I'm 27. Most people I know have not stayed in an Airbnb rental, or considered becoming hosts. They haven't heard of it, or they're reluctant to stay with a stranger.
Eventually, positive word of mouth will convince them to try. They just have to like it once and they'll do it again.
Friedman tried to paint Airbnb as massive, but all I can think about it how tiny it still is compared to the global hotel industry.
You may say that for use case X, a hotel would be better. Fine. But I'd estimate 80% of the market hasn't tried Airbnb, and X% of them will switch once they do.
There has been somewhat of a stigma associated with it. I was the guy telling my friend in Illinois about it when we were planning a trip to LA with some other friends. I also told my parents when we were planning a vacation. Once you experience it, it's awesome and people will talk about it.
You can find this pattern in other markets, like online dating. A lot of people were initially hesitant (and still are), so there are social forces at work. Once the lid comes off that, I think it'll blow up.
I have the urge to box Airbnb into this "paid couch-surfing" category, but that's not really what they are. They positioned their company as something greater than that: all of the services that went along with their experience. Funny enough, the investors didn't buy it because they were tunnel visioned by how big it could be and whether it would scale at the seed stage. Those are the wrong questions to be asking at seed, and actually I don't think many founders could have pulled off starting Airbnb. The team clearly was the overriding factor in Airbnb working, followed by their excitement to be doing that startup.
Once you experience it, it's awesome and people will talk about it.
Why is it so flatly awesome? My experience was: overpriced room (overpriced because the high airbnb fees get passed on to the person who stays), annoying extra "cleaning/deposit" fees that don't get refunded (and you're not notified that they didn't get refunded), and a quasi-too-personal system of booking where half the listings are by weirdos ("RENT A ROOM IN MAH CAMPER ON THE STREET!") you can't filter out or fake listings nobody responds to.
It's squarely not in my "things that make me happy" column.
I came to Airbnb with prior couchsurfing experience. You learn how to distinguish good listings from bad. Every single one of my Airbnb experiences has been both inexpensive and awesome.
Some markets are tougher though. Manhattan is extremely expensive. Most other cities seem fine.
I had the opposite experience. I was moving to New York City, had been staying with a friend, decided it was high time to move out, and found a single bedroom in a really nice penthouse in east Williamsburg for the short term for... barely more than I was paying to commute to and from my friend's place in White Plains on the train. More convenient, too.
(Granted, it was something like a fifth-floor walk-up, and the neighborhood was a little gritty, but in the edgy-up-and-coming cool-if-you're-into-that sort of way and not the help-get-me-out-of-here fear-for-your-life drug-dealers-on-the-doorstep kind of way.)
I can only expect that I'd be out another few hundred bucks if I used a traditional hotel.
Exactly! Saying "airbnb is good" by itself is meaningless. It's a product of the context of experiences sustained over multiple interactions. If you're renting $500/night rooms in Upscale Town, USA, you'll probably love it like you love your $800 shoes and your $3000 jeans. If you're renting $40/night rooms in NYC, you'll probably hate it.
Irrational exuberance of startups around here tends to get out of hand. I get it. Everybody is the friend of a rich person and you want to promote them because you know them. hi-5's and bropong all around. Great. But they're still delusional. Gotta speak truth to ego-elevating unrestricted happiness. Life is pain, not million dollar post-exit condos in SF.
Were there hidden fees that you didn't see? I filter by price and feedback, so I know the hosts are legit. The cleaning fees are shown on the listing. They show you response rate, so you know if the hosts are active or not. You won't always receive a response, but that's why I never message people who have no reviews or a low response rate. They may just be trying it out casually ("window shoppers"). My experiences have been very positive when I've used it--which isn't that often, but when I do, I no longer even consider hotels.
Well, the fees do get paid whether they're listed externally or not. If the fees are $250, then the lister is just jacking up the listed price by $250.
The cleaning fees had some wording like "if necessary" or "if damage is done," but it was never returned or communicated nothing would be returned.
(Sidenote: There's also no recourse or discount for "weirdness." The lady whose second bedroom I rented had her non-english-speaking mother stay for two weeks (unannounced, unasked--suddenly there was just someone new living there) whose hobbies included power sanding furniture starting about two hours before daylight and taking up the entire kitchen for five hours a day.)
The response rate things are okay, but there are still tons of people who cannot communicate effectively online (or even form coherent thoughts in person most days). It's a crapshoot. (Kinda like trying to sell things on craigslist -- you never realize how many weirdos are out there until you have something they want. "Yoooooo maaan... will you take some pot for tha xbox? we aint got no monay.")
I think you had a bad experience with that one listing -- and the proper recourse is to write an honest review, just as you would on Yelp for an experience that wasn't what you were expecting. This helps prevent it from happening in the future.
That's tricky too, isn't it? You're writing a public review with your name attached directly about another person, in public, with their name attached. I'm not comfortable doing that at all.
Hell, I'm not comfortable reviewing an air mattress I bought on amazon.
The AirBnB founders are one of the hardest working teams I've ever seen. When you think of all the incredible feats they pulled off in the beginning, it's hard to conceive of another team managing it.
This is HN. Anything goes in the name of growing a startup!
(including, but not limited to: rampant cross-site promotional spam, dead baby jokes, rambling on about how you overcame such adversity all the way from your $40,000/year private high school, follow-the-bouncing-ball upvote rings to promote insiders higher on the front page of Marketing To Nerds and Journalists Daily, and becoming an apologist for other people abusing/lying/cheating/stealing/manipulating things now that they are successful and you're afraid of them politically.)
I don't know about hard-working, but my impression after meeting the founders was that they were clueless stuffed-shirts who have no idea why their idea created a community of authentic enthusiasts - and they're desperately trying to cash out without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
As someone who knows them well, I can tell you that you're so mistaken that it makes me wince. The Airbnbs are among the most earnest and dedicated founders we've funded.
That's possible! Can you hire them an image coach or acting classes or some sort of interpersonal communication coaching, though? I turned down a job offer from them because of how inauthentic several of the airbnb's office personalities (not only the founders: some of the staff, too) seemed to be.
Earnestly and dedicatedly inducing people to break their contractual obligations, fall afoul of local hotel regulations, and make life suck a little more for their neighbors.
I'm having trouble replying to this comment, having met Brian in 2009 and later interviewing him for a book. I am wondering if you are confusing them with some other founders.
I'm not sure why this is downvoted. That stigma in dating is still alive and strong today, and Airbnb is still stigmatized for some of the younger people I know outside of Silicon Valley. Part of the article talks about trust, which is pretty important. Both couch-surfing and dating have lacked identity and trust, which makes it more comfortable. The last thing you want is for someone to axe murder you or spike your drink and not know who it was. If you get axe murdered, knowing who it was is your last concern, but at least it acts as an enormous deterrent. Identity is the reason places like Hacker News don't completely degrade to the rules of Crowd Psychology (well, most of the time).
That friend in Illinois was very uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in some random person's house, and I didn't realize how absurd it sounded until I was listening to myself explain it to him and his very uncertain reaction. The reputation/trust element removes that "randomness." So much so that I won't book with listings that don't have any reviews, and I tell my friends the same thing.
That comment, while accurate, was almost literally just rephrasing something already in the comment it replied to[1], yet presented it as some kind of rebuttal. It doesn't look like the poster had really read what they were replying to.
Personally, I think the "weird factor" around AirBNB will probably be harder to erode than the one around online dating. I think the existing hotel industry comes a lot closer to meeting a wide range of people's needs for accommodations than the standard informal "go out to a bar or meet people through mutual friends" thing does, and for someone like me, who travels fairly infrequently, I don't mind spending more once or twice a year to have that extra identity/trust from the known quantity of an actual hotel.
[1]"A lot of people were initially hesitant (and still are)"
As a homeowner, I can tell you with all sincerity that I'd rather post a "room for rent" sign at my local university than let random strangers with random problems I'm not used to dealing with come crash at my place for a fee.
Airbnb seems very cool as a user of the service, but I'd almost never even think of being a host.
I'm 27. Most people I know have not stayed in an Airbnb rental, or considered becoming hosts. They haven't heard of it, or they're reluctant to stay with a stranger.
Eventually, positive word of mouth will convince them to try. They just have to like it once and they'll do it again.
Friedman tried to paint Airbnb as massive, but all I can think about it how tiny it still is compared to the global hotel industry.
You may say that for use case X, a hotel would be better. Fine. But I'd estimate 80% of the market hasn't tried Airbnb, and X% of them will switch once they do.