Airbnb charges service fees to both tenants and landlords. Charging two-sided service fees is illegal under Dutch law.

On March 9, 2020, the Amsterdam court ruled that Airbnb falls under these regulations and the service fees paid by Dutch tenants are unjustified. We worked with the Massaschade & Consument Foundation to launch a collective action against Airbnb to retrieve the service fees unfairly paid by Dutch tenants.

This particular initiative had to be competitive, as there were several others attempting the same claim. In this situation, it was important for us to acquire the most participants and take the lead. It would take more than a standard campaign - we would need to promote the collective action across various platforms and in the press.

Participants had to upload Airbnb invoices to prove that they had paid service fees. We needed a way to process these invoices into usable datapoints on a large scale. Of course, whenever you have uploads at such a large scale, there are bound to be incorrect uploads. Another challenge was figuring out how to manage this and guide participants towards uploading the correct documents.

Also, due to the amount of participants in this action, we needed to create a system that would allow all participants to easily stay up to date on developments.