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Thanks for posting, it was a interesting, and heartbreaking, read. An AirBnB mission statement of sorts: We also stopped trusting each other. And in doing so,

by cwilkes 11y ago

Thanks for posting, it was a interesting, and heartbreaking, read. An AirBnB mission statement of sorts: We also stopped trusting each other. And in doing so, we lost something essential about what it means to be a community. After all, our relationships with people I literally threw up in my mouth when reading that. Your company makes money by renting out rooms by skirting hotel laws and you're wrapping yourself in a flag of "we're getting back to trusting one another!" What about the trust of that you bought into a place that isn't a fly by night hotel next door?

_delirium 11y ago
There's a bit of both going on: AirBnB is used by regular people renting out a spare room of a house or apartment they occupy, which sometimes has a vaguely couchsurfing-but-not-free feel to it. But it's also used by fly-by-night hoteliers running illegal hotels and hostels. And lately, it's also used by legal vacation-rental brokers as a competitor to VRBO/Homeaway/etc. The marketing materials obviously prefer to emphasize the first, but the second category does a lot of volume (the percentage seems to vary heavily by city). What's most annoying as an occasional user is that it's sometimes very difficult to determine which is which: is this someone's spare room (may actually lead to friendly personal interaction, probably won't cause significant problems for the neighbors), is it one of 50 "spare rooms" that this person is operating as a black-market business (impersonal, likely to be contributing to neighborhood social problems), or is it a VRBO-type rental unit just cross-listed on multiple sites' inventory (impersonal, but at least probably legit)? You can sometimes guess by looking at their other listings, but some people split their operation across a bunch of accounts. AirBnB could probably make life harder for people running the larger-scale operations if they wanted to, emphasizing the site's focus on lodging rented out by regular people, which could bring the site a bit more in line with the marketing copy. But I don't think that's the likely trajectory.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Don't forget the category 1a - regular people renting out a spare room even though it's against terms they themselves rent their flat on. This can sometimes also contribute to the neighbourhood social problems.

by cwilkes 11y ago

_delirium 11y ago

There's a bit of both going on: AirBnB is used by regular people renting out a spare room of a house or apartment they occupy, which sometimes has a vaguely couchsurfing-but-not-free feel to it. But it's also used by fly-by-night hoteliers running illegal hotels and hostels. And lately, it's also used by legal vacation-rental brokers as a competitor to VRBO/Homeaway/etc. The marketing materials obviously prefer to emphasize the first, but the second category does a lot of volume (the percentage seems to vary heavily by city). What's most annoying as an occasional user is that it's sometimes very difficult to determine which is which: is this someone's spare room (may actually lead to friendly personal interaction, probably won't cause significant problems for the neighbors), is it one of 50 "spare rooms" that this person is operating as a black-market business (impersonal, likely to be contributing to neighborhood social problems), or is it a VRBO-type rental unit just cross-listed on multiple sites' inventory (impersonal, but at least probably legit)? You can sometimes guess by looking at their other listings, but some people split their operation across a bunch of accounts. AirBnB could probably make life harder for people running the larger-scale operations if they wanted to, emphasizing the site's focus on lodging rented out by regular people, which could bring the site a bit more in line with the marketing copy. But I don't think that's the likely trajectory.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Don't forget the category 1a - regular people renting out a spare room even though it's against terms they themselves rent their flat on. This can sometimes also contribute to the neighbourhood social problems.