
Selling Airbnb host addresses to hotels and landlords - jamesJones
Am building a service that harvests Airbnb listings and identifies the address of apartments being rented out by hosts. I then want to package the information in a saas application allowing hotels to see Airbnb rentals around their hotel. This will give them the ability to see how big is the impact surrounding their hotels and an opportunity to act legally against the landlords and hopefully pressuring them to stop their tenant from further renting out their apartments. It can also help landlords by guiding them to terminate leases for those tenant or asking a cut of the revenue from their Airbnb rentals.<p>What do you think about me product HN? How do I go about pricing my product?<p>note: I am neither crawling or scraping Airbnb&#x27;s listings, just connecting patterns pragmatically to identify hosts addresses.
======
pr0vitamin
I think you'll find this is against Airbnb's Terms of Service on a few fronts,
so be wary of that. "...you may not and you agree that you will not: \- use
manual or automated software, devices, scripts, robots or other means or
processes to access, “scrape,” “crawl” or “spider” any web pages or other
services contained in the Site, Application, Services or Collective Content;"

There's quite a few other clauses that you'll be breaching, so it might pay to
have a read: [https://www.airbnb.co.nz/terms](https://www.airbnb.co.nz/terms)

~~~
jamesJones
Every major site has such clause. It's a matter of how careful and aware your
scripts are.

~~~
pr0vitamin
I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, nor that you can't. _Personally_ I think
it's a terrible idea and bordering on evil, but that's neither here nor there.

Just be aware that if people find out what you're doing, it probably won't be
looked at very fondly - legally or morally.

~~~
jamesJones
morally? Seriously. Step back a little and look at it from a landlords
perspective. Airbnb can facilitate lease violations and that's okay, but
helping Landlords identify lease violations is morally wrong?

~~~
pr0vitamin
I don't disagree that the situation sucks for landlords if their tenant
breaches the tenancy agreement and uses Airbnb as a tool for sub-letting. This
of course also places the tenant in breach of Airbnb's TOS too.

But you're now suggesting that this injustice to landlords justifies
harvesting Airbnb's user's personal information and then selling it? That's
morally and legally questionable any way you look at it.

~~~
lgsilver
Seriously? the information isn't that personal if it's publicly listed on
AirBnB...

------
robotkilla
Why the fuck would you want to help corporations crush the small guy?

~~~
ffumarola
Airbnb - $20B* Hilton - $30B Marriott - $22B Choice (Holiday Inn, Best
Western, etc) - $3.4B

* [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-01/airbnb-sai...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-01/airbnb-said-to-be-raising-funding-at-20-billion-valuation)

They aren't really the "small guy" anymore.

~~~
robotkilla
The Airbnb hosts are the small guys I was referring to. Ratting them out to
their landlord? Selling their contact info to hotels? That's some dark shit
and I hope it fails spectacularly.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Though I have never tried it myself, I know numerous people who have done
AirBnB "hosting." It has enabled them to afford trips and vacations they could
otherwise never afford; their tenants have always been cool people who loved
the experience and left the spaces in immaculate condition (I served as the
"key man" many times).

Every AirBnB experience I've witnessed has been win=win; the absurdly
unbelievably filthy rich landlords can go cry in their beds stuffed with money
as far as I'm concerned.

~~~
mobiplayer
Well, but why those don't go out and buy a flat they can rent in AirBnB
instead of sub-renting someone else's? Most rental contracts explicitly forbid
sub-renting _and_ I'm pretty sure these cool people don't pay taxes on the
money they get from the short-term tenants.

This is a greeeeey area.

------
tehwebguy
Are you doing it to make money, or to right an injustice you perceive? Or some
other reason?

------
brudgers
Another potential client category for such business intelligence is municipal
planning departments. Around the country they are all scrambling to adjust to
the changes in use.

------
_delirium
If you had a large-scale set of data of AirBnB listings that was reasonably
accurate, that could be valuable to many people, for all sorts of reasons.

I'm slightly skeptical of some of your specific suggested markets, though. I
would guess landlords are not likely to be a big market. The apartment and
condo buildings that want to shut down AirBnB in their building already have a
fairly easy time looking through nearby listings and identifying the ones in
their building. The ones who aren't paying enough attention to do that will
probably not be paying enough attention to find out that they can buy a list
from you, either, unless you do a lot of marketing. And governments so far are
going more the route of just trying to force AirBnB to hand over listings
directly, instead of buying from a third party.

------
rrich
I wonder if there is a use for an SaaS that spits out the license plate number
for Uber drivers. Uh Oh, I think this time I may have stated something that
deserves being banned. Evil is as evil does.

------
danso
> _Am building a service that harvests Airbnb listings and identifies the
> address of apartments being rented out by hosts._

> _note: I am neither crawling or scraping Airbnb 's listings, just connecting
> patterns pragmatically to identify hosts addresses._

Could you clarify?

~~~
jamesJones
oops that's a typo. Am screen scraping some of the Host's basic information
and then looking into other sites to find a pattern that identifies them. From
there I look up their address.

------
akulbe
I hope I'm not the only one here who thinks this is incredibly ANTI-
entrepreneurial. I'll even go so far as to say this would be a really JERKY
and EVIL thing to do.

Are you a hotel owner who has a grudge against the little guy who is trying to
make some extra income?

What's your beef with Airbnb hosts?

And just because "every major site has such [sic] clause" doesn't mean you
looking for the loophole is ethical.

As someone who hosts on Airbnb, the thought of this kind of action that would
very likely harm MORE than those intended... it's evil.

I hope it falls flat.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I hope I'm not the only one here who thinks this is incredibly ANTI-
> entrepreneurial.

How is it anti-entrepreneurial? Seems like a perfectly entrepreneurial
response to the market opportunity created by overlap of the AirBnB vs. hotel
conflict with the AirBnB vs. existing law conflict.

> I'll even go so far as to say this would be a really JERKY and EVIL thing to
> do.

Some people say that about the way that AirBnB and AirBnB hosts have openly
flouted laws governing short-term rentals. Any disruptive entrepreneurial
activity is going to "jerky and evil" from someone's perspective.

And, maybe it _is_ jerky and evil -- but that's not a category opposed to
entrepreneurship. At best, its an orthogonal concern.

------
somberi
If obtained with consent, I for one will find this service valuable and will
be willing to pay for it. All the best.

------
andrewkitchell
Don't love the application, but the tech is interesting.

I work in the space - would be fun to talk further.

------
DanBC
Do you also link to local legislation and local enforcement agencies?

------
RantyDave
snitchr.com ?

