Airbnb announces confidential submission of draft Registration Statement

Confidential S-1's are reasonably new (2012) and limited to "emerging growth" companies. But yeah, I imagine most S-1s discussed on HN take advantage of that provision.

EDIT: ohh, that changed in 2017. Now all companies can file confidentially.

In all of my sales I have modified the offering midstream after feedback from investors that jumped through hoops to see how to invest and balked at the numbers. All advisors I've ever had all completely missed the mark about what the market is interested in and what a good deal looks like. And then after modifying its published publicly and that's the only record of what the terms ever were. In the public's mind we never mispriced or raised or lowered based on demand.

Confidential S-1's are perfect for that same result.

What action has Lisbon taken recently? I hadn't heard this until now.

The market can remain irrational far longer than one's ability to remain liquid :-)

That's bad, because your life can be in the hands of your AirBnb host. https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d6... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-death-at-an-airbnb-rental-p...

There are going to be legitimate reasons for removing a review like bad writing, personal information, or foul language, but the net effect is making the listing appear better than it is, and that doesn't sit well with me.

You know, the moment the pandemic hit, the layoffs at Uber and Lyft came and the recent disappointing earnings and the worker classification ruling, it was just screaming "short me".

Lyft in particular offered some deranged predictions thinking this sort of market is sustainable and reaching "profitablity in 2021". This was them last year [0], this was them four months ago [1], and this is them now [2]. They seem to have used a malfunctioned crystal ball for that prediction.

Airbnb seems like they are now escaping for an IPO, but I'd rather short the stock until it reaches below its IPO price. This virus is not going away any time soon.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21328871

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23020812

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24114206

You shouldn't short a stock on the basis of you not liking it or based on X bad business practices. You should only short it if you believe that the market will perceive it as over valued, and the valuation will go down. That's it.

Another dark pattern is hiding the price until you are nearly booking the place. Most people want a cheap stay close to where they need to be, so they look on the prices on the map, which fail to include fees which can be all over the place depending on the host.

Short the company -- not the stock. 1. Don't buy the stock. 2. Don't use the platform. 3. Tell others to do the same.

I don't really like Airbnb as a company but they are the only one out of the marketplace based unicorns who's unit economics seem really solid to me. I personally would not be against them.

Can you share an example of a place where you stayed at and the negative review was removed ? Would be great to see a before and after screenshot so that people are aware that this is happening

organizational bloat.

IBM lawsuit

From knowledge of the travel industry:

1. Hotels are still in the dumps.

2. Single home rentals, a la VRBO and AirBnB, are doing fantastic as people decamp from urban areas and work remotely.

3. Urban rentals are in the shitter.

4. Shared spaces are also in the shitter.

AirBnB has a lot more urban inventory and shared spaces than for example VRBO (which was always more based around vacation destinations), but I have no idea if their split between urban and vacation destinations is an overall boon or hindrance for them.

I highly doubt they make more money now than before covid.

This is at least as far as the UK goes, Brighton 2 weekend ago was £430 for 2 nights for 2 people in the Mercure which is kinda well meh facility wise.

Hotels basically are either closed for renovation or jacked up the prices while closing down everything that they had as an advantage over AB&B.

The restaurant is closed, there is no room cleaning unless you explicitly book it a day in advance, the gym, spa and pools are closed and so are all other in-house attractions and services such as the children play areas, lounges, media rooms etc.

So you have higher prices than pre-pandemic in many places due to them having to recoup their losses and a much much much worst service than usual which already in many places in Europe was a hit and miss outside of the large resorts and world renowned hotels the hotel service and overall quality in Europe is pretty shite.

Another big factor in Airbnb, like other "platforms" like this vs their traditional counterparts, they have no assets that incurr costs no matter how down the market it

Hilton, Marriott, etc all still have MASSIVE amounts of physical property that they have to maintain year around no matter if they are full or empty. Airbnb has none of those costs.

This makes them more flexible and are able to quickly respond to changes in the travel market, more so than their traditional competitors

There aren't further layoffs, this information is inaccurate.

I live in a very touristic neighborhood in Lisbon and several of the apartments in my building are rented full time through AirBnB & friends and it's definitely still a lot quieter than pre-covid, and we're in August when there should be tourists everywhere.

It's only one datapoint of course but from this very limited perspective it seems very hard for me to believe that their business would be stronger now than pre-covid.

But hotels are probably suffering even more, that's true.

The timing is certainly interesting...

Presuming Airbnb makes it through the crisis, they're set up for many quarters of blistering earnings "growth" as things return to normal.

Brian Chesky pretty much said exactly this in his interview with Guy Raz on How I Built This a week or so ago.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=594606847885635

they are benefiting from rise of the "local summer getaway" but that's only one season of the year. what happens in the fall and winter? and to business travel?

Local tourism is fine but international is not. Airline travel is not fully functional yet.

I moved back to Rome from Milan because I knew that without tourism (from US in particular) rents would go down

I'm now in the process of choosing between 2 houses both in the most exclusive part of the city centre, a thing I could only dream of until few months ago, at the same price I was renting an apartment in Milan in an average neighborhood

Most of the listings are former Airbnb places, you can tell when you visit the houses that packing up so many beds to maximize profit didn't pay, that level of service could only be acceptable by youngsters looking for a cheap place to crash during the two nights spent in Rome with friends, but it actually lowered the real value of the apartments a lot, to the point that many of them are corridors with the same number of rooms and bathrooms, but not a living room or a kitchen, hence impossible to live in unless you enjoy suffering.

Unfortunately for them young tourists and cheap flights will not come back for at least a few years

So now their properties are basically worthless

Agencies that were managing the properties have abandoned the business or are selling their licenses (good luck with that!) and owners have to face the choice of renewing and waiting at least next year to start renting again or lower the prices and avoid more losses, but accept a long term contract which binds them for at least 3+2 years

As I said many of them are not worth it even if the rent went down considerably so it's not even easy to rent in this economy, even owning an apartment in a super exclusive neighborhood rented at half the price, also considering that people who can afford it don't pay for shitty places full of sofa-beds and cheap furniture.

all the listings say the same thing "NO AIRBNB, NO HOLIDAY RENTALS, NO AGENCIES" they only want to deal with medium-long term rentals with trusted people after checking their income.

I'm quite sure even after covid airbnb and all the businesses around it won't come back, at least not in Rome, not in the same way, people are fed up with mass tourism and businesses are starting to enjoy working more with locals who actually live in the neighborhood, like it used to be not so long ago, but were forced to leave by the "tourist-pay-double-for-shit" craze.

It happened and until it worked, it worked, but when it stopped it left ruins

I think people have opened their eyes

Airbnb will still be the preferred way to rent a van on a beautiful beach on a Greek island where a couple can spend few romantic nights, but the idea that it was going to improve the fabric of our old cities is dead IMO

> They can't lay off employees or reduce staff until, currently, end of September.

The WARN letters for October 1 layoffs have all already gone out. They needed to be out before August 1st. So we'll know of any further layoffs with two months notice.

I think the big bucks for AirBnb in the future are in the medium-long term rental market, not the vacation market. The >1 month rentals also happen to bypass most of the regulations they're having issues with.

I’m not so sure. Look at Sweden, look at NYC. The numbers ain’t going up again until now. There have been pandemics before, that’s not the first one. And after the pandemic everything will be as before.

Why do you think AirBNB will be overvalued?

There's the old saying, It's Probably Overpriced. Not just tech stocks, not just Airbnb.

It seems highly likely that you are not, and therefore that this trade is much less of an obvious win than you appear to assume.

I'm super eager for the opposite reason: I want to go long. In 3 years people's travel habits will mostly be back to normal, and AirBnb has a very strong competitive moat

Good luck with that. In this market stonks only go up.

We wrote similar comments at almost the same time. Yes and Yes.

They're a pretty shady experience as a guest, so on a personal level I'm upset (per other comment). There's a pandemic and economic catastrophe, so there's a good bear argument that adds to the already bear argument that cities around the world are cracking down on AirBNB rentals because they're easy political targets.

I'm eager for them to go public so people who short them can lose their shirts.

You'd think so but my brother started an extended WFH road trip and his first booking (after a very long drive) ended up going to hell due to the host not having the place ready and to top it off Airbnb has some crazy policies such as: if you have any issue it's a 100% refund (ok, great you think) but since there is no leeway to even attempt to work something out with a host, the host will always leave poor feedback, which (get this) you can not view unless you leave a review. Bonkers. Not worth the trouble for people who have enough money to not want to worry about the hassle and headache.