

How Google I/O impacts Airbnb Availability - zaius
https://beyondpricing.com/learn/google-io

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jayshahtx
What a great website with an intuitive product. Cherry on top is the extremely
relevant blog post which is A) somewhat interesting B) obviously connected to
their product C) not regurgitated industry information.

This might not go viral, but this is what I define as good marketing/messaging
efforts

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Apoorv02
I agree, they created something great and they are providing more non-biased
information on the product.

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CmonDev
Let me correct the title for you: "How Google I/O impacts Airbnb Unit
Availability in San Francisco"

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grahamel
It was a bit of a confusing title, I read it as something to be announced at
Google I/O will change something for Airbnb everywhere.

A better title would be "How large conferences impact nearby Airbnb
availability"

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md2be
What happened to the social component of airbnb. Maximizing revenue on
everything, give me a break.

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iandanforth
This just makes me hate beyondpricing. After all, as a consumer, I _love_
paying more when demand is high.

A _good_ company (as opposed to an amoral capitalist company) would focus on
increasing supply during times of high demand. Not restricting supply to those
of significant means.

~~~
potatolicious
I wouldn't be quite so harsh, they're acting in a completely rational,
expected way. And on the face of it there isn't really a problem with helping
people price better.

But I look at this stuff in aggregate - surge pricing on Uber, primetime on
Lyft, this service on AirBnb, etc etc, and I get a sinking feeling in my
stomach.

The utopian technocratic future Silicon Valley is bringing about seems to be
one where every merchant everywhere is maximizing every penny they can extract
from you at every moment, where everyone spends an inordinate amount of brain
cycles trying to defeat pricing algorithms, driving an increasingly
maddeningly complicated web of price-maximizers so complex and pervasive you
have no chance of understanding what's going on.

Individually these things all seem rational and understandable, but as a whole
where do we draw the line? As what point do I pick up a chocolate bar and
watch its price tag change in front of my eyes because the system knows I have
a weak spot for Snickers?

This seems dystopian to me, and perhaps more dystopian than this possible
future is the fact that a _lot_ of people in our industry would wet their
pants in joy at the thought of that future.

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rahimnathwani
_As what point do I pick up a chocolate bar and watch its price tag change in
front of my eyes because the system knows I have a weak spot for Snickers?_

Here you're talking about price discrimination (separation of markets) rather
than dynamic/surge/prime pricing within a single market. These are
fundamentally different concepts.

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jarek
Think about someone picking up, e.g., half of a store's supply of Snickers.
This increases local demand for Snickers right now and the supply doesn't
change. Surge pricing suggests that this is a good time to increase price.
Then the same is true, though to a lesser degree, when someone picks up one
bar.

(Though sorites paradox.)

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md2be
Double the price of gas during a crisis? It's called price gauging. Put
lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig

~~~
jarek
It's a good thing there are many protests against the rising price of
chocolates right before Valentine's Day.

The gas price doublers might get the news and the local representatives being
outraged, but, empirically, few care about smaller instances of price
discrimination.

