Hay Festival urged to end sponsorship deal with Airbnb over illegal lettings in West Bank

Martin Shipton

Palestine Solidarity Campaign Cymru has called on the Hay Festival to immediately end its sponsorship partnership with Airbnb, amid growing international condemnation of the company’s role in profiting from illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

The call comes as two speakers withdrew from the festival in direct protest against the sponsorship deal.

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, and forensic architect Professor Eyal Weizman of Goldsmiths, University of London have both pulled out, with Albanese describing Airbnb as profiting from “an economic system that supports occupation, annexation, and forced displacement.”

The United Nations has formally named Airbnb in its database of companies implicated in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank — settlements the International Court of Justice has ruled unlawful.

Airbnb has partnered with the Hay Festival to launch a writing award called “Room to Write”, described as championing “creativity and the importance of place and space in storytelling.”

PSC Cymru says the irony could not be more stark: Airbnb is simultaneously listing properties on land from which Palestinians have been violently displaced and stripped of the right to tell their own story.

Hay Festival is not the first cultural institution to face this reckoning. When Airbnb sponsored Vivid Sydney, multiple artists withdrew from the festival, refusing to allow their work “to be used to legitimise or sanitise unethical corporate relationships”, citing Airbnb’s documented history of listing properties in illegal Israeli settlements. Vivid Sydney subsequently dropped Airbnb as a sponsor.

Opponents of Israel’s behaviour say the message from the cultural world is becoming impossible to ignore: Airbnb’s settlement listings are incompatible with the values of any festival that champions ideas, human rights, free expression, and the power of storytelling.

‘Shocking’

PSC Cymru Co-Chair Bethan Sayed said: “It is deeply shocking, and bitterly ironic, that the Hay Festival has taken money from Airbnb to promote ‘the importance of place and space in storytelling’, while Airbnb profits from the violent erasure and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

“Airbnb is complicit in a war crime. Its settlement listings help fuel the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and land, propping up Israel’s system of apartheid, and forcing Palestinians into isolated enclaves, subjected to violent settler attacks, cut off from their families, their communities, and their cultural and historic space.

“By accepting Airbnb’s sponsorship, the Hay Festival is sending a clear message that Palestinian lives are not important, that stolen land is acceptable, and that war crimes are acceptable. Is it content to accept that the destruction of an entire people’s home, story, and identity is someone else’s problem?

“We say: it is not. The Hay Festival would not platform a plagiarist, and it must not platform land theft. Close the book on Airbnb. End the sponsorship now.”

PSC Cymru is calling on the Hay Festival to terminate its partnership with Airbnb without delay, on authors, speakers, and literary figures to publicly condemn the sponsorship and on festival-goers to sign its e-action and petition demanding that the Hay Festival ends its sponsorship deal with Airbnb.

Mixed-funding model

Julie Finch, Hay Festival CEO, responded: “As a charity, Hay Festival Global operates a mixed‑funding model that includes sponsorship, grant funding, ticket revenue, memberships and donations.

“This income supports the ongoing viability and accessibility of the Festival, enabling us to celebrate literature, arts and culture each year, provide an international platform for intellectual and creative exchange, and widen access to ideas, creativity and debate.

“When Hay Festival Global is offered sponsorship or funding, we consider this carefully in line with our charitable purpose and relevant governance guidelines. In all sponsorship and funding agreements, the Festival retains full editorial independence.”

Those wishing to sign the petition can do so via this link.