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Fascinating conversation. Thanks for giving insight into how these deals work...

>ABNB reminds me of Etsy in that it facilitates real commerce in a marketplace model directly between two people.

Interestingly enough, I still tend to side with Fred's assessment of AirBnB's future. All my experiences with it as a user have been too unreliable to expect that it can scale to truly massive usability. Selling your old guitar online is a lot different than renting a room to someone. Renting a room has so much more of a personal aspect to it.

There are so many more subtleties to actually having a stranger come and stay in your house than there are to sending a stranger a book, guitar, etc via USPS.

Regardless, I still think there's a massive market out there for this type of thing, I just don't see it swallowing up the whole Hotel industry.

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There are so many more subtleties to actually having a stranger come and stay in your house than there are to sending a stranger a book, guitar, etc via USPS.

So, PG is a good salesman, and he hit the nail on the head with this comment:

Just wait till all the 10-room pensiones in Rome discover this site.

If you ever read a Rick Steves guide (which are not exactly the scariest guidebooks on the planet -- they're fairly comfortable middle-class NPR stuff) or tour around Europe in backpacker mode you will become familiar with the pension, aka the German zimmer or the English B&B. These are rooms. In pubs, or very tiny hotels, or people's homes. Which get rented out. They are very common, they have been a tradition forever, and they aren't very formal. Maybe you call ahead. Sometimes that doesn't even work. Sometimes you call ahead but then the landlord forgets your reservation. But ultimately you turn up, meet the landlord, get taken to the room, you look around for two minutes, you say "si" or "no" and fork over a night's rent, and there you go. It's not like buying a house or getting married or anything.

Yes, it's a bit more subtle to rent a room than to deal in used books. But it's not that subtle.

I just did my first AirBNB experience (actually am still in the middle of it) and I can say that it's actually been surprisingly smooth. It's almost like a paid way to make friends. The hosts who I'm staying with are so cool, and since I'm pretty public online, it was easy for them to feel comfortable with me staying at their pad. They've set it up as much like a hotel as I could ask for. It's really great, and it's paying half their rent (they have about 100% occupancy, believe it or not).

I like Airbnb. I've hosted 8ish times and stayed with people once.

Why I think the people on Airbnb are 'cool' is that its a small population that has a lot in common (young or young-at-heart, singles and couples without kids, internet natives, own a macbook, would love to hitchhike Europe while submitting correspond reports for the NYTimes). As it grows, I'm worried that everyone's not going to find everyone else 'cool' on Airbnb.

I wasn't around for the early days of Craigslist, but I imagine it was easy to like people you found on Craigslist because they were probably very similar people to be on Craigslist so early. But now, after scale and popularity, that's gone.

I wonder if Airbnb might lose the 'cool' people edge after scaling.

Good question but I think they will always have the 'cool' crowd simply because allowing a weary stanger to stay in your apartment is inherently a cool thing to do.

also money talks in this case. As has been brought up elsewhere in this thread, there is a huge market here for unused space that AirBnB is exploiting. Even cool people like saving/making money.

What Airbnb would need to do is allow renters to rate rentees. Two-way system like eBay used to be.

We do.

Like Craigslist, there's also the "everyone was really cool until someone raped and murdered a client" angle.

I would be afraid of being the uncool person in this equation :-)

Aww shucks, Thanks, Randall. We really enjoy hosting, and it seems like an even better deal for us (we get paid to make friends).

About the only downside Iv'e experienced so far is that I have to wash sheets all the time (most people stay with us for 2-3 days and since we now have between 70%-100% occupancy thats a lot of sheet washing.

I'm also about to go to Paris and the value proposition of airbnb there is even better (try hipmunk's hotel search in Paris). We are staying in a private entire apartment on the seine with a view of the eiffel tower for about $130 a night.

My wife and I used AirBnB to stay in paris on our honeymoon, we had an entire apartment (a studio) in a nice part of town for a fraction of the cost of hotel. It was great experience that we couldn't have had without AirBnB.

If you're renting out your spare room 70-100% of the time, why don't you just get a roommate? Seems like it would be safer, less work, and you'd ideally have a better long term relationship.

Well, to look at it from solely a financial point of view, a room in an apartment is worth much more if you rent it out by the night or week rather than by the year (like you would with a roommate).

Here in my neighborhood, in Chicago, one can find a room for about $40/night; 15 nights and I already have half my rent. So yes, having a roommate might be less work (but that depends on what you consider "work") but I can make more money renting a room out by the night.

They can probably charge a premium to the short term guests.

Well, we like meeting new people, we probably would have to charge the roommate less and there are different social obligations for a roommate. (For example a guest that stays for a few days is unlikely to leave a mess in the kitchen). In addition any little annoying habits don't have enough time to become tiresome.

Lastly, we can have the room available for our friends and family when they come and visit (which is the point of having a guest room in the first place). My parent stay there (for free, of course) about 2 nights a month.

Seriously, AirBNB should post this comment on the front page of their "List Your Space" page. This is a great value statement.

I've got friends who do it 'cause you can't boot your new roommate out when your parents want to come visit for a week...

'It's almost like a paid way to make friends.' - love this :))

I stayed in like 4 airbn places in SV and learned: 1) That it certainly not for everyone, some ppl just dont need all this fun and pretty happy with avg hotel room. 2) If you think that its not for you, still please give it a try, there is a very serious chance that you will absolutely love it. (I was super skeptical too) 3) I dont pay Airbnb fee on second stay and just contact my 'paid friends' directly. They need to consider this and if its a problem in scale. 4) I absolutely love it and will only stay in hotel in worst case scenario if all my "paid friends" in area cant host me.

3) I dont pay Airbnb fee on second stay and just contact my 'paid friends' directly. They need to consider this and if its a problem in scale.

That's a really good point. A common theme in Paul's argument is that "AirBnB could be the next eBay." But eBay's worst nightmare is buyers and sellers communicating directly, saving each other money while cutting the company out of the revenue loop.

AirBnB is almost more like a dating service than a marketplace... a 'buyer' and 'seller' who prove compatible with each other will never need to use the service again, at least not in the same city.

"I just don't see it swallowing up the whole Hotel industry."

I've been out of the travel/hotel game for about 4 years now, but I worked in it on and off from ~'97 through to '07.

It's an industry ripe for a new player to do a Paypal style end run around the traditional banking/creditcard industry.

I don't know whether Airbnb are that player (I'm 100% sure pg and Fred are _much_ better judges of that then I am), but I'm also at least 99% sure that it _won't_ be any of the existing big players (Sabre, Gallileo, Pegasus, MyFideleo, Worldres were the large players I worked with) that revolutionise the hotel booking business.

I definitely agree! the industry is stagnant and ready to be disrupted.

I'm going to Vancouver soon with my family; the first thing I did with my wife this week was pull up AirBNB (where is your ipad app, guys?) to check out what sort of deals we could get.

I'm not saying I wouldn't check hotel deals, but reading honest reviews from people who really stayed in each room, and sometimes getting to half off a hotel works great for me. They are definitely moving into 'high on my list' for travel, personal and business. I'm guessing I'm not alone here.

Strangers renting rooms are only a piece of their future. HomeAway (vacation rentals) just bought a superbowl commercial and are reporting revenue of $100M+.

writing on the wall: https://skitch.com/webwright/rieyj/airbnb-search

Note the # of entire home/apt entries. My guess is that these (with B&Bs, inns, and eventually hotels) will dominate the listings.

ABNB has a challenge with positioning moving forward-- a LOT of people think they are all about renting a room in a stranger's house, sharing a common area, etc. But their growth speaks for itself.

I disagree.

I opted for ABNB literally 5 out of 6 times this past February. All successful.

My take on it is that Airbnb is great unless you're the kind of person that doesn't trust strangers. Sadly, in the United States, the tendency to not trust strangers has been on the upswing for the last few decades.

I think the trusting-strangers thing actually comes down to two questions:

1. The collective level: are there enough people who trust strangers that Airbnb can make tons of money, and help out those people? It looks like the answer is yes.

2. The individual level: are you okay with trusting some random strangers from the internet? I think you probably should be -- people tend toward decency, overall -- and it's possible to change the way you feel about something with a little effort.

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