4 ms·

Let me know if I interpreted you incorrectly, but I think you mean that VRBO has existed for longer and has a poor product/UX so they needed to be disrupted. I

by godot 6y ago

Let me know if I interpreted you incorrectly, but I think you mean that VRBO has existed for longer and has a poor product/UX so they needed to be disrupted. I think it may be easy to compare the two now, but back in the days they were fairly different. I was a fairly early user of Airbnb (they opened at a time when I was young and traveled a lot, especially solo). During those days, Airbnb was truly about renting out extra space in your own home. (Maybe not an "airbed" every time, but just a room in your house/apartment, nonetheless) All of my early usages of Airbnb (as a guest -- I was never a host) were actually renting rooms in these strangers' apartments, that they live in themselves. This was in France, Italy, Brazil, etc. It's not about vacation houses in popular resort places (Lake Tahoe etc.). In fact, I remember back in the days there was a lot of comparison of Airbnb and Couchsurfing. One is paid and one is free, sure, but both were very much about meeting folks locally.

borski 6y ago
Precisely. Same space, distinctly different product and vision/goals.
- rhizome 6y ago
  Their intent is irrelevant. What counts is how they're used for the same purpose.
conductr 6y ago
This is true I remember as much as I wanted to like the concept, Airbnb never resonated with me personally until they became more like vrbo. It’s because I’m firm on not wanting to befriend my hosts. I want the whole house to myself. Now I like it because I can get into a neighborhood and “live” in my host city.
rhizome 6y ago
>Let me know if I interpreted you incorrectly, but I think you mean that VRBO has existed for longer and has a poor product/UX so they needed to be disrupted. Correct. I first used VRBO sometime around 2002. They were the only game in town for this kind of thing for a long time. Yes, you could rent out space in peoples' homes, but if you wanted a vacation spot that wasn't a motel, they (eventually) did that better than VRBO did. I'm pretty sure VRBO didn't change their vintage 1996 website until well after AirBNB was a competitor. Multiple years. I could be wrong on that, but suffice it to say that AirBNB also filled a vacation house need that VRBO had been limping on.
205guy 6y ago
Yes, and if they required the host to live in the space too, 90% of the issues they caused would have been avoided. But “disrupting” VRBO’s market by making it hip and ignoring all those pesky regulations (BnB licensing) made them realize that real estate arbitrage was _much_ more profitable. And their fault was the same as google’s: our motto is “don’t be evil”, but it’s so profitable so I guess we just forget the motto. Sibling comment conductr is part of the problem, the same blindness as Airbnb: I want what other people have (private pads in cool locations, rented by the day), and I don’t care if that’s unsustainable in the long term, I will just take advantage of it now.

by godot 6y ago

borski 6y ago

Precisely. Same space, distinctly different product and vision/goals.

rhizome 6y ago
Their intent is irrelevant. What counts is how they're used for the same purpose.

conductr 6y ago

This is true I remember as much as I wanted to like the concept, Airbnb never resonated with me personally until they became more like vrbo. It’s because I’m firm on not wanting to befriend my hosts. I want the whole house to myself. Now I like it because I can get into a neighborhood and “live” in my host city.

rhizome 6y ago

>Let me know if I interpreted you incorrectly, but I think you mean that VRBO has existed for longer and has a poor product/UX so they needed to be disrupted. Correct. I first used VRBO sometime around 2002. They were the only game in town for this kind of thing for a long time. Yes, you could rent out space in peoples' homes, but if you wanted a vacation spot that wasn't a motel, they (eventually) did that better than VRBO did. I'm pretty sure VRBO didn't change their vintage 1996 website until well after AirBNB was a competitor. Multiple years. I could be wrong on that, but suffice it to say that AirBNB also filled a vacation house need that VRBO had been limping on.

205guy 6y ago

Yes, and if they required the host to live in the space too, 90% of the issues they caused would have been avoided. But “disrupting” VRBO’s market by making it hip and ignoring all those pesky regulations (BnB licensing) made them realize that real estate arbitrage was _much_ more profitable. And their fault was the same as google’s: our motto is “don’t be evil”, but it’s so profitable so I guess we just forget the motto. Sibling comment conductr is part of the problem, the same blindness as Airbnb: I want what other people have (private pads in cool locations, rented by the day), and I don’t care if that’s unsustainable in the long term, I will just take advantage of it now.