Jeff Smith of Butler didn’t expect to be running a short-term rental.

“When we refurbished our building on Main Street, originally, my son stayed there, and then my daughter and her husband stayed there. We fixed it up, and it was a pretty nice place. We looked at some different options, and we said we would try listing it as an Airbnb,” he said. “I was really surprised with the response.”

Since opening his property to short-term rentals less than a year ago, Smith says he has seen a lot of interest from travelers. Wedding guests, sports event photographers, parents dropping their children off at college, and visitors from across the state have stayed at his property.

“It’s just been really positive. The demand for it has been higher than what we had anticipated,” Smith said.

As short-term rental options expand, Butler County officials approach the business opportunity with both interest and caution.

Zelienople recently voted to advertise a proposed ordinance for public review that would create location restrictions for Airbnb rentals and require a $100 license. The move comes in the wake of an April incident in Pittsburgh, where a party held at an Airbnb became violent, and two teenagers died.

On the county end, some officials, such as county Tourism & Convention Bureau director Jack Cohen, think the short-term rental locations come with upsides and downsides.

“I would think that it’s an additional lodging opportunity. Some people love to stay in that kind of atmosphere,” Cohen said. “I don’t think they’re really giving us a run for their money or anything like that, but they ought to be doing it correctly.”

While problems with the Airbnb operation itself being disruptive are more common in larger cities, Cohen said, the issue of potential “party houses” or rowdy residents at short-term rentals is concerning.

“Sometimes, college kids or younger kids rent these and they have a party, and it disturbs the neighborhoods. That's a problem,” he said. “On the side streets where people live, you don’t want to be disturbed.”

Keeping track of taxes can be a challenge when it comes to short-term rental companies, Cohen said.

As Airbnb is considered a hotel operator, the company owes a 5% hotel tax to the county on rentals. Funds from the hotel tax benefit the county treasurer’s office and the tourism department. However, it’s sometimes unclear whether each rental is accounted for.

“I do believe that it’s necessary for some of the growth in some areas (for people) to be able to use their properties in this way, but the only thing I would ask is they keep in mind that that property is generating an income, just like a business,” said county Commissioner Kevin Boozel.

“The hotel tax is sort of your payment into the system — when someone is paying it and someone else isn’t, that’s not fair,” he said.

County Treasurer Diane Marburger explained that Airbnb voluntarily agreed to pay the hotel bed tax back in 2016, before it became mandatory in 2019 with the passage of a state law.

However, the tax is paid directly from the Airbnb company itself, not from the individual property owners, and Butler County does not have a list of all the rentals available at any given time.

“I can remember going out in 2014-15, going on Airbnb's website and trying to identify manually the establishments in Butler County that were renting out their homes for overnight stays. It’s like an amoeba — it changes,” Marburger said. “You can put your house on there one day and tear it down the next day.”

Compared to the tax revenue from other more conventional hotels, Butler County receives a smaller amount from Airbnb, because the company’s presence in the county is smaller, she said.

From January to September this year, the gross hotel tax revenue was $1,836,472. That amount is divided between the tourism bureau and the treasurer’s office, with the majority — 96% — going to tourism.

Only $34,750 of the $1.8 million in hotel tax revenue came from Airbnb, Marburger said.

The constantly changing nature of the Airbnbs that are available and the relatively small portion of funds that come from them make checking in on each individual rental unfeasible, both economically and practically, Marburger said.

“We need to do some cost sharing on the revenue collection side, and the enforcement of it all,” she said.

In fast-growing Cranberry Township, no ordinance specifically regulating short-term rentals exists yet.

Planning & Development Services coordinator Ron Henshaw said the decision not to make one had to do with the relatively small impact Airbnbs had on the township.

“What we found is it was not that impactful here the last time we looked, so we did not pass an ordinance,” Henshaw said. “What we did find is if (homeowners associations) are concerned about them, they were passing their own regulations on them to regulate the length of rentals. But we do not regulate them at all — it’s not part of our zoning ordinance.”

“It kind of makes sense for people who might stay here longer on business looking for something homier, and a place to stay,” Henshaw said. “We found it to be so not impactful that it wasn’t worth regulating.”

Though no regulations exist for short-term rentals in Cranberry as of now, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of future regulations, he added.

“We’ll keep our eye on it as always and see what happens,” he said. “You never know with concepts like this, will they grow, will they take hold, will they become more popular? We will just keep our eye on it to see if it is something we need to regulate in the future.”

In the city of Butler, Mayor Bob Dandoy said he likes the idea of Airbnb, as long as renters are operating aboveboard.

“I think it’s a great concept, and I would love to have it in Butler, to have those kinds of resources available to travelers,” he said. “I've used them in other cities, and it’s great. But it’s a business, so let the people who own them treat them as such and come onboard just like any other small business owner in the city, and pay their fair share.”