1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09) | Hacker News Reader

1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)

blog.airbnb.com

123 pointsRaphomet50 comments

Glad to see a lot of people were able to book rooms there. I wasn't, but not for lack of trying.

I wish they would offer hosts more flexible controls for showing availability (and make sure hosts use them) so that people don't try to book places only to get negative responses from hosts who don't know if it'll be available at the time and to check back later. I was trying to book a place in SF for Google I/O and got a lot of responses saying that May is too far out for them to say for sure. It got pretty frustrating.

I don't have a place to host so I can't see what the controls exactly look like right now, but from browsing available properties it looks like the default case is that the place shows up as "available" unless there's an Airbnb booking in effect for a given date or the owner explicitly has blocked it out.

Given my experience searching for places, it'd be nicer if hosts had the option to say things like "don't show as available further out than X time into the future" or "default as unavailable except on specific days."

Hey, thanks for your feedback! We're continually working to improve the core experience on Airbnb, and we'll be fleshing out some updates to the calendaring system in the near future to address problems like this.

(I'm a backend engineer at Airbnb - feel free to write me at raph@airbnb.com if you have any other feedback to pass along.)

Awesome, looking forward to trying again when there's a little more clarity in availability (or when I need a place on short notice, because it looks like that kind of situation is where Airbnb really hits it out of the park).

For perspective, a single large Vegas hotel books that many nights each year. (For instance, Mandalay Bay has 3300 rooms.)

Mandalay bay does not have 100% occupancy 365 days per year. They probably don't even have 50% occupancy 365 days per year. But yes, it's about the size of a VERY large hotel.

Vegas has very high occupancy rates. Even in the down economy, it's around 80%. http://cber.unlv.edu/tour.html

Wow, impressive! And based on actual data, as opposed to numbers I made up :-)

Wouldn't be surprised if they tweak their thresholds for comping rooms to fill rooms that would otherwise go vacant.

They also have tweaked pricing to keep rooms filled. The same room at MB is going for $70 on 3/13 (Sunday) vs. $270 on 3/16 (Wed). (To be honest, sophisticated enough that I don't even really understand that. Usually it is the weekends that have the prices jacked.)

I've done my part, renting 4 places in Zurich, Milan, Barcelona, and Strasbourg over the last 2 weeks. I have yet to have a bad experience, and as soon as I move into my place, will absolutely be listing it.

In fact, I'll be looking for an apartment with with an extra room, specifically to rent on Airbnb. Not just for the monetary aspect, but I've met some incredible folks over the past few weeks. The model just works.

Sorry for the metapost, but it would be helpful for a potential renter to know - has anyone here had a really negative experience with Airbnb? (Briefly) Sharing = Caring. :)

may be this works because you are staying with a person only for a very short time and such a short time interaction is mostly nice...its long term interaction which becomes a problem many times.

for now, but is it not subject to the same kind of quality degradation that all online communities are?

I imagine it is, but the bi-directional reviews show that the company has thought about that from the beginning.

I'm MUCH more likely to book a place that is reviewed well, and I am sure that my reviews play a role in the renters decisions to accept me, as well.

The trick is growing the user base to new users that have no reputation. If "good" places won't rent to me, then the quality of the rentals from my perspective is quite poor.

I booked a room on AirBnB when I visited Los Angleles. I spoke with the owner of the room and he said he made $4000 in 3 months off of his 2 rooms. AirBnB is on to something.

I wouldn't say the calling to the site is based on monetary gain. By comparison, he'd make that same amount if he rented each of those rooms for $670/month (a pretty cheap price for California) - and it'd require a lot less work. I think the bigger call to it is that you can meet new people in an interesting context. It's a fun thing to do, in my opinion.

Having a boarder is VERY different than having people drop in for a night here and there.

He could rent a room for $700 a month or $90/night. The latter works out better assuming he can rent it for 8 nights per month AND allows him to keep in available for friends/family who are coming into town, etc. I think the "fun" aspect of it is definitely part of it for some folks, but I'd wager it's less than you think.

But he couldn't find anyone to rent the rooms. AirBnB fixes that inefficiency and fixed that problem for him.

Congrats, as someone who has seen the hard side of the Travel Industry these are truly remarkable figures.

Good luck for 2011.

Congrats!

I really like when Brian's grandfather (Brian is CEO and founder) found idea just fine, as that's the way people were "travelling" 60+ years ago - they just stayed at someone's house. Like history reinvented.

Last night I was wondering if Airbnb has the kind of traffic that would make it feasible to buy a condo somewhere popular (downtown Boston, for example) with the goal of renting it full-time.

I'd love to hear from people who've rented out rooms/apartments through Airbnb in a popular area. How was the demand?

Depending on the city it does, but many of those cities are quickly trying to shut it down. Hotels and other officially sanctioned places of lodging aren't too jazzed on the idea of unregulated (and thus untaxed) competitors.

An example, New York City has banned rentals for less than 30 days. Enforcement is another issue though, so I guess we'll have to wait until May when the law goes into effect to see what happens.

http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2010...

People are already doing that on Airbnb, at least in New York. We'll have to see if the new law will have any impact the basis of it is a huge mess.

We, ahem, tried to book in Vancouver BC, but had a few issues. Since I know the airbnb folks hang out here, I will elaborate: We tried to book a room and found that the slow response time from our candidate people made it impossible to fix up a place in short enough notice.

However, there was something in this process which might have alienated the spouse from airbnb forever (much, much more than the convenience/ time lag factor): We exchanged emails with the airbnb people, who were quite helpful, and in one of them said something like "the owner pulled back from the agreement at the last minute because he lost power from a snowstorm, which is quite reasonable." Or something to that effect. A couple of weeks later, the owner emailed us, basically screaming "why did you post such nasty things about me?" Turns out someone from airbnb had put "the owner pulled back from the agreement at the last minute" onto the owners feedback page, with neither our permission nor any context (like, the power went out because of the snowstorm). My wife emailed airbnb and the comment got pulled, but it didn't leave a great taste in our mouth.

I may not be remembering exactly the exchange, but it was pretty close to that. If you ever want my wife to consider airbnb again, it will probably take some cold hard cash.

Otherwise, I love the idea!

Estimate of revenue to date: $50 per night * 3% * 1M = $1.5M

Hmm looks like Airbnb handles the credit card transaction for the lister. If 2 out of that 3% goes to the credit card companies and banks, the adjusted revenue is $500k.

I think this is an underestimate. They also charge a per-booking transaction to the person booking. It is around $10. Assuming that the average booking is 3-nights that's another $3M.

You're right. I suppose the 3% is meant to just about cover the credit card fees then.

E.g. http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/73581 . Click the 'more info' link that's just below the 'Book it' button. It says in tiny print "Excludes Airbnb service fee ($9)".

Odd how they're hiding that fee; much worse than the typical hotel website that tries to hide taxes. Airbnb folks, I know you're reading: that instantly changed my impression of you guys from awesome to sleazy. Please make it more visible.

Hotels, unlike Airbnb, get to make money off of the actual room charge. They also get to charge high rates for late bookings and general "just because."

Airbnb is a different business model than hotels. The $9 service fee is something that I happily pay for their service.

Edit: it is also right there on the submit reservation page:

http://cl.ly/3r0G0w3p1G0S0c093j3d

Yes, instead of hiding it under that little 'more info' link they should probably just show it with the room cost, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them sleazy.

I just used them two weeks ago for a trip to SF, and never felt surprised by their service fee during the booking process.

Anybody have any insight into how they handle taxation? Is it up to the homeowner to declare any income derived from their rental as taxable income, or is up to Airbnb to keep track of the tax codes for every locale they have listings for?

In their T&Cs it says the host is responsible (last I checked)

They give you 1099's, taxed as regular income.

Wonder how airbnb is internationally. Leaving for a year long round the world trip w/ my wife in april and so far have found some great deals in sydney and seoul. My plan is to use airbnb exclusively. Better deals than hostels in many places. Our travel blog is www.shenventure.com if anyone is interested.

Everyone's missing the most impressive part. 65% revenue growth in the past month. I'm not sure if some of that has to do with the particular month (I'd think more people travel in December than January, but I guess a lot of them stay with family?), but if they sustain that growth, they'll get huge fast.

Ok AirBnB, great work so far. you've got 11 months till my honeymoon, get me some more choices: GO!

I have my honeymoon coming up in 8 weeks and wasnt sure if AirBNB was a good idea for that(?)

You've convinced me to at least give it a serious consideration. Unfortunately i've never seriously used AirBNB before.

Any advice?

Yeah I think Airbnb would be a great alternate to expensive luxury hotels. From what I have seen, even some hotels seem to post listing at comparable prices here. Ultimately its really up to you what kind of honeymoon you like. Do you want one where you get room service, and other hotel luxuries at your beck and call, or do you want to be left alone and handle everything yourself. In my view, the best of both worlds would be one of these beach front villas, with a private beach, and hiring a butler for the stay so you don't have to worry about having service.

Sorry for the late reply. I'm going to Sorrento, Italy. I ended up getting a hotel for very cheap, but i really need to consider the AirBNB idea more. My wife and i werent sure about how much privacy we were going to get amongst other things. I'd love to hear more about how you would have done something like this. I think i need to learn to be a little more adventurous when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Is there some kind of unwritten rule that states any submission with (YC W*) needs to be upvoted straight away? I'm sure if the title was "Hotels.com reaches 1 billion bookings" wouldn't get the same attention. Anyways, congratulations!

If Hotels.com had launched on HN, regularly had founders and employees interact with members here, then I think Hotels.com too would get upvoted similarly when they achieved such feats.

There are so many YC companies that if every YC company was upvoted similarly, there wouldn't be anything but YC coverage on the homepage.

My favorite part about their Info Graphic is that is took 11 months from idea to launch. Its also interesting to see the 4 year timespan.

So often we can get frustrated by the time our ideas take to reach their goal, but its easy to forget success is hard work and rarely comes overnight.

Congrats to the Airbnb.

Not to marginalize these guy's success in any way, but being part of the winter 09 ycombinator class probably helped in a big way (right around time of their major bump)

The YC pedigree probably helped with capital and hiring, but I'm curious how they solved the chicken and egg problem of getting enough rentals to attract enough renters to attract more rentals... etc. Alot of hard work and selling, I imagine.

Well don't discount the PR and hype. Reputation plays a huge factor on a service like this. Yes, hard work and persistence is the real factor of this success.

Anyone know what's up with the speed issues? I've been trying to book a room for SXSW for days now & at least from here (CH) the site is unusably slow. Weird since my last experience booking a place in Vienna 5 months ago was great.

What about renting an apartment specifically for the purpose of putting it up on AirBnB? In San Francisco or NY this could make some money.

awesome news! congratulations

Did you guys happen to have the girl who used a website design as a resume create this for you? :)

Posterous fail

I am a bit unnerved with airbnb, as they took something people have been doing for free(couchsurfing), and are now incentivizing people to charge money for it.

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