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Selling Airbnb host addresses to hotels and landlords
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.
What do you think about me product HN? How do I go about pricing my product?
note: I am neither crawling or scraping Airbnb's listings, just connecting patterns pragmatically to identify hosts addresses.
- danso 11y ago> 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 11y agooops 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.
- tehwebguy 11y agoAre you doing it to make money, or to right an injustice you perceive? Or some other reason?
- robotkilla 11y agoWhy the fuck would you want to help corporations crush the small guy?
- ffumarola 11y agoAirbnb - $20B* Hilton - $30B Marriott - $22B Choice (Holiday Inn, Best Western, etc) - $3.4B * http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-01/airbnb-said-to-be-raising-funding-at-20-billion-valuation http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-01/airbnb-sai... They aren't really the "small guy" anymore.
- robotkilla 11y agoThe 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 11y agoThough 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.
- akulbe 11y agoI'm an Airbnb host. Love it. It has changed our lives. This idea of the OP, it pisses me off, to no end.
- mobiplayer 11y agoWell, 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.
- sergiotapia 11y agoIf owned a house next to these rentals, I would be PISSED. I think OP has a good idea going.
- dragonwriter 11y agoAirBnB is as much a corporation as any hotel is. At least as many small guys depend on the hotel industry as depend on AirBnB.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- akulbe 11y agoTHIS. I am one of the "small guys" that something like this could harm.
- wodenokoto 11y agoThe small guys are already being pushed out of airBnB by professional that buy up apartments and rent them out full time.
- pr0vitamin 11y agoI 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 11y agoEvery major site has such clause. It's a matter of how careful and aware your scripts are.
- pr0vitamin 11y agoI'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.
- _delirium 11y agoConsidering that most AirBnB listings are themselves breaching something like a ToS, only usually a more enforceable one (such as a tenant agreement or condo deed conditions), I don't think pointing to a website terms of service being potentially violated gives much of a high ground in itself. It also seems like a pretty unlikely combination of positions: someone who takes an "ignore the rules / pro-disruption" position on illegal rentals, but is hardcore pro-enforcement when it comes to a ToS? I'd think almost everyone who agrees with the first position also takes an EFF-style anti-enforcement position on the second one.
- pr0vitamin 11y agoI'm not advocating illegal rentals, or Airbnb, nor am I "hardcore pro-enforcement" of a ToS. I merely advised the OP about the ToS, so he can make sure he's covering himself.
- brudgers 11y agoAnother 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.
- RantyDave 11y agosnitchr.com ?
- rrich 11y agoI 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.
- _delirium 11y agoIf 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.
- somberi 11y agoIf obtained with consent, I for one will find this service valuable and will be willing to pay for it. All the best.
- akulbe 11y agoI 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 11y ago> 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.
- DanBC 11y agoDo you also link to local legislation and local enforcement agencies?
- DanBC 11y agoDo you also link to local legislation and local enforcement agencies?
- andrewkitchell 11y agoDon't love the application, but the tech is interesting. I work in the space - would be fun to talk further.