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Anyone know why airbnb became so much bigger than flipkey, vrbo, and homeaway? Was it just being lucky to be being based in SF and the associated network effect
by n72 11y ago
Anyone know why airbnb became so much bigger than flipkey, vrbo, and homeaway? Was it just being lucky to be being based in SF and the associated network effect? I.e. people could have theoretically used the aforementioned companies to rent their room in SF or NYC, but they didn't.
- ff_ 11y agoA catchier name.
- hamburglar 11y agoI have no experience with flipkey or pre-homeaway VRBO, but I can tell you that the smooth rental experience of AirBnB makes it much, much more appealing to use than VRBO. My VRBO experiences always involved strange inconsistent booking procedures and calendar management, and the website was clunky and old tech with lots of state-destroying page navigations. And one thing AirBnB has really nailed is that it can be really important to have great communication between the two parties in the transaction, not only through the mechanics of booking, but through your entire stay. There's a ton of redundancy in communication channels (email/sms/web/phone) for a transaction, and the result is that you never have to say "oh, I need to go run the app to send them a message" or log into a web page (oops I booked this on my desktop and I'm not logged in on mobile) or look up a phone number or anything like that. It's one big multi-transport conversation that is easy to use, so if you need to communicate, it just happens, rather than being something you have to work for.