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Comment by nora4 | Hacker News Reader

AirBnB is such a great business. No significant competition for now among startups. Primary (initial) market is different from the incumbents (hotels) and it can gradually chip away from their market share too.

It also has better network-effect than say Uber (which has per-city network effect but no significant global network-effect) and less competition than latter. The "moat" is super strong and the leadership (Brian, Joe et al.) seem to be really good.

I'm so in awe of their prospect. My only misgiving is that they rejected my application (which proves no one's perfect after all - as they seem to also make hiring mistakes:P)

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Is VRBO/HomeAway not a significant competitor? It's owned by Expedia, so it has a pretty huge backing.

I usually check both AirBnB and HomeAway when I'm looking for a rental and don't see any reason to be loyal to one over the other. (AirBnB has a better website/app, but the whole experience is pretty similar.)

AirBNB has their own version of a 'showrooming' problem as well - last time I went to Hawaii, I found a nice condo that I liked, then searched for that same condo online, found the owner's standalone website offering similar prices but no AirBNB fee. I booked direct.

I wonder if they start somehow "cracking down" on that. For now, it might not be worth it but eventually?

I think that would be very hard to crack down on. Hotels are listed on multiple booking sites and have their own site as well. As a property owner I would never want to be stuck with only one rental channel, if one tried to force me I would simply stop using it.

Hotels/hostels are not supposed to not list on AirBnB I thought. (I stayed at a very low-end hotel booked from AirBnB in, and I was very disappointed. When I book an AirBnB I hope for a real host, conversation, see how they live and what I got was a stupid hotel... but I digress.)

They can choose to delist the properties that have a separate channel, by crawling the web, or just querying google, query, etc. to find out if the listing is just a shell. Or they can look at the messages to see if the host suggests book instead on this website. (That of course doesn't prevent direct email communication through which the same outcome transpires. It just catches the most naive showroom cases.)

I’ve definitely stayed at B&Bs that I booked through other means and I found out by chatting with the owner sometimes used AirBnB as well. No idea what is officially allowed. But if I were renting I’d need a real good reason to grant an exclusive.

There are lots of 'condotels' in tourist areas, which are essentially full-service condo buildings that explicitly sell on the idea that the owner can use it for their own holidays, then rent it on AirBNB/VRBO in all the other weeks of the year. These condotels almost always have their own booking site.

That's a pretty serious amount of effort to go through, and I don't think is actually a meaningful problem.

Most hosts do not have an alternate presence and it should be pretty easy to contractually forbid this behaviour on the part of hosts, at which point it's a detection problem, rather than a fundamental problem.

I think that would crater AirBnB.

Exclusivity contracts? What's my incentive as a host there? Is AirBnB going to give me more of a cut?

Is AirBnb going to make "exclusivity" actually mean something, and not give me 100s of hits in a square mile or two, so that my listing doesn't appear on page 10 of the results?

It's possible I've misread the host pool, but 80%+ of the places I've stayed at have not been professionally managed apartments, but rather people subletting a room or their entire place when traveling, and doing some quick reverse image searching shows that these places are not available on any alternative sites, for them an exclusivity arrangement doesn't even matter because they were not going to rent elsewhere.

If people sidestepping AirBnB became common, it would be a pretty easy decision for AirBnB to enforce exclusivity and just say goodbye to everyone else, because people showrooming on AirBnB is actively harmful to them vs not having that inventory.

If you're in an area with 100s of hits in a square mile, you have no real leverage here by definition.

This is the first time I've heard of either VRBO or HomeAway. I assume they have a much smaller presence.

VRBO has been around since 1995. My parents had their vacation condo listed on there for a long time. The reason you don't hear about them is that they weren't controversial with sharing out rooms and didn't invest in pretty design.

I really think they dropped the ball when Airbnb moved into the space

It depends a lot on the area you're visiting. VRBO has a much larger supply in certain areas, especially traditional resort type destinations like ski towns or beach towns.

Maybe it's geographic. I've used VRBO exclusively and never found a comparable option on Airbnb. VRBO fees to renters seem lower and you feel closer to the property owner with less glam or polish from the agent obscuring the realities of the property.

VRBO feels like craigslist, while airbnb feels like eBay to me.

VRBO basically is what people used before Airbnb. As a long time user of it I never really understood the Airbnb hype. I guess Airbnb penetrated markets due to hype and marketing which vrbo was unable to. But they are basically the same thing for end users.

Well, I hadn't heard of them till this minute.

If they did bizarre things so they start getting mentioned more in HN or TechCrunch I guess it'd help their cause :P

VRBO seems like the AirBNB of an older generation. My parents and their friends use it exclusively. To the point they never have visited AirBNB by web or app.

I used OwnersDirect once (part of the same group). I just visited it, HomeAway and Vrbo and they all look like Airbnb clones now. At the time I had to pay for the villa by a bank transfer directly, they didn't handle any of that (and I had to pay the international fees which was rubbish) but I'm guessing they've probably got the same payment experience now too.

They also blissfully ignore the thousands of hosts using it to skirt zoning laws and operate illegal hotels.

So the question is are laws sacred things that should never be broken. I don't think so. I think there are cases that people should break the law so we progress.

In other words, our laws are not the word of God (so to say), they are the word of men (genderless ofc). Good things can happen when you break them and demonstrate how much value can be unlocked or how much a better society we can become without them. By ignoring the laws you ultimately can become a force for change of the law. Those laws usually are there for a reason, of course. But the point is that sometimes those reasons are antiqued or irrational.

I don't know about the case of AirBnB and zoning laws. Don't know enough to have an opinion there.

Well, something that happened where I live (Portland, OR) is that AirBnB became popular enough that people and businesses would buy houses to rent out. One of the consequences was that, because it was so profitable, these renters could buy more, driving up the cost of housing and contributing to an already bad housing shortage. It became very difficult to find an affordable apartment, and it's still pretty tough. I feel like that trade-off (people who own those properties make more money, visitors have a few more places to stay) is skewed pretty heavily in favor of the property owners. And the businesses making that money could easily come from out of state, draining money from the local economy.

You are supposed to have a license (Accessory Short-Term Rental permit) for AirBnB rentals, and it has to be your primary residence. But people still skirt this law.

To summarize your points AirBnB has these effects: 1) more supply & cheaper options for travelers/short-term renters 2) higher rent and less supply for long term renters. 3) More income for property owners (A more varied demand) 4) Less business for hotels/established incumbents.

It's a very hard tradeoff. I can't tell how to argue for one side or the other. Should we use regulation (or enforce existing ones) to help the long-term renters at the expense of travelers? Or should we let free unregulated market roll? It's not clear-cut case for me either way.

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