In Paris, Airbnb blamed for all kinds of ills

In this Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018 photo, a cleaning lady works in an apartment located on Airbnb in Paris. The spectacular growth of Airbnb in Paris, the top worldwide location for the internet giant is also raising alarms in the French capital. Some Parisians and officials at City Hall blame the site for driving Parisian families out of the city center, leading to school closures and concerns that the French capital is losing its life and charms. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

PARIS: The first paying guests to the ground-floor studio flat newly posted on Airbnb were innocuous enough: A family, come to experience the joys of Paris, like many millions of others. 

Franck Briand, who lives in the apartment directly above, now looks back on that moment as the start of what he calls his Airbnb “nightmare”. The ensuing four years, he says, have been an incessant carousel of late-night parties, drunken revellers and the rattle of newly arrived groups, sometimes 15 at a time, dragging wheeled suitcases across the cobbled courtyard.