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I'll typically use Airbnb for business travel - it's always been cheaper than the average hotel (after some searching), and it fits well with my preference agai
by candu 11y ago
I'll typically use Airbnb for business travel - it's always been cheaper than the average hotel (after some searching), and it fits well with my preference against neatly-packaged things.
That said: in my experience, the "local experience" schtick is pure BS. Airbnb is at an awkward midpoint between hotels and Couchsurfing: it lacks both the predictable experience of the former and the possibilities for awesome interpersonal/cultural exchange of the latter. Couchsurfing is not a real predecessor to Airbnb; the two are not at all the same thing, and confusing the two does a real disservice to what the "sharing economy" meant before it was conflated with the financial economy.
- nnd 11y agoI used the word "predecessor" with a more of an ironic connotation. The awkward midpoint is spot on. Like it or not, but all of the hospitality exchange networks seem to have failed so far (provided that a success implies creating value, with an indicator being profit and/or number of members). Even Couchsurfing, the most "successful" one of those was originally started as a service to find a free place to stay. It just happened that a great community formed around it. If we leave the community out, Airbnb in its essence is a "paid" hospitality exchange network. In a way Airbnb derives from the ideals of sharing economy, being a more of a peer-to-peer marketplace which promotes itself as a hospitality exchange service.