has its upsides,” says Pedro Jimenez, a store planographer. “Like we don’t have to change the bedding as often since they require the customers to wash it once they’re done in the room to avoid a cleaning fee. What sucks though is when you want to change the décor or something you have to go through the hosts now, and it’s sometimes a nightmare to get ahold of them.”

“The Airbnbers have gobbled up the rooms so effectively,” says sales manager Monica Jacobs, “that there’s barely anything left for casual customers who just want to walk around and see how we have the rooms set up. It’s really disheartening.”

When we reached out to Ikea’s US CEO Javior Quiñones to ask how something like this could even happen, a representative from his office had this to say:

“We expect a lot from our Tampa store as the market continues to grow in new and interesting ways. Unfortunately, part of that growth includes a tightening of the housing market, over which we have no control. As Tampa grows and changes with the time, so must the way we approach business in that area, and sadly that seems to mean losing some touchpoints to short-term rentals.”

The customers however are not as understanding of the change.

“Utterly preposterous,” says one customer named Doris. “Every time I come here it’s another damned app to download and I have to pay to see the rooms now? Did they not save enough money from refusing to give us bags and forcing us to use self-checkout!?”

“I couldn’t believe what we got charged just to be able to jump on the bed with the fluffy, pink blanket for our TikTok,” says regular customer Dwayne. “And the service charge for DoorDash to bring over a plate of meatballs was ridiculous!”

“If I can't get into the rooms,” asks Marianne Tomlinson, “then how am I supposed to take the displays I want to buy to the cash register?”

“Back in my parents’ day,” says Stephen Mitchell, “you could come to Ikea and sit in a bedroom or living room display room right out of college. These days though, you’re lucky if you can even get a seat at the dining table display in the cookware department with two other families at the equivalent salary. Sad.”

We had a chance to talk to Cal Hardgrove, Airbnb host who rents out several roomsets in the KitBa (kitchens and bath) neighborhood who had this to say on the matter:

“Hos mad because they don’t understand how passive income works. Gotta always be on that hustle, bro. Don’t like it? Too bad. Why don't you just go down to Småland and cry in the ball pit?”

While this situation is less than ideal for customers just looking to browse or for respite from Ikea’s long, winding shop path, the Airbnb keypad gates seem here to stay with things only looking more and more dire for the Ikea display roomset market, especially as Florida legislatures seem uninterested in stepping in to stop renters from hoarding all available properties. Even as we conducted interviews for this article management was informed that WeWork had taken over the entire Workspaces department.

“WeWork is here!?” one sales manager was heard to exclaim upon walking into his department and finding several office workers editing spreadsheets, doing tequila shots, and playing foosball. “I didn’t even know WeWork was still allowed to be a company anymore!”

The store planography team has begun to see that the roomset rentals have brought down the value of the showroom as a whole. 

"These renters have no respect for our showroom departments," says store interior designer Julie Anderton. "And why would they? They have no investment in roomset value or keeping the showroom in shape as new. Used to be that this whole area was primarily Family Card members building a shopping trip together, but now it's just quick in-and-out shoppers with no regard for the rules and regulations of the Showroomer's Association. But that's all just to say that this place has gone way downhill lately."

The most conspicuous effect of this trend is displaced and confused customers with nowhere else to go congregating in the self-serve warehouse district. Upper management within Ikea acknowledges that this is an issue, describing these mass gatherings of customers, sometimes referred to as “Ingvar Towns”, as a “blight” that needs to be taken care of but never addresses the root cause of the issue. Sadly, with less Showroom areas available for regular customers, these occurrences can be expected to become more and more common.

When contacted to comment on these issues, a harried-sounding Airbnb representative said “If you have an idea of how to control these hosts we’d like to hear it. We barely have enough people to keep the app running let alone stop our users from destroying the housing market.”

Way to scale, guys.

So what is there to do? Unfortunately, there’s not much to do at the moment. With no incentive to keep showroom roomsets available exclusively for shoppers, Ikea and the holding corporations that actually own those roomsets have no motivation to stop selling them as rental properties. In fact, for them it’s actually the safer option to ensure return on investments. The key to fixing this problem would be to somehow make corporations more concerned with the general welfare of the people than with profits.

But as they say in Sweden: kommer aldrig hända.