This is different. I work at Airbnb - we've been working on what was announced today for quite some time, and it has been our intent to fully own and provide an Airbnb-branding-appropriate offering.
What were your motivations for this? It seems like the opposite experience of what I use Airbnb for. If people were after hand holding tourism it's unlikely they'd be using airbnb. Does this signal a shift in strategy away from what made us all start using airbnb in the first instance?
From what I learned about AirBnB's origin story via an episode of NPR's How I Built This [1], the original idea of AirBnB was a kind of "stay somewhere with a local and experience the place not as a tourist" experience.
The fact that this kind of idea never went away even when everyone else found that AirBnB fullfilled a different requirement doesn't surprise me.
Right. The original idea is now trashed. Airbnb doesn't care if someone is operating a 20 bunk bed dorm room that they don't actually live in, as long as they get a cut.
It couldn't get further from living like a local; it's just an AirBnHostel.
To expand a little on my sibling (prawn's) comment, I don't think the original idea is trashed, but travelers do have more options now. I've stayed at an "AirBnHostel" as well as "AirBnVacationHomes", but most of the time, I've stayed with hosts who like to hang out and share their city/lives.
It's relatively simple to discern which type of AirBnB you're getting from the host's description, and from the cities I've rented in (granted, mostly popular/populous destinations), there's plenty of choice between the types.
Strange. I mean, we only have our own experiences to go by, but every time I've used Airbnb (throughout Europe) it's always been with a host who doesn't live there and shows no desire nor feels any obligation to show their city (much less talk) to the traveler outside of handing-off the keys. Even when their profile might say differently. They were all way more Hotel than Hospitality Club, so to speak.
Yeah, I had a lady cancel her reservation at my place in NYC after realizing it wasn't a professionally operated hotel citing that she'd never experienced such an arrangement on Airbnb.
In some cases. In others, you can stay with others, or rent an entire house in a small village, or rent something crazy, etc. Airbnb has its faults, but there are loads of options on there.
I, too, work at Airbnb, and I'm also a host. A very significant majority of us care a great deal about the quality of the stays booked through us (I can't speak for everyone here, but if they don't care, I would question why they work here). Although there's not much of a reason to be public about it externally, it's a pretty regular occurrence to see poorly reviewed listings warned or failing to improve after that are removed for consistently poor reviews. We take a lot of pride in facilitating meaningful experiences between guests and hosts.
I love Airbnb. I use it almost exclusively (maybe 95% of the time) when I travel and I travel often. I even met my ex-co-founder through staying at his Airbnb. Bearing this in mind I think Airbnb is barking up the wrong tree here. A classic case of a solution looking for a problem. Airbnb are trying to solve a problem with this new move but not one based on a market need like their initial idea. The problem they are trying to solve is they've run out of growth in one market and are obsessed with trying to continue their hockey stick growth so they look to new markets. Lots of companies do this and they all inevitably fail. Doing this rips the soul out of companies and dilutes their value proposition. Growth is great until the delusional need to continue it at all costs becomes a curse. It looks like this is where Airbnb have arrived.
Edit: I just played around with it a bit more and maybe I was a bit harsh. I'm definitely not the target market for this and will never use though I can imagine there is a sizeable number of people who would enjoy this. That said it should definitely be a new app. It doesn't make sense to put it in the main app.
This is more or less correct - authentic, local experiences have always been top of mind. It was sort of an accident that in the process we also stumbled onto "stay somewhere cheap" with a better reputation system than CouchSurfer, et al.
Another way of thinking about this is to understand that Airbnb doesn't think of itself as an accommodations company, and hasn't for years. It thinks of itself as a travel company, and this has significant implications for its overall strategy.
This is awesome. My wife and I are planning a round the world trip to celebrate our last college tuition payment. We've talked about becoming 'Citizens of the World' and eschewing the canned tourist experiences to instead live the same lifestyle as the citizens of the countries we visit: Stay in a neighborhood instead of a high-rise hotel, shop at the same grocery stores, eat the same home-cooked meals, get around via the same transit, I mean as high-fidelity as is reasonable. We expect the main friction will be language, but we anticipate that we can work through that.
Thinking a little bigger, I can see no better way to combat bigotry and nationalism than to experience life the same way as humans from the other side of the planet, and realize that we are the same in so many ways.
I highly recommend HelpX to get a really good feel of the lifestyle in foreign countries. Rather than just staying at someone's place like Airbnb, you do light work for your host in exchange for free room and board. You get a place to live in a place where locals actually live, homecooked meals in the local style, when your host don't feel like cooking you get taken out to eat at places where locals actually eat, get shown around the local sights by your host on evenings and weekends, and you also get to experience some of the work they do. It's an incredibly easy, low-cost, and effective way to temporarily live somewhere.
I stayed with 2 families in France that way, and got to label wine bottles at a local domaine (vineyard), drink their wine at dinner, shovel horse manure at a farm, harvest honey, ran to the boulangerie for bread, went shopping at the local supermarket, got shown around a spectacular nearby castle and a monastery carved into a cliff that I'd never heard of, ate cheese and charcuterie at their favourite restaurants, they made an effort to cook traditional food like raclette and canneles for me to try.... really I can't rave about the experience enough.
This sounds tempting, but I have a hard enough time arranging regular visas on international trips, and work visas (even short term ones) sound like a nightmare and a half...
Sorry, late response, but most countries (including France) require a work visa for things like unpaid internships, or being compensated in any way. Paying for board/food counts as compensation.
Look at it from the perspective of the US -- you can't just recruit programmers from India, have them come over "on vacation", pay them in room/board, and expect to not have any problems with border control. Work is work.
I don't know the official answer, but given that it's all under the table, short term and no money is being exchanged, I think you'd be crazy to even try getting a work visa. I'll be honest that it didn't even cross my mind.
> to instead live the same lifestyle as the citizens of the countries we visit: Stay in a neighborhood instead of a high-rise hotel, shop at the same grocery stores, eat the same home-cooked meals, get around via the same transit, I mean as high-fidelity as is reasonable
Until one of you gets severely sick or something like that, in which case you'll be very happy to not live like a local anymore and fall back on your home country.
This "citizen of the world" rhetoric seems to only ever be "citizen of the world that we like". How about being a citizen of the world in North Korea, or as a woman in Saudi Arabia, or as a gay teenager in Somalia?
Sorry, I have a hard time swallowing the "bourgeoisie traveling the world with Airbnb is the best way to combat bigotry" bait.
You might try thinking about this from the other direction. I can tell you from first-hand experience that once-shocking levels of South Korean nationalism, and really, ethnic nationalism, have been calmed down to something far far friendlier and more cosmopolitan, and it very much seems that travel and exposure to other cultures (especially the West, but not only) are what has done the trick.
Now as for being a North Korean, well, you are kind of proving the point because North Koreans' number one problem is isolation from the world.
Back in the USA, what percentage of Trump voters do you imagine hold passports? Sure, correlation is different from causation, but still...
So I can respect your call to realism, but at the same time it reminds me of some old aphorism about babies and bathwater or something.
Incidentally, another baby that people seem to want to throw out when the bathwater gets dirty is international trade.
>Back in the USA, what percentage of Trump voters do you imagine hold passports? Sure, correlation is different from causation, but still...
About the same percentage as Hillary supporters? In my experience holding a passport is more correlated with income than any particular political leaning. What they do is likely a lot different (e.g. religious mission vs French wine binge), but there is nothing particularly Democrat/Republican about a passport.
The notion of global citizen is misguided in the first place, because there is no global entity to be a citizen of, at any socio economic level that matters.
Sure you can say that you're a creature of Mother Earth, we're all brothers and sisters united by a common bond, all that; at the end of the day you're still paying taxes to a very specific, non "global citizen" government, and depending on that government for basic services like healthcare or educating your kids.
> The notion of global citizen is misguided in the first place, because there is no global entity to be a citizen of, at any socio economic level that matters.
Well duh. I'm pretty sure people who use this phrase are well aware that they're not literally becoming citizens of some world entity.
> Sure you can say that you're a creature of Mother Earth, we're all brothers and sisters united by a common bond, all that; at the end of the day you're still paying taxes to a very specific, non "global citizen" government, and depending on that government for basic services like healthcare or educating your kids.
Yes, this is what the term "global citizen" means.
>Thinking a little bigger, I can see no better way to combat bigotry and nationalism than to experience life the same way as humans from the other side of the planet, and realize that we are the same in so many ways.
The people rich enough and willing to do this in the first place are usually not that bigoted/nationalistic. Someone who hates the French isn't going to volunteer to go live in a village in France for a month... especially if it means quitting their job and spending a 20% of their annual income to do so.
Think about the other side of this - the host side. For hosts of these experiences, they don't need to be rich or capital-owning at all in order to be exposed to people of many different backgrounds through experiences.
i think would be very cool if there was an app that would do the reverse and enable the have-nots to have what the haves have, even for a short period of time:
- private heli trip to a private island villa,
- 300' yachts, aventadors, 488s, 911s all free to use,
- private shopping sessions (fully paid for) at hermes, chanel,
- meet-and-greets w/ robuchon, redzepi etc,
- take a whimsical trip to some middle of nowhere farm to work for a day..
at a totally affordable price for the typical middle class in a middling country.
it's not real obviously, it's all a show, rich people don't live like this every day, just substantially more likely to experience something like this than the not-so-rich.
obviously, it's not going to happen, but it is a hope.
So your idea is for an app that would allow anyone to have private heli trips to island villas and free-to-use Aventadors for a "totally affordable" price?
And Vegas! The underlying reason all of those things suck.
Relevant: David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." You should read it — it's a hilarious takedown of these sorts of experiences (specifically a 7 day Caribbean cruise).
Right about that. But if travelers have no preconceived notion one way or the other, this can provide a true notion that they can carry back to friends and family, Tweet about, Instagram, Facebook, etc. etc. The message will get out.
> combat bigotry and nationalism than to experience life the same way as humans from the other side of the planet
it's hard to do as a tourist because the whole point of travelling is to momentarily disconnect from the existential demands of life, which drives national sentiment.
unless in your quest to live like a local, you also experience the angst of employment, family, social pressure and social standing, and where your place in the world is going to be.
It's a nice idea, but if the rest of AirBnb is anything to go by, it'll very quickly be filled with generic experiences that cut costs and under deliver.
I've had some great times staying at AirBnbs, but over time the ratio of good to bad/average is sliding fast.
I've done this abroad in a few places — Costa Rica, Taiwan, Greece. While it is pretty trendy, it's actually somewhat difficult to "live like a local" in places where you don't know a local. That said I think staying in an Airbnb spare room with a local host simplifies things a lot. I suppose they can kinda become your impromptu host family.
Also, you might like the short book Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.
My wife and I did the same for all of 2014 and 2015, living out of airbnbs, one month to the next.
Nothing but amazing people and experiences and nothing but 5 star reviews in both directions, with us singing Airbnb's praises all the way.
And then last week, I tried to find a place for new year's, and discovered that Airbnb had deleted my account without notice and without cause. It is impossible to contact a human being without an airbnb account, and we are effectively blacklisted from doing business with the company.
Checking online, this is hardly an isolated case, so do yourself a favor and have a backup plan for that eventuality.
I'd rather prefer them to first stop skimming 50% on foreign exchange. Just today saw this screenshot in my fb feed, someone's reservation cost was converted at 100 rur/eur, whereas market rate is around 70 now. And they force payment in rubles, like if Russians don't have enough problems already.
I seriously doubt they are skimming. It's most likely the company that is actually doing the currency exchange that is overcharging AirBnB and they are pushing the cost onto the end user.
It's a fairly common practice for states in autocratic regimes to force foreign businesses operating in their country to cut them in on the action with currency hijinx. Currency exchange rates are often purposely kept low for precisely this reason. Even if it's the exchange company ripping them off, at least half is going into some bureaucrat's pocket.
It's a cheap way for the regime to reward supporters without actually having to come up with any real dough. Anyone supporting the regime has safe, easy means of exploiting currency arbitrage whereas ordinary people are policed heavily. Show up at the airport with a suitcase full of US dollars and depending on your political status the customs agent will either close it back up and send you on your way, or perp-walk you straight to jail after confiscating your haul. (guess where it's going?)
It's also why one of the first demands the IMF makes on broke states before they'll lend them money is to let the official currency rate float.
In that case then why don't they allow paying in either currency? I hate that airbnb always makes me pay in my home currency when my credit card gets me way better exchange rates, but I don't have a choice
Why can't I use the airbnb website so that I can sit comfortably at a desk with a real mouse and keyboard and calendar?
On a PC, you can open new tabs easily to read reviews, look at maps, make itineraries, and comparison shop. This is torture on a phone, and as a result, people just don't perform as thorough a search on mobile.
Airbnb knows this because they have data on how many options we consider before making a reservation when we browse on phones vs. PCs.
With this app, they're trying to push us towards making a less informed decision by limiting our ability to research the options, which seems blatantly anti-consumer to me.
hey, that's true! I have used Withlocals before and I loved it. And when I saw the 'experiences' part I thought I had heard it before and now I remember from where.
Looks kinda the same indeed, although they focus more on 1 day activities. A good alternative if you don't want to do 1 activity for your entire weekend trip.
Interesting. A startup, BeSomebody, actually just pitched this item on SharkTank. His presentation did not go well at all, and he got no money. But the idea seems really cool. So I'm glad Airbnb is implementing it.
A few different companies and people have tried to do this before, but they've generally struggled to find adoption. I think, since this is a fairly natural complement to Airbnb's existing business, that Airbnb may succeed where the others have failed, but only time will tell.
I was a co-founder of a startup which had this concept back in 2011. There must have been some sort of global zeitgeist or something because during that year over 40 competing startups showed up all over the world. Only a few survived, and unfortunately my startup was not one of them. Even the ones that did survive never did that well, Vayable and Viator got acquired, and some small time sites are still dragging on.
I am curious whether AirBnB has a different take on it. The major problem is that it is hard to deliver on that promise and implication of an authentic experience from a local who is more interested in showing you his/her world than money. Actual individual tour guides have scheduling issues due to them having lives and jobs outside of giving tours, which then makes the system favor organized tour operators, and we go back full circle to big tour groups.
That's a good point about not finding enough local guides. I'd expect people would be less picky about housing assuming the quality and prices were reasonable. But someone wanting to tour wineries might not be ok going mountain biking if that was the only option available when they had time.
Google seems like they have been pushing more into this "experience" space with the creation of their local guide program. They've effectively introduced a review-based system for anything inside of maps and incentivize people through earned points for reviews, photos and other items. Google has been sending emails out to local guides to conduct meet-ups and other inputs from the users. Wondering how long before you can start contacting local guides directly from the maps application.
I travel a lot and I have recently started to use Google trips and it's amazing app which shows what to do for the day, when the attractions get close, what's the nearest hotel, photos, translations of basic sentences and more..
How this will be different from Google Trips? Does Airbnb has enough data to show me relevant information? Or this is about partnering with local businesses to find me a guide/get a massage?
I have a feeling their beta experience hosts will be their cream of the crop. Once the general public starts hosting experiences, and Airbnb's quality control falters, we'll see a lot of complaints about shitty or scamful experiences.
That's what people thought about sleeping in strangers' apartments, but it turns out that reputation systems do a pretty decent job of culling bad experiences. "Don't get in a car with strangers" used to be common sense, but now people do it every day.
Why not just go out and have your own experience and be guided by your own sense of adventure? Rent a bike and just explore. Stumbling upon new things without an app or a guide book is one of the greatest joys of traveling.
The usual response to this question is "well I only have a few days or my time is really limited." Which means you aren't going to "live like a local anyway" if you only have 72 hours.
The places actual locals frequent will now become boxes to be ticked on a "live like a local curated airbnb experience." And there will be lines of people all trying to have the "local experience" just as you are. And these are the people you will end up meeting and talking to. The actual locals will have gotten fed up and started going elsewhere.
This article is worth a read, I think someone posted it here a while back:
Your too late. I live 3 minutes walk from a tourist destination so my airbnb business is good. 9/10 locals don't hang out there despite good prices and tons of bars.
Only a few of my guests hit up places locals go to...if they're decent they get tons of tourist anyway.
>Why not just go out and have your own experience and be guided by your own sense of adventure? Rent a bike and just explore. Stumbling upon new things without an app or a guide book is one of the greatest joys of traveling.
I'd say nearly all my guest do that. I feel like I have to pull teeth to give them a quick 15 minute walking orientation tour to save them time.
People don't like making choices. It is a cognitive burden especially if you're in a new and unusual place. Unusual to you, not the locals obviously. So having a guide can help and when you revisit the place you can go on a more freeform adventure.
I think this is a pretty good idea but not sure how I feel about AirBnB monopolizing the thing. If there is some kind of exclusivity component then the aggregation of "experiences" on a single platform is not beneficial in the long run.
>"People don't like making choices. It is a cognitive burden especially if you're in a new and unusual place"
This is a rather blanket statement and you haven't supported it with any evidence. I also don't believe this is true at all.
I don't think there are many people who spend money and time planning a trip and then fly to to some far off place and upon arriving views exploring the place that they traveled to "a burden." Those that do tend to either not travel for leisure or else travel to the same places again and again or maybe opt for package holidays.
"and when you revisit the place you can go on a more freeform adventure."
Many people never revisit the same places especially the ones really far away. In fact a common refrain among travelers is "I would love to get back there"
I feel like they should have done this under a different name. Or am I missing something and "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind" is an outdated tome and not relevant anymore?
I also thought that was the most interesting of the featured experiences. Actually gardening with anyone is probably a really great/fun social experience (I'd assume I do pretty much no gardening outside of some indoor experiments).
CTO of an adventure experience start up here. Wanted to share my thoughts.
The adventures are curated specifically by Airbnb it looks like. They are mostly urban adventures so it doesn't cater to the adventure type. Overall the app is great. Little Netflix but it's nice.
The major issue with this and what we've seen is real adventures are really hard to get. Most of the outfitters have trust issues with technology because they have been burned by the 50 other companies that tried to do this but were sketchy. Gaining that trust is key and why they did this under Airbnb name is going to hurt them.
Exciting validation for us and a welcome competitor but you can't throw money at adventure market (climbing, skiing, fishing, diving, etc) and expect to gain traction. Takes connections, trust and a show of commitment to the industry.
"you can't throw money at adventure market and expect to gain traction".
Eh, yes you can. Not to say they'll make it this time, AirBnB has been trying this (or something like it) for years, they might well fail. But not because money can't gain traction :)
Not at all. They will cater exclusively to urban adventures. Branching out to real guided adventures will take them a long time. Trust me. Guides doing backcountry adventures are a whole different breed. It also takes an understanding of how permitting and licensing works for parks not to mention the exclusive land permits.
I just got an EULA-wall asking to agree not to treat anyone on Airbnb "with bias or judgment" based on their origins.
That's not how bias/judgment work. You can't just agree to be unbiased, though you can certainly try to be aware of your biases and to be accordingly more sensitive to situations where you may be biased.
I wonder what the impact of this is. So many people blindly click "Agree" when presented with legalese - will this be any different? Will anyone really click the button that admits they are biased? Will anyone change their conditioned behavior because they were nagged by a modal they saw one time and promptly dismissed?
It's interesting to me that we hold AirBnB to one standard and Tinder / OKCupid to a completely different one, even though they're both essentially apps for finding someone whose house you can sleep in.
.. i hope you are being sarcastic because they are different. the latter is not for a house to sleep in but rather someone you can sleep with.. it can be in a dumpster or box if need be.
If you're Italian and send me a request, which I refuse on the sole basis that I hate Italians, no matter how politely, I am certainly acting with bias.
I had an apartment booked in st Petersburg, had been for months. My wife, Latvian, handled communication, in Russian.
Show up. Dude is visibly shocked and upset that I'm not Russian. Proceeds to "angliski blad" and "velikaia schwinoi" me, tells us apartment is closed for renovations starting today.
In Russia this is a problem - when you get a visa you have to list your accommodation - and if you diverge you stand a half decent chance of being arrested and deported, particularly if a host reports you as a no show.
We eventually found a hotel that evening, but it's left me very wary of using airbnb - and I'm a bloody white male. I can't imagine what a dark-skinned Muslim/homosexual/not just British couple/person might face.
Huh, I still don't have that refund, now that I remember. Three months ago.
Just wanted to add, as my comment seemed harsh against Russians - I've had a very mixed experience in Russia over the years. In cities, very mixed bag, muscovites are generally assholes but laugh about being assholes, st Petersburg clearly feel like they're under invasion. Go deeper though and people are warm and kind - we found ourselves being inexplicably adored in random small villages in the urals by the old babushkas sweeping the empty dusty streets. I had a night I'll never forget with a bunch of mobsters in Volgograd - and I met the Russian Slim Pickins as a highway cop near Astrakhan. Taught me to swear and beg for mercy in Russian, and let me go - despite the illegal-on-every-planet manoeuvre I'd just pulled.
Airbnb I've also had some great experiences with - in fact most have been - but it only takes one really shitty situation to sour ones perception. I'll probably use them again but it's still an issue they have to get on top of one way or another.
So then you start a new account and list it again. Change a letter in or the order of the address if needs be to make it look unique. There are many properties which exist multiple times on airbnb.
I live in a city in SW England, in a Georgian terraced house - the four stories above me are airbnb. The house next door is airbnb. The house two beyond that is airbnb.
This street used to be social housing, now it's an illegal hotel. I pick broken glass out of my yard weekly. I even had one of upstairs' guests just walk straight into my living room a few months back and start complaining about water pressure. Practically threw her through the door - not what I needed wedding eve. Par for the course though - last year a hen party were trying to break in through my bedroom window. I've watched the street depopulate over 36 months. I'm leaving soon too - it'll all be airbnb by the end of next year.
So, bad hosts just relist, airbnb really don't care (why on earth would they?!), and the cost to people who live near/under these modern day doss-houses is considerable.
I don't think so, they have been criticized for enabling hosts to make decisions based on racist prejudices, not for the messages exchanged.
I would expect AirBnB to try to cover itself by looking at the patterns of acceptances/declines by the hosts and correlating them with the apparent ethnicity of the guests.
I'm not sure how that works legally. If I systematically discriminate against a race of people without being aware of it I'm pretty sure I can still be in legal trouble for doing so.
Funny, the experience of "Send yourself an SMS to get our new app." instead of just linking to Google Play for people in Spain is that it doesn't accept spanish number format. Instead it asks for one extra number and if you pad it with a zero, it throws an error "Unfortunately, a server error prevented your request from being completed". So much for the Airbnb experience.
Even better that if you turn of JavaScript, then the links open up Google Play instead of the annoying sms popup.
Airbnb's app has the most annoying privacy problems that I refuse to use it on my phone. I only use the website for this reason.
When setting up the app, it refuses to sign you in unless you authorize it with Oauth to download your entire contacts list from Google or Facebook. I refuse to give Airbnb access to my hundreds of personal and professional contacts just so I can book a room somewhere.
For some reason, the website doesn't require this level of Oauth permissions, just the ability to see your email address.
Airbnb, please fix this! Privacy conscious consumers shouldn't have to delete your app, but there are some lines in the sand we refuse to cross, like giving you access to our entire list of personal and professional contacts.
> to fully own and provide an Airbnb-branding-appropriate offering.
Can you translate that into some human language? Probably not.
Here, let me try: people don't like you for legitimate reasons, and you clumsily tried to make that go away. Sorry, dude, you weren't "brand-appropriate." Can you give it another go?
You can't comment like this on HN. Snark is deprecated here and personal attacks are a bannable offence. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Is it now a yet another pizza delivery/haircut scheduling app? Really, you should try that. You will make more money than on those "food anthropologist" thingies.
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Ouch, -18? Are you downvoting me with your whole team?
I am very happy to hear that! The app I developed drop!in (http://www.idrop.in) exists in a similar segment and is doing well for the year. (Accenture Customer Innovation Award Finalist, 300K+ Events) . The more companies go into this segment it will help me increase awareness for the solution. If someone is interested in buying it let me know dropin_at_tenqyu.com !
Here's the one where they partnered with Vayable, all the way back in 2011:
https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/02/airbnb-to-partner-with-vay...