‘I wanted my children to grow up here’: how Airbnb is ruining local communities in north Wales
Sitting at her kitchen table, a shellshocked Cherylyn Houston reflects on an ordeal that is finally over. It all started in September 2021. Houston, a 42-year-old secondary school teacher, opened the door to find her landlady on her doorstep. “She said: ‘I’m really sorry. My circumstances have changed and I need to give you six months’ notice. I can get four times as much money on Airbnb and I’d like you to leave, ideally by March, so I can start the new season.’”
At the time, Houston was living in a four-bedroom cottage in the village of Dinorwig, in the county of Gwynedd, north Wales. Houston, her two teenage children and their stepfather had lived there since January 2020 and never been late on their £800-a-month rent. She pulls out her phone. “Christmas was heaven,” she sighs, pausing on an image of the spacious kitchen with a flagstone floor and log-burning stove. “You’d just snuggle down and close the curtains.”
Dinorwig is just 15 miles from the foot of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), Wales’s highest peak, which draws at least 600,000 visitors annually. Gwynedd is a landscape of craggy peaks and mirrored lakes, coursing waterfalls and heather-covered hills, a place where the beauty of the natural world is underpinned by a shared reverence for the region’s mythology, history and language. About 77% of the population speak Welsh, the highest percentage in the nation. The fourth branch of the Mabinogi, the 11th-century prose collection generallyacknowledged to be the earliest in British literature, is set in Gwynedd. The medieval Welsh giant Rhita Gawr, felled fighting King Arthur in battle, is said to be buried under a cairn of stones on the summit of Snowdon.
Houston knows all too well the astonishing appeal of this part of the
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