Poll: Airbnb controversy - Does it matter?
There's been a lot of press this week about Airbnb and the majority of it has been very negative.
I want to know if what's happened and how they have handled it so far will change whether you use Airbnb.
I want to know if what's happened and how they have handled it so far will change whether you use Airbnb.
There's been a lot of press about this because "every day is repost day" and blogs want to milk hits. It's a notable incident, but most of the press is just trying to milk ad impressions from attention while it lasts.
Most people are reasonable and would not write off the whole platform because of 1 out 2M incident, most will just take more precautions, some will just be comfortable with the odds.
While the current incident doesn't make me feel unsafe in those choices (statistics are good), AirBnB's handling of it has left me with no confidence whatsoever that they are a well-managed or reasonable company. They may well be awesome people... but they do have competition, and I'll be using them instead. First impressions matter.
Everyone I've been in contact with seems very nice and understanding and I'm pretty satisfied with it all thus far. I'm hoping everything works out. I might be SOL otherwise, i.e. spending a hell of a lot more money than planned.
It was only a matter of time before an incident like the one EJ had became a reality. I'm sure there will be more, but that's the nature of this beast. Out of the 2 million places that have been booked, I think having one or two be fuck ups is great. If it stays like this, or becomes >= 1 for every 2 million, I will continue using Airbnb or similar services.
Most people are nice and trustworthy, but there will always be the handful psycho/sociopaths that make a good thing go awry.
If I am booking a hotel, I hit tripadvisor before booking any hotel. The internet is very helpful for this sort of thing and that is something that people used to rely on guide books for (Lonely Planet and Let's Go guides come to mind).
The current situation in the news is a reason while I will never open my house to a similar situation. If I were to rent out a room, I would make sure someone was around. If it was the whole house, it would be set up as a rental not as my personal home.
Even before this, I would not have rented out my apartment. But I see much lower risks to renting others' apartments - especially when I can choose to rent only places with a lot of positive reviews.
Some may shy away from renting out their place after this, absolutely. But on the tenant side, people who would have considered renting but will no longer consider are either shunning AirBNB's reaction or illogical.
I feel sorry for the victim, but there's little I could do, so the only real affect it has had on me was to convince me to trawl through "new" and look for more interesting stories to read, rather than the Nth rehash of this one.
I also hope that they make some significant updates to their PR and Crisis PR team and processes, so they are better equipped to handle crises like this in the future.
This is a one-in-a-million incident, blown out of proportion and turned into melodrama.