Chalcot Crescent in Primrose Hill is a favourite location for Instagram and TikTok users

PRIMROSE Hill is braced for an invasion of the TikTokers after Airbnb announced it would be marketing stays in “the home of Paddington Bear”.

Furious residents including business guru Mary Portas OBE have sent out an SOS for picturesque Chalcot Crescent, which they say is set to be “pimped for profit” at their expense.

Works are starting this week to temporarily transform a house into a replica of the one seen in the hit films. Airbnb is searching for competition winners to spend a special night at the “Brown’s House” in what the company said was a chance to go “inside worlds that only existed in your imagination”.

And the company’s PR team is looking to book in a string of influencers to get tongues wagging on social media. Major broadcasters, broadsheet newspapers and lifestyle magazines including Cosmopolitan, are set to be invited to a press preview later this month.

But residents told the New Journal that the street was already inundated by selfie stick-wielding social media-makers keen to pose beside the actual townhouse used in the films, starring Hugh Bonneville, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant.

In a group letter to Airbnb this week, residents said: “The global campaign you are embarking on using our street will only increase its already popular profile for tourists and the social media generation of digital-lifestyle over sharers. While some may see this as ‘sour grapes’ and the price one must pay to live on a beautiful street, it is the Paddington franchise to date that has created the current flow of tourists.

“An expensive media campaign will only amplify this and have an increased negative impact on all of our lives. Overall, we are getting tired of feeling that our street is being pimped by corporations for their profit.”

The Paddington House is part of an “icons of Airbnb” publicity cam­paign for a new category of “extra­ordin­ary experiences” in the UK.

Launched in the US earlier this year, the experiences have included a night in the Ferrari Museum, a recreation of Marvel’s X-Mansion and Prince’s Purple Rain house.

The residents’ letter suggested Paddington competition winners would “think twice” about wanting to stay in the house if they knew how “the project is getting in the way of the locals living peacefully on their street going about their daily lives”, adding: “Chalcot Crescent is our home, our real world.  It is not a public or commer­cial venue.”

Images of what the Paddington Bear house will look have yet to be made public by Airbnb, which is donating £20,000 to the Primrose Hill Community Association for the imposition. A third Paddington film is set to be released in January.

Meanwhile, the owner of the house due to be transformed is facing a backlash from neigh­bours who say they had struck the Paddington house conversion deal with Airbnb without giving them enough notice.

In a letter to neighbours, the home-owner said: “Unwittingly, in my agreement to temporarily transform my home to the home of Paddington Bear, I have caused considerable consternation – and have also occupied your time. I am sorry on both counts.

“With honesty, I was somewhat blind-sided by the initial reaction but with reflection, quickly understood it. I am sorry that I failed to properly consider things from your point of view… ‘climb into your skin and walk around in it’, despite absorbing Harper Lee’s words [from To Kill a Mockingbird] – almost 30 years ago – as a GCSE guinea pig.”

The owner added: “Whilst it may not impact you directly, I hope the donation to Primrose Hill Community Association to span a collection of initiatives, resonates positively. This was an integral element to my first communication with Airbnb and has continued to be so for both them and me.”

While the children’s books were set in Windsor Gardens near Notting Hill – and closer to the train station where the bear from Peru was famously found – Marmalade Films and Studio Canal first came to Chalcot Crescent in 2013 for the movie versions.

A statement from Airbnb said: “To celebrate the upcoming film release of Paddington in Peru and in partnership with Studiocanal, we’re bringing the magical home of Paddington to life for just three days … In this instance, we are making a sizable donation to the Primrose Hill Community Association.

“This is a temporary feature and the space will be fully restored in a matter of weeks. In all communication materials, we have not disclosed that the location is in Primrose Hill and in all our publicity, we will direct attention to Paddington’s fictional address Windsor Gardens.

“We respect the community and the homes within it. To ensure transparency, we sent a letter well in advance to inform local residents about this project.”