Airbnb S-1
sec.gov
sec.gov
- Looks like they are significantly leaner now as a result of COVID. Cost of revenue is at an all-time low in Q3 (17% of revenue on p164). There's a lot of focus the drastic cuts to Sales and Marketing, but it looks like there's a fair amount of increased discipline across the board.
- It's interesting that Operations and support looks to be very similar in both the first 9 months of 2019 and 2020 despite having drastically different revenue numbers. They had to spend roughly the same amount (600 million) to support 30% less revenue
- Looks like China is a huge part of their future strategy, so much so that it is explicitly called out in their Executive Compensation bonus calculation (p271). I can think of exactly one other American consumer tech company that has had success in China.
This also on the back of the ticking time bomb that is their Shanghai contract. We should probably wait until the end of 2023 to see if Tesla "succeeds" in China.
Intel has made a huge amount of money from China.
Google's Android positioning in China has made it a lot of money as a defensive position for the rest of Asia. By conquering China with Android, it delayed the inevitability of China having their own domestic dominant mobile OS (which will push into other countries in Asia as well at least, harming Android elsewhere).
And while not in China, Facebook makes a lot of money from China.
No, their product is their booking service.
The technology is capital (means of production), not product.
To note, it feels like 'tech company' is a bit ambiguous these days and doesn't necessarily have great clarity.
Is Expedia a tech company?
* a car company makes cars that it sells to consumers or other businesses
* a tortilla company makes tortillas that it sells to consumers or other businesses
* a chip fabrication company makes chips that it ...
... you see where I'm going with this?
* a tech company is a company that makes technology that it sells to consumers and other businesses.
Amazon is a tech company, but only because of AWS, not the marketplace or its own retail operations.
AirBnB is not a tech company. Neither is Ebay.
Maybe we need a new term like "tech-dependent company" to describe most of what are currently termed "tech companies".
Kindle. Firestick. Echo / Echo glasses/earbuds/wearables. Delivery drone (prototypes). Luna controller. The new AZ1 chip inside Echos. They own Ring (doorbells) and Eero Wi-Fi routers.
They custom design[1] their own internal routers, chips, storage and compute servers and network cards, they own Annapurna.
[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-secret-wea...
pffft. Robot roles for their warehouses is a distinctly bounded and rather small "marketplace". Kindle sales likely outnumber this by at least 3 orders of magnitude. Not to mention Alexa technologies.
And then there's that "Amazon doesn't make anything" claim so neatly demolished by jodrellbank.
Traditionally, the business world has qualified tech companies as those which primarily function via zero marginal cost distribution provided by software and the internet.
If Airbnb and Ebay aren't tech companies, then neither are Google and Facebook. All four are marketplaces (Google and Facebook are advertising marketplaces at their core).
Saas and marketplaces are the most solidly "tech" businesses that exist by the textbook definition. They fully take advantage of zero marginal cost distribution.
Apple is clearly a tech company since they conduct tons of activities that are zero marginal cost (iOS, MacOS, App Stores, AppleTV, Apple Music, Apple News, Logic Pro, iCloud storage, etc. etc.)
However if you remove the software part of their business, then they'd be a commodity phone company, and valued by Wall Street in the same way TV manufacturers are (ie. like Samsung, with a PE ratio roughly half that of Apple).
The higher value and differentiation is mostly derived from the software (an OLED screen with a processor attached isn't high margin otherwise--see Samsung's margins). Hence why "software is eating the world."
Do you also question whether Ebay is a "tech" company?
Don't underestimate the cost of customer support (on both ends), dispute resolution, ...
Salesforce isn't suddenly an old school manufacturing business just because they have a customer success team.
Yes.
is cme group a tech company? it is literally marketplace technology. eurex and xetra, nasdaq, nyse, bats, lse all those guys as well.
if you want to go a bit further, jpm, morgan stanley, goldman, barclays and so on are also tech companies, since they're one layer over all these marketplace tech companies, but with their own internal marketplace technology on top of it.
anyway, it's all very silly and meaningless categorization.
But I find the zero marginal cost qualification useful. These companies are fundamentally different than companies that are further out on the marginal cost spectrum.
Take for example CME, NYSE, Nasdaq, etc. Pure zero marginal cost. Virtually unassailable positions for the marketplace niches they dominate.
Then compare that to JPM, Morgan Stanley, Goldman (farther down the spectrum). While they do offer software products in trading, retail, etc...they also offer lots of high touch, high human cost investment banking services. Not the same thing.
It doesn't really matter if you IPO with JPM or Goldman. The bank will make lots of fees but it will be proportional to their man hours worked. No obvious winner.
By this definition, you could say they do some tech, some old school professional services.
As a "tech worker," I find this useful when examining which employers to work for. It determines how much leverage I can have in affecting my employers business. Far and away, the best jobs I've had are at companies on the extreme end of the zero marginal cost spectrum (pure tech, by this definition).
To use banking as an example, you can go from zero to $1B quite quickly in the software (zero marginal "tech") side of the business. Look at SoFi or Plaid.
Meanwhile, on the old school professional services side, imagine how hard it would be to get to $1B there.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. (Serious)
Airbnb has made some non-trivial open source contributions that I'm aware of at least. There's a very popular eslint style guide based on their internal policies and they've also created an svg animation library (the name eludes me) which is popular with designers as it accepts Adobe AE as input.
AirBnB had tons and tons of listings in both places, all of which had specific instructions to tell the neighbors you were “a friend” and not staying there with AirBnB.
At the time, and possibly still so, AirBnB was not operating legally in those particular places, and I presume most of the country, but it’s such a good booking platform people used it anyways.
Long story short, I doubt China is not going to copy AirBnB, unless they can find a nice revenue share model with AirBnB the platform.
P.s. There is ripe opportunity to make apps that interface China to westerners traveling there. There was literally no way to hook into the QR payment system, get a Didi, navigate, or get good translations just 2 years ago. Good luck to those of you building products to help non Chinese people in China. You’ll do well.
Yes, I believe they do (Vreemdelingendienst).
For tourists, it's something that's rarely enforced. And if you stay at a hotel they'll handle it for you (or presumably, maintain records in case the police have questions).
Here's an official source, in Dutch - Google Translate will get the general point across: https://www.politie.nl/themas/kort-verblijf-vreemdelingen-20...
Machine translated, then lightly edited by me:
> Short stay in the Netherlands
> In anticipation of the amendment of the Vreemdelingenbesluit (Foreigners' Order), you no longer need to report to the vreemdelingenpolitie (foreigners' police) as a foreign national coming to the Netherlands for a maximum period of 90 days. There is one exception to this new rule. The Dutch representation abroad or the Koninklijke Marechaussee (Royal Military Police) may, in special cases, require you to report to the vreemdelingenpolitie in person within three days.
I suppose it's cultural differences. There's a staunchly individualistic attitude in the US and the idea of a central government tracking its citizens is very unpopular. I get it, too. If you take a look at the "Anmeldung" process in Germany, where the government has a list of everyone and their race/religion/nationality, along with exactly where they live/which building/which floor/which side of the building, you can see how such a system could be dangerous if Germany were to ever shift from the liberal democracy it is today.
The American model is highly distributed and need-to-know. Many government forms ask for your current address, but it is not automatically shared with the police and there is no requirement to update it in a timely manner.
Many Americans are highly skeptical of the police, and for good reason. Expecting people to go to the police to register when moving would be a complete non-starter in most neighborhoods that I have lived.
Disclaimer: I'm not complaining about how it is in Germany/other countries in Europe. The trust in government is quite high here, and for a good reason :)
First we have a system of primary elections, and in many jurisdictions your party registration status determines which primary you can vote in. You have to be registered Democrat to vote Democrat, registered Republican to vote Republican, etc. The local election board is the one who oversees to vote, so they need to know your party registration in order to make sure you get the right ballot and the right ballot information (which is sent by mail beforehand). In many jurisdictions you can also "decline to state" and then in a primary election you have to tell them each time which ballot you want.
Second, it's used in state redistricting. Having this information be public allows auditors to check if redistricting is resulting in gerrymandering.
In other countries parties run their own candidate selections as private business and the state can’t meddle in it, so the state doesn’t have to ask what what your affiliation is.
Everywhere else in the world, if you strongly support a party, you join it, and pay a membership fee, and the party adds you to a register. Then, you can take part in party activities, like internal elections.
In the US, you register as a supporter of a particular party with the state. Then, everyone registered can take part in (some) party activities, like primaries.
It's a weird system, and i don't know how it started, but because Americans don't realise it's weird, there isn't much written about it!
As it relates to ethnicity, you're right. I can no longer edit my original comment though.
Also, as another child comment said, filling out religion and gender is optional, and no form ever asks for race (at least in Germany and Switzerland I know that for sure).
On the other hand, having better data about citizens makes a lot of things more efficient and fair in government and politics. As I said, I think the US Census is a disaster and always leads to unfair outcomes for minorities and lower class people.
But I agree, it would be better if they woulnd't ask for religion at all.
What are you referring to? We have a every-ten-year census mandate built into our constitution. It’s been an ongoing thing since the 18th century.
The census results are mostly kept private and anonymized, with only aggregate data being shared.
I do agree it would be difficult for the US to shift to such a system given the requirement is constitutional rather than merely a procedure of the civil service.
Also, in the US it is state governments that are the authority for most things pertaining to where people live: property and rental law, identification cards, property taxes, voters registration, etc. Most states do require people to change their voters registration and drivers license when they move between states.
It’s not that strange that you don’t register your address with the federal government, when in fact, the only interaction that many Americans have with the federal government at all is their yearly tax filing.
It's the same in Germany and Switzerland (and I think in a lot of other European countries): You register with your local government when you move, not the federal government.
In Germany, it is required that when you move to a new apartment you walk into the nearest police station or town hall within a few days and fill out a form telling them your new address, who you live with, what their religious affiliations are, etc. You will get in trouble with the police if you do not do this.
In China they take it even further, and even tourist have to do the same. If you stay in an Airbnb in China and do not register with the local police, it is possible you can get in real trouble. This is not “write your hotel’s address on the immigration form”, it is “tell the local cops where to find you.” There is a huge difference in my mind at least.
I'm sure it all goes into the same database.
In Finland it's not really handled by police, usually done with Posti. Other great thing is that it also updates your details to most places...
Here in London there is a 90-day rule (a property can’t exceed 90 days total short-term rentals per year), and it’s 60 days in Amsterdam. This is enforced on the AirBnB platform, but landlords will try to get around it by listing on multiple platforms or by having multiple listings for a property.
This reasoning given is 'security', that is, the city should know in case of an emergency ( say, a nuclear attack ) who to rescue. Ahum.
Of course, there is the nightly tourist taxes, that might have something to do with it too.
Obviously there are tons of competitors in that area in China. They have far more employees and use typical Chinese aggressive marketing. The most notable one, Tijia cooperates with the main travel providers - CTrip, Expedia, Qunar. For me as a foreigner Airbnb works well, although in some rural areas it's better to go with Tijia.
Airbnb entered the Chinese market in 2015 – the same year in which Tujia became a unicorn. The global giant has been slow to expand in China, with 80,000 listings compared to Tujia’s 400,000. Indeed in 2017, Airbnb Inc's founders were moments away from merging their China business with Tujia. Chesky decided to block the deal out of concern that it would harm the Airbnb brand.
Afaik, Airbnb focuses on the quality of its listings. The company has visited thousands of houses and removed those that do not meet quality standards. The company launched Airbnb Plus, a premium service. The company works with opinion leaders and adapts its products to the market. Thus, apartments can be ordered through mini-programs in WeChat, and checkout using WeChat Pay and Alipay.
Link to article in Bangkok Post: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/special-reports/1475857... (2017)
Trying to stay under the radar seems like it courts risk of deportation, as I've known _lots_ of folks who got a visit from police at their place of stay who were not aware of this. Virtually all of them settled things fine but it was more headache than had they just done what they're supposed to.
I believe in a hotel stay, your hotel registers you online so that you don't have to deal with this.
If a hotel can do it, surely there’s no reason why Airbnb can’t figure it out?
This was reckless and stupid of them and demonstrates what AirBnB often does -- that they put their business above the safety of their guests and hosts.
The downside was it was all incredibly insecure. They'd be snapping passport photos on their personal phone, and one apartment had a book in the living room with passport numbers and personal information of every previous guest.
So, technically it works now in different countries, but Airbnb really needs to assist these owners and get some proper procedures in place.
A good innovation for AirBnB would be to automatically notify the relevant tax authorities about their hosts income from illegal subletting, ahem, I mean "renting out a spare room"
Of course the wealthy here would never know, most places priced in the top 20% expensive accept foreigners. I was a poor student and also worked as a teacher($400/mo) looking for midrange accomodations, not to spend a month's pay on a weekend trip
Yep, one would think that for a government that cares so much about their image they would avoid visitors having to go through this nonsense.
For budget travellers to Beijing -- 如家 accepts foreigners last I checked. 7天 used to but they don't anymore as of a couple years ago.
I am moderately involved with various sinology students from Europe. And have traveled to China personally.
Personally I stayed at various AirBnBs within China and registered at the police in Bejing and Shanghai.
The host provided a signed letter confirming where we are staying. With that letter I headed to a local police station where I gave the letter and had to fill out a form with basic personal details and address of where I was staying.
In return I got a stamped letter confirming my stay.
Anecdotes from others: People who have registered late for various reasons (finding apartment, inconvenient arrival combined with work, etc)
I have as of yet not heard anything experience other than the police saying please register on time next time and still got their stamped confirmation of stay.
One standout story however is someone who looked up a recent political dissident via Baidu and got a visit from the police, nothing really exceptional happened except he got visited at his apartment got told off, had to sign a letter confirming the visit and infraction.
The person in question has been back to china multiple times since.
......How is anyone okay with this..
sorry, what infraction?
(It is a communist nation where disagreeing with the government is tantamount to treason and is treated as such.)
Her uncle, my wife, and I went to four police stations. All refused to register my stay and told me to go the next place. The final one told me that they require to see our marriage certificate (which we didn't have as I never read once that it was needed), so we gave up.
I've been many times now, and I've never had a problem although it's a city that foreigners probably do not travel to as much as say Shanghai or Beijing.
It is interesting in the context of AirBnB - with the registration system they can't use the same "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" approach they used in US. I have seen very successful foreign run businesses, for example a friend who imported steel in China, do really well for many years because the government wasn't interested in their industry, and then all of sudden find himself against several competitors and be completely out of business in the space of 6-12 months. I'm bullish on AirBnB but depending on success in China is a risky strategy.
You also don’t need to be married to stay in a private home.
Fine up to 2,000 RMB, more info:
https://en.tripadvisor.com.hk/ShowTopic-g294211-i642-k123478...
Until recently WeChat Pay and AliPay could only be used with Chinese bank accounts in China, and to get a Chinese bank account you need to get a Chinese mobile number first.
If you are a frequent traveller and read Chinese, it isn't especially hard to get a mobile number and bank account other than preparing to waste half a day standing in lines. After that, life is heaven for you because you now have access to all the convenience of the myriad e-commerce websites and apps.
Any other visitors would have tough time getting train tickets, booking accommodations, renting bicycles, hell, even buying from vending machines or automated convenience stores, because people really don't use cash anymore, but the system is really only designed for domestic users without much thought for short-term visitors and tourists.
Is it? I always hated it. I'd be very curious to learn what makes it feel like a good booking platform. It doesn't even show you where the room is located! (only approximate location). Seems way worse than e.g. booking.com, the only reason really to use them might be lower prices... if they still have an advantage here, which I'm genuinely not sure anymore (a while ago I decided I don't want to deal with their crap regardless of how much money I might save).
[edit] "Is it?" was not a rhetorical question. I'm not upset or anything if you downvote, but can you also add what do you feel makes it a good platform? Or what did I say that was wrong?
I just had to go to local PSB (police) office to register for staying as a foreigner.
The biggest problem was of course the language as the police haven't spoken a word of English. They also didn't know Poland (issuer of my passport) is a real country.
That's not surprising to me at all. I'm sure their support and operations teams have been working insane hours during Covid dealing with cancellations, unclear lockdown/quarantine policies, more guest/host disputes, etc.
For example I often use Agoda or hotels.com when I travel in China.
I think AirBnB will have plenty of competition in China and broader Asia from well-established players such as CTrip, Agoda or Rakuten.
The "social network" (rating your visitors etc.) aspect of AirBnB I think will matter less in those parts of the world ... but maybe I am wrong and things will change.
I'm not saying the two services you referenced do or do not do well with the Chinese market, but it's a different proposition to actually capture a massive distinct market vs expansive options for the existing customer base.
Do you consider AirBnB to have more personalized service?
To me AirBnb is like a hotel, except:
- No gym, sauna and other SPA facilities included
- No breakfast buffet, restaurants or room service available
- No room upgrades available
- No early check in/late check out available
- No 24/7 access available
- No reception desk 24/7 available where I can ask for good recommendations, learn a bit more about the place without feeling awkward to ask or risk being sucked into a long unnecessary conversation
- No easy way to voice complaints or raise concerns if something goes wrong
- No extra facilities such as laundry, flower service, etc.
- No other guests which I can meet in the lobby, at the bar and so on to socialise
On the other hand I get this at AirBnbs:
- Having difficulties to access the property because hosts want to meet somewhere in a place which suits them but not me
- Sometimes waiting for the house/flat keys longer than expected
- Sometimes being told on arrival how some things "recently" broke and that they won't be available during my stay
- Awkward hellos and good byes
- Awkward random house rules
- Awkward access restrictions such as can't open this gate after X hour, and so on
- A lot of fake friendliness as long as you don't raise any concerns
- Difficulties to raise issues and getting refunds
- A lot more which I can't think of now, but left me with a really bad aftertaste every time
AirBnB's best-case "ideal" setup has always struck me as just "CouchSurfing[0] but monetised". While AirBnB has received a lot negative press for facilitating the letting of would-be residential property by large-scale professional landlords, the marketing from AirBnB's side has always favoured the "local guide, personal human experience" angle, an angle CouchSurfing has always tried to cover non-commercially.
So in my mind it's a comprehensively bankrupt proposition from either side of the spectrum. It's worse than a hotel (no service), worse than traditional self-catering tourist apartments (more expensive), worse than a long-term let (a LOT more expensive) and infinitely worse than the social, warm-fuzzy personal experience of CouchSurfing (free).
I don’t want a couch, I want a whole home that our group can share, and for less than the surge price that a hotel will slap on for a single room, we can fit our needs well.
> worse than traditional self-catering tourist apartments (more expensive)
...is I think what I would consider your use-case to fall under. No?
This isn't something that didn't exist before AirBnB...
Call me cynical, but "Advertise your product for a use that your core moneymaking market doesn't do" would be a good dark pattern to avoid scrutiny/regulation.
Try hiring hotels or hostels for large gatherings: bachelor/bachelorette parties, weddings, family vacations, etc. and I think it will be easier to see the difference. They compete more with vacation rentals, which seems old-fashioned since their online inventory always sucks.
I also think hotels are impersonal. As mentioned in this thread, they market themselves as "having a local experience" and I think that's been an effective message. I have gotten great recommendations from hosts on food, dining, and things not to do and I get to choose the location/theme of my stay too. Do I need to work? Am we relaxing for a couple days? The choose your own adventure aspect means that AirBnB is the starting place for all those searches, not hotels.
I also think there is a real lack of comparable options to hostels in the states so those could be similar jobs here (not abroad). I know of 1 hostel in my hometown near the airport (top 20 US city by pop).
I do agree that great hosts will push up prices to be comparable to hotels and the gap is closing steadily. I think you can still find great middle ground in most cities.
I agree with you that AirBnb fits much better into that category. Having said that, I also frequently rent an entire chalet with friends for skiing and even then we use websites which cater specifically for those types of accommodation (especially in France there are so many good websites to book chalets) that the offerings on those websites exceed AirBnb again in every possible aspect.
Besides that, I don't think that investors have valued AirBnb at the current levels with the idea that AirBnb only caters to bachelorette parties and a few odd student gatherings. That market is not nearly as big as AirBnb is currently going for.
Personally, while I default to Airbnb's for finding stays when I travel, I've found myself gravitating back towards hotels as of late because they were generally better value propositions for what I was looking for.
But I do agree that it's becoming harder to justify Airbnb use. As it's popularity has risen, it feels like, what was once a cheap stay in someones house, is now the same price as a nice bed & breakfast. And with Hotel's seeing the lost footfall, the gap between a private room in a strangers home and a hotel room with much more privacy has become smaller and smaller.
I've used it every week for about 8 years now for my accommodation when working away but couldn't see using it much in the future
How would a solution to each of those for airbnb look like?
- Want to rent an entire house in some specific area
- Want to rent something as cheap as possible / on a strapped budget.
Very cheap travel/plane tickets and accommodation has made international travel very accessible for a lot of people around the globe. So I can absolutely see why some people swear to using airbnb - but for me? I'll rather pay the extra $50 for a hotel room. That's chump change for peace of mind, IMO.
But yes, for an entire house for a group of 4 - 6 people, it's great.
Actually in my mind, Airbnb is always more expensive than a hotel. Each trip I end up checking both options and I'm amazed at how expensive Airbnb ends up being after you add all the hidden fees.
I think the main use case is for big groups and gathering. When you want to stay with 10 people. And even then, it's still more expensive than 6/7 hotel rooms (if you come as a couple you would only use a single room).
I think Airbnb manage to convince a lot of people that they are always a better deal than hotels. I see a lot of my friends never checking regular hotels anymore.
Strong agree. They have this in common with Amazon. They used to be cheaper but now aren't anymore, but customers don't comparison shop.
I don't know about the US, but certainly in Europe a shared room in a hostel is always much cheaper than anything on AirBNB if you're really on a budget.
When finding chalets or cabins/lodges for outdoor trips, Airbnbs are often much better located.
To me it is not so much hotels they need to replace, but a streamlining of booking vacation houses to the point where it is almost as convenient as hotel bookings are, but with vacation house amenities.
Some people are confused and surprised they expect hotel services(airbnb is to blame for this as well) instead of more "adventurious" accomodation offered by private owners.
AirBnB is the eBay of short term rental with the good and bad parts. Booking.com used(and mostly still is) more a kind of Amazon.
They also did $3B+ in revenue last year so they are clearly very successful.
- Don't care about the gym.
- I'd rather cook my own food.
- Rent a nice place, upgrade not needed.
- I've never rented a place that had awkward check-in/out times.
- Not sure what you mean? If you rent the whole place, you can come and go as you please.
- Airbnb facilitates online chat with the owner.
- Never had a concern that needed raised.
- Rent a place with laundry
- I'd rather go to a local place than a hotel bar
- I only meet the host about 1/3 of the time and it's always been at the house. The other 2/3, the house has a key box or similar for access.
- Never happened to me
- Never happened to me
- Never happened to me
- Never run into weird rules
- Never run into this either
- Never run into this. Hosts have always been professional.
- Refunds through Airbnb have been easy (I have several this year)
- Airbnb plus or Airbnb Luxe can have breakfast or groceries basket
- Early check in or late check out is possible. Just discuss with your host prior to confirming reservation. Unless they have a guest coming just after or their cleaning crew can't make it work, they will find a way to make it work
- Many Airbnbs have 24/7 access. Many have electronic door locks
- You can get local, custom recommandations by discussing with the host, and more. Same for complaints
- Flower service, laundry, babysitting options are available with Airbnb Luxe
On the other hand, if your goal is to socialize, talk to hotel staff, talk to other travellers, then of course, airbnb are NOT an option for you. Airbnb doesn't have to provide everything. I can tell you they are great for families looking for a vacation home.
It feels like every other booking ends up with an email like "this is our childhood/lovely/whatever reason place, we are very picky about who we accept and we except you to treat it as your home, can you confirm you would do that?". Every single time I roll my eyes. It's not like I'm paying them more than a hotel for the privilege of staying there.
now it’s just a boring business of terrible managed apartments with really bad amenities and problems that make you lose time and totally diverges you from the whole concept of hassle-free vacation/renting.
My last 5 airbnbs were apartments fully setted up to be rented in Airbnb just for the money and not for the experience and good service, every single one of them were so much problematic to check-in/check-out, I was charged insane cleaning fees even tho the places were not clean and were never cleaned, I had to deal with people putting cameras around totally disrupting your privacy, I had to deal with overcrowded apartments (some guy decided to rent every room in his place and sleep in the living room without mentioning it anywhere in the listing), I had to deal with last minute cancels that almost made me sleep in the street, etc.
Worth mentioning that all of those bad experiences came from places that were marked as "superhost" and had quite a lot of reviews.
Aand lastly, Airbnb decided to just void a 500$ giftcard that I got in 2018 and I tried to use early 2020 and they said it was invalid, I just lost the money.
Airbnb it’s just death for me
When I first started using airbnb, I would run into these awful listings because I was scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel.
On a visit to Boston, I once stayed in a cheap AirBnb in the bad part of Methuen, MA, where the local grocer knew I was from out of town because I paid in cash and not food stamps.
My wife, on the other hand, always reads the reviews and I've never had a single bad experience travelling with her.
If you go by price you get what you pay for. This isn't a failing of AirBnb, its how life works.
I miss the days where I can just make purchases without having to "read the reviews."
I'm so time-constrained as it is; making customers responsible for ensuring that they've contracted with a quality host / Uber driver / seller on Amazon -- is one of the things I hate about new age "marketplaces."
most people conveniently don't mention that there's a cost in the process of making a decision itself, and it isn't negligible.
If this was in California, gift cards cannot expire (with some exceptions). You might have a recourse there.
It also looks like Q3 tends to be their best quarter by far. Is that because of summer vacations?
I have, however, no hard data to back up if these are actually the reasons.
I'd bet that an AirBnb is normally a bit cheaper than a hotel suite with multiple rooms and a real kitchen.
But Q3 was likely an anomaly since they saw a lot of tailwinds from greater demand for homes in driving distance for easier summer vacations plus Covid was only concentrated in a few hot spots over the summer.
Now Covid is more widespread plus there’s naturally less leisure travel in the winter and still very little rebound in business travel.
Still, I think long term the biggest issue is not rebounding demand, which I think will happen, but regulatory issues. Lots of questions and scrutiny around their impact on local housing and rental prices and safety issues related to home rentals for parties.
I would also guess that long term bookings are up
> Most of our guests discover Airbnb organically, with approximately 91% of all traffic to Airbnb coming through direct or unpaid channels during the nine months ended September 30, 2020.
Anyone know what % of traffic to Bookings and Expedia (and others) are paid vs unpaid? 91% unpaid seems really high, and I wonder if it's because Airbnb is so differentiated / people want to "Airbnb" a place (vs. "stay somewhere")
edit:
> Our hosts had 7.4 million available listings of homes and experiences as of September 30, 2020, of which 5.6 million were active listings. We consider a listing of a home or an experience to be an “active listing” if it is viewable on Airbnb and has been previously booked at least once on Airbnb
IMO it's super sneaky to blend homes and experiences together
At one point in the past I heard Booking was the largest spender, worldwide, on Adwords.
I wouldn't immediately consider the hotel metasearch products a problem for booking. It shifts traffic to different paid channels with different tradeoffs (eg. less fine grained control of spend if it's a revshare model). I ran the product development in marketing for a little while. Some years ago (ie. late in the game, largely due to politics), we started investing in cross channel attribution models to better direct spending.
Disclosure: I no longer work for Booking, though. I do work for Google, but am in NO way involved in Ads or travel and an not trying to comment on the company's business.
Seems like Booking and Expedia disagree with you:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/some-of-the-biggest-tech-n...
Time flies!
So they are definitely getting a tremendous amount of organic traffic because "Airbnb" became a verb like Google or Uber.
Especially around the fast growing millennial sector which is very focused around experiences and travel.
Definitely helps that Airbnb has become a verb - can't beat that.
Great breakdown by Casey Winters on the strategies - https://news.greylock.com/four-strategies-to-win-big-with-lo... - showing that there are different strategies, and not one absolute best.
"Brand is an extension of the Airbnb model, not its own strategy. If the product doesn’t deliver on a differentiated experience, brand building usually does not create loyalty."
This post seems to say that AirBNB didn't just focus on brand, but they innovated on /somehow/ making booking UX "10x" (let's leave the ostensible 10 aside for a moment and just say "a lot" instead) better than incumbents. But that requires a durable product advantage, one that consistently creates a differentiated experience. It's more accurate to say that brand is a downstream side effect of the core product than a sole or primary focus.
The risk vs rewards under this system would discourage bad hosts from joining the platform. For new, honest hosts, it would be a minor inconvenience at best.
https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-paying-10-percent-int...
This is so detached from reality. It would wipe out probably 99% of listings from people not doing it professionally.
It is okay if certain people are excluded because you only want people hosting that are SERIOUS about doing it. If you can't do the surety bond then you simply aren't ready to be a host. It really is that simple.
fraudsters would easily game this. ask a bunch of their friends to "stay" , or even create a bunch of fake accounts and "be our guest"
Airbnb already holds the money for 24h after check-in, which is enough to defuse 99% of scams. The problem is the guests that book outside the platform, then claim they were scammed.
I'm reading this right, correct? I see the cash positions below are a bit different, but that's likely from... the loans?
2018 looked so hopeful. They only lose $20m total! 2019 should have been a profitable year, IMO, but they went with the aggressive strategy.
Don't forget, there was the announcement in April [0], they issued $1 billion of that debt at 10% interest, and it's convertible, which is equivalent to rate of about 12-13% non-convertible debt.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-paying-10-percent-int...
What the S1 says about that loan: Interest on the First Lien Loan is payable monthly or quarterly in arrears, at our option depending on the chosen per annum interest rate equal to (i) in the case of LIBOR borrowings, 7.5% plus LIBOR, subject to a floor of 1% (the “First Lien Eurodollar Rate”), or (ii) in the case of base rate borrowings, 6.5% plus the greatest of (a) the prime rate, (b) the federal funds effective rate plus 0.5%, and (c) LIBOR for a one-month period plus 1%, subject to a floor of 2%.
'While we have not yet received a Revenue Agent’s Report generally issued at the conclusion of an IRS examination, in September 2020, we received a Draft Notice of Proposed Adjustment from the IRS for the 2013 tax year relating to the valuation of our international intellectual property which was sold to a subsidiary in 2013'
I’m sure they will have to make a more detailed explanation of this at some point, and it should make for a good read whenever the release it. And they may take their accounting firm to court, because this is large enough to at least suspect negligence or fraud. But until something else happens, all we have is speculation.
I hope you're not an accountant.
Revenue was up ~30%, but costs an expenses up ~50%, primarily SG&A and product development... basically they hired a lot of people it looks like.
I'd recommend having the debate after meeting them instead of before. We had big doubts about this idea, but they vanished on meeting the guys.
It's interesting that pg also believed in the eventuality of AirBnB competing with and taking a lot of market share away from hotels. Fred and the "older" guys at their firm didn't believe this.
Turns out in most places it's profitable to arbitrage long term property cost and AirBnB income. So you have a bunch of small time operators buying or leasing property and putting them on AirBnB. AFAICT that seems to be the bulk of AirBnB business. Not Etsy (person to person) nor Hotels. But a new kind of "hotel" that consists of one person running a handful to a couple dozen apartments.
The most important part of Airbnb is creating a hotel "chain" or "brand" without having to deal with things like zoning or licensing or insurance for hotels.
While Hilton/Marriott/IHG/Hyatt/Accor/Choice/Wyndham/etc collect 10% to 20% in exchange for putting their brand on the line, Airbnb also was able to create a business where they can take 18% without putting their brand on the line, and keeping the ability to dump all the liability on the hosts. However, I think this is a weakness for Airbnb long term, but they may be able to take advantage in the short term.
Quality control for real world products, especially volatile ones such as abodes rented night after night, are costly and I'm willing to pay a premium to make sure there are some double or triple checks going on.
And we stay in some of the nicest Airbnbs, my brother is a doctor.
The real difference, as you allude to, is centralized reputation. If you stay at a crappy Marriott you blame Marriott. If you stay at a crappy Airbnb you blame the host.
It will be interesting what happens in the long run. There's now a proven market for apartment style hotel options. I could see a reputable brand move into the space.
Anecdotally, HotelTonight is my go-to for booking any hotel, any time.
I checked Hilton SF downtown for next week and it’s $91 on HT and $95 on Hilton Honors rewards pricing.
It returned Hilton SF Airport Bayfront at $93 for a room with either 1 or 2 beds. In the Hilton app, I get the same hotel for the same night at $87 for a room with 1 king size bed or 2 double size beds.
Then I was able to search for Hilton SF downtown in Hotel Tonight and find the Financial District one, which was available for the night of Fri Nov 27 for one night. Hotel Tonight had a price of $152 for the following room:
“The hotel will assign room at check in and it will fit 2 adults”
The Hilton app showed the financial district hotel available on Tue Nov 24 (which the hotel tonight app showed as not available) for $95, and for Fri nov 27, the Hilton app shows 1 king bed or 2 double size beds at $159.
So it looks like you’re right for some nights for some hotels, except they don’t let you confirm a room type on Hotel Tonight. I wonder how this squares with Hilton’s best price guarantee:
https://hiltonworldwide3.hilton.com/en/price-match-guarantee...
Looks like they’re trying to engage in some price discrimination. I would call the hotel front desk and tell them, I can pay the cheaper hotel tonight price, and you get 85% of that (hotel tonight pays the hotel 85% of the price you pay hotel tonight), or the hotel can sell to you directly for 10% off the hotel tonight price and end up making 5% more and see what they say.
It’s also possible the franchisor is violating their franchise agreement by letting hotel tonight sell for cheaper than Hilton’s website, so you might be able to get an even bigger discount by filing a complaint with Hilton.
Amazing growth and story up to 2018 (only $20M loss on $3.5B rev), clear investment in the marketing side that leads to the 2019 loss, but now curious if they can rebound when the world opens up.
Investing in Airbnb is definitely a bet on their model righting itself in a reasonable time frame. I wonder if their IPO price will have to reflect current realities instead of just future potential (given it probably won't improve its profitability for 2 years now)
For context: http://archive.is/xdv1u (NYT Article)
Its quite surprising that CEO of Airbnb should make just $110k/ annum in base salary before the company goes public. I would expect it to be around $500k.
The average private driver salary's in NYC is about 60k a year according to Google btw[0]. The average yearly -household- income in the US is 68k.
It's a massive luxury to be able to afford such a thing.
[0]: https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-full-time-driver-cost-...
edit: That's a rough estimate and probably a low estimate. You'd be using Uber for commuting, going to work social events, driving kids on weekends, driving out of the city on vacation, etc.
Wow, that's crazy. I pay 28000USD/yr in London, most of my friends pay about the same.
Perhaps the money goes towards cloning costs?
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/overpaid-executi...
as I understand it the value of the RSUs is on the _grant date_ for such purposes. (and not at vesting)
Options on the other hand are a different beast.
How does one figure whether the business will keep growing without blasting people's faces with ads? If so much spend on ads is required to generate revenue growth then there will either never be profits or the revenue growth will stall (and thus the equity is worth rather little), if ads are not required then why are they spending so much on them, or maybe when will they stop spending.
All the "heroes" of the tech boom (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft) did not suffer from this problem - they were profitable before going public.
It feels like this time we're in an advertising bubble. Nearly every single S-1 submitted to HN has this feature.
I am genuinely puzzled by this, if someone can offer some perspective on how can you model something like this I would be grateful - what assumptions you'd be making here.
[1] https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-top-50-biggest-advertisi...
I am not saying advertising is bad, or that it doesn't work, or that you shouldn't do it. Nothing of this sort. It's just unclear to me what's the plan for eventually returning anything to the shareholder. All of the eventual value depends on this.
However, I think H8crila meant that they did not spend that much on advertisement around the time they ipoed.
If you're consumer focused, you spend on marketing, if you're business focused, you spend on sales. There are few examples to the contrary (Google, Atlassia, for example).
AirBnB early on was sniping Craigslist vacation listings[1], and now they have the resources, and scale to market directly. If AirBnB isn't doing it right, what constitutes the 'right' time to spend on marketing?
I'm curious as to how some folks would respond to this, and why.
So scaling as fast as possible is the #1 goal, because if you don't someone else will and you'll go out of business.
Therefore sales and marketing is a huge factor in growth. Then the idea is, once you've grown as much as you can and it's too hard for others to compete because of your entrenched network effects, you can reduce sales and marketing to a a reasonable, highly profitable level.
That's it in a nutshell and it works in any market with strong network effects, which AirBNB strongly fits into, in facts it's a poster child for the concept. Yelp is another good example -- sign up all the restaurants before a competitor does.
There are a lot of different business models out there, which you can study (and MBA programs teach you). This is just one model, and it's a legitimate one. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple all have different models from it (and all drastically different from each other as well).
To evaluate ad spend, you don't look at just short-term return. There's a reason that "lifetime value" is a critical concept for companies. It's fairly normal in large companies that, in a given year, you may spend more on ads than you gain from those ads - but you expect the customers you gain from them to continue spending over many years.
So you may spend $100 to gain a customer who spends $20 in the first year... then $40 in the second... then $80 in the third... now all of a sudden your return on that was positive, three years later.
These are the kind of ads you want to buy, even if in the short term it looks bad. These large marketing expenses should have compounding benefits over many years. The people who care about the short term like that are not the investors you want and not the people you're trying to please.
I don't know what AirBnB's numbers are, companies aren't required to disclose this and they guard it very closely :)
I am not saying they're doing a bad job, I am merely saying that it looks difficult to tell. Remember, the management has a huge incentive to sell you the stock regardless of the future value of the business, it's your job to figure out if it is a good idea.
While I've received signing bonuses in the past, I was not aware that you could get a signing bonus that was 4x of your base salary.
> Dave joins Airbnb from a 17-year career at Amazon, where he was most recently Vice President and CFO of their Worldwide Consumer Organization, which is responsible for all of Amazon’s global website sales including Amazon Prime and subsidiaries such as Whole Foods and Zappos.
For someone like that, you pay whatever you need to pay.
- Reducing full-time employee headcount by approximately 25% (I'm curious from what/to?)
- Setting expectation for the potential of no employee bonuses for 2020 and reducing executive team member salaries for six months (interesting that executive team _salary_ is getting reduced rather than bonuses, no? At this level isn't most of your compensation not direct salary?)
- (to the above point) , in May 2020, we announced a reduction in our workforce of approximately 1,800 employees (So I guess they had ~9,000 employees?)
- Outstanding RSU obligations are quoted as ~$2.7B
It seems fair to wonder, given the timing during a pandemic, that there's a need or desire to cash out by the investors and founders.
I wonder if their headcount downsizing wasn't severe enough. 9,000 employees seems like a lot for an intermediary. A lot of these companies seem to get in the habit of thinking they're the next Google long before they have the Google revenues to fund such pursuits.
The risks section reads as expected.
I do wonder if the tide is turning against home "sharing". Unlike ride-sharing, there are significant externalities to deal with. People don't generally don't want to live near an illegal (in many cases) hotel and it's not so easy for them to up and move. It's classic tragedy of the commons.
What's more AirBnB has (IMHO) a provable negative impact on the supply of rental units in many cities.
So cue the standard self-serving defense of AirBnB. I, for one, would not be sad to see it go.
I would think the IPO is happening despite the pandemic, not because of it. They had been planning to go public long before the IPO hit, so I wouldn't read into that too much. I definitely have similar reservations about the company as you do though. I get the impression the tide is generally turning against the airbnb model at least within major cities.
Also AirBnB just gets blamed for the rental shortage in many communities. The truth is poor zoning results in a shortage of rental units. Many areas with rental unit shortage have that shortage because zoning does not allow for high-density construction. The easiest solution to any shortage is to simply increase supply.
London says Hi!, where every garbage building that has some semblance of age is marked a Listed Property, and where it's more fashionable to let people be homeless/living in refurbished toilets than to build taller buildings because they would "destroy the character of the city".
At least they're honest about it!
Put that together with some ridiculously low international air fare, like, RT SFO LHR for $700, pre-pandemic, and many more people will travel.
If cities and townships were to have looser regulations on hotels - which evidently they should, given the vast demand and 'mostly' it's not excessively problematic for communities - then AirBnB wouldn't exist because hotel prices and types would have much more variety and competitiveness, and so would listings.
If anyone could just get in their car and tell the local dispatcher 'they want to drive tonight' - probably Uber would have never been able to come to fruition in the first place.
I'm not saying that either company is good or bad, or that the regulations are good or bad, rather, that the underlying business models depended on a kind of civil regulatory asymmetry.
Personally, I wish cities would adjust their regulations to be more appropriate, I don't think there needs to be an Uber or AirBnB.
I live in a 6 bedroom house, and only regularly use a couple of them. I decide to make one available for random people to stay, short term.
How do I find them? How do they find me? How does anyone find a regular hotel these days? That's why you need a website to coordinate.
? So your point is only AirBnB 'can make a website' ?
If regulations were lax before AirBnB existed there'd be 1000 different sites you could list upon and hoteliers of all kinds would charge less. Or at least many would.
Because AirBnb was the progenitor of the lease-your-room modality they captured the market and have a little bit of a natural monopoly in it, as there's some coordination with marketplace, identity, etc..
Just like there are a myriad ways to 'book a hotel room' - there'd be a myriad was to book your '6 room place'.
I doubt that. I'm not sure I can justify my doubt, but I doubt it.
Also, the "myriad ways to book a hotel room" works only because more or less every hotel is on more or less every such way of doing it.
There's no reason, that with more open regulatory scnearios, there wouldn't be a myriad ways to 'book your 6 room flat'.
Or rather, you could have the option to list with a few.
AirBnB 'broke through' into a market that didn't quite exist, partly because it's literally illegal in most places. Very few landlords allow subleasing rooms as well.
Both AirBnB and Uber created a market in a 'regulatory grey area' so they kind of developed a marketplace monopoly.
If that gray area did not exist previously, AirBnB and Uber would not have had the power to break through and dominate.
These companies have a weird human shield - that prosecuting individual house owners or drivers has little tin no impact on the supply (whereas it would have a huge impact on a normal commercial supply) - so the usual weapon regulatory bodies have is simply useless.
It really demonstrated the absurdity and borderline incompetence of a lot of regulatory entities: both Uber and AirBnB operate out in the open even where it's essentially illegal. The Hotel industry lobbies to keep the rules in their favour - and none of us are winners really.
Accommodation rules should probably be opened up somewhat, AirBnB has provided overwhelming evidence of a supply/demand mismatch. The taxi industry is considerably more difficult to redress because the cities have already sold medallions.
Maybe some areas. In Europe, Asia and Australia I have always found AirBNB more expensive than hotels which incidentally waste less of your time, have better signage and access, and can provide value-added services like multiple contactless keys, key replacement, waste disposal, laundry, holding luggage and local recommendations. Oh, and they support three sometimes-killer features: payment on arrival, cash, and pre-inspection of rooms.
Anyone have thoughts on if that is possible or plausible?
https://www.airbnb.com/resources/hosting-homes/a/how-were-gi...
I admit, I ask mostly selfishly (my wife and I are superhosts, we have managed a full-time AirBnB in CA for 2 years). But it's also an interesting thought experiment. It would be quite the contrast to how the rideshare and food delivery companies treat their non-employees.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/11/uber-is-dishing-out-apprec...
Disclaimer: I am an Airbnb employee
Disclosure: am employee
"At our request, the underwriters have reserved up to [blank] shares of Class A common stock, or [blank]% of the shares offered by this prospectus, for sale at the initial public offering price through a directed share program to: * Eligible U.S. hosts who hosted on our platform in 2019 and 2020 [...]"
Not sure what this means.
I am sick of the random people being rude to me and the constant parties/noise. I can't do much about it. The bylaws of the building doesn't forbid it. I am trying to get elected to be part of the board so I can request these change to the bylaws.
I prefer to know my neighbours, might not be friends, but at least have some relation to them.
Depends on later stage dilution and what the pre-money is, but still a ridiculous markup. No comparison to S&P.
If someone got shares in 2009 they likely had a substantially higher return.
Re: 2009. I recall an early employee saying YC told them not to hire anybody, but they hired him anyways off of his very creative outreach. But let me tell you they all earned every penny of it. It's hard to remember how crazy of an idea Airbnb was ~10 years ago.
The real question is though, going forward, what ROI will Airbnb deliver vs. the S&P 500.
Growth stocks seem to be nearing bubble territory at the moment, so if we get a repeat of the 2000s where interest rates start rising again and value stocks become more in favor, it doesn't look great.
Then again, selling fractionalized access to highly restricted real estate supply in all of the world's major cities doesn't sound like a bad bet for the future. If the lack of desire to invest in new construction in cities due to the covid narrative of cities being dead (obviously overblown) leads to further supply deficits, the future for Airbnb looks bright.
So in summation, its impossible to predict, buy index funds instead.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airbnb/company_finan...
Revenue:
2020* 2.5billions
2019 4.9billions
2018 3.7billions
*until September.
And then of course they also posted a lot of pics of said Airbnb on their timelines, which basically became advertisements encouraging other people to do the same...
I know there were layoffs so I'm sure they were in full cost-cutting mode by the time the pandemic hit full swing
Makes me wonder what the 2020 story would have been without COVID.
Personal bias makes me think Airbnb is here to stay and the marketing spend can definitely be cut back. The timeline to revenue growing back against their costs is probably 2 years with this pandemic though and that hurts anyone who is looking to invest and hold.
Laws, regulations, and rules that affect the short-term rental and home sharing business have limited and may continue to limit the ability or willingness of hosts to share their spaces over our platform and expose our hosts or us to significant penalties, which have had and could continue to have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In most of the world Airbnb will not be able to buy a law like Uber/Lyft did with Prop 22 to get out of this jam.
When I reported the problem, the support rep claimed it happened that way because I had "Smart Pricing" on. It was set ON by default. But AirBNB's own documentation says the Custom Price I set for the dates in question (Xmas week) override all other pricing.
Even if "Smart Pricing" had applied, it shouldn't have offered the lowest price for the highest demand week of the year, because AirBNB's own calendar shows the demand peaking high for the week, not low.
Now I've been 3 days trying to get a response from tech support.
They deny responsibility, and promise to escalate it to a supervisor, then close the case without responding to my detailed evidence.
What can I do? Does anyone know how to escalate to an AirBNB IT person? I would have thought AirBNB would like to know its platform has a serious bug.
I was trying to actually solve the problem by identifying the bug and having it rectified. But I'm in the wrong industry for that now, aren't I? D'oh!
It's an important bug. The "Smart Pricing" is broken, or at least in 3 cases of mine it was, and the documentation in the guides for Hosts is discordant.
Airbnb S-1 Page 191
> Serving Our Stakeholders
> Pricing. While hosts set their own prices, we provide hosts with Smart Pricing tools that suggest prices for their listings based on changes in demand for similar listings. Our Smart Pricing recommendations are based on the type and location of a listing, the season, expected demand, and other factors. In addition, we provide data insights that include how host occupancy rates compare to other listings on our platform.
Xmas/NYE is the middle of summer in Australia. My pad is right next to the beach in a nice part of South East Queensland, and everything like it is already booked out for Xmas.
If you have access to my account data, which the support team does, Airbnb FAQ Articles #503 and #1168 are all that's required to establish that the pricing made in the offer to my guest is the result of a bug, which I have characterised in writing.
But how to establish that with Airbnb and get a resolution? I've been trying for 4 days..
When I read the S-1 with the beautiful sentimental story of the evolution of Airbnb, I couldn't help but post here. Not because I'm pissed, but because I believe in the story promoted by Paul Graham about these people. It would be great if they could retain some of their essence by responding to this incident instead of blocking it with bureaucracy.
They do have good customer support people, and evidently they have retained their culture, but it doesn't facilitate responding to bug reports from hosts in a timely manner. As the support guy told me, without reports, they'd never know about pricing bugs. Surely this is an important one, given that "Smart Pricing" is a feature in the S-1, and hosts are considered important stakeholders in the prospectus.
I've got to wait until the subject specialist verifies the bug and reports it to engineering. If engineering verifies the bug and reports back to the subject specialist, who might then report back to the support guy, who might then consult with his supervisor about whether they can compensate me or my guest somehow, this could all work out fine. So long as that happens before 21 December, no problem. Otherwise, I better cancel the booking before then and find a new guest, and hope the woman who thought she got a bargain can find somewhere else to stay for Xmas. Or just disregard my feelings for this guest and be more detached about hosting. And other people's bugs.
The support guy last night who escalated it to the specialist said they can do things to help her, such as find her another place. Knowing that, I am hanging on a bit longer to see if they come through...
Most people probably don’t want to check a dozen different sites (convenience) or don’t know which sites they can trust.
Maybe that is true right now, but in the future I doubt it. The last place I rented was on both AirBnB and VRBO, VRBO having a slightly lower price.
When I'm choosing a place for a vacation, again, I'm looking at the top brands I know of, including AirBnB. Since the major hotels all resemble my business hotels, I'm more or less stuck looking at AirBnB rentals, simply because it's a more casual brand that I know of. I assume the vast majority of casual travelers are just like me.
I've had very good experiences using AirBnB in smaller towns, even in otherwise poorer places in Asia and Europe. On the contrary, I've had shitty AirBnB experiences, mostly in large cities in developed markets.
That’s interesting and I guess the big thing that makes this different than vrbo if they can grow the spare room side much more over time
At least that's my experience when I was trying to search on the site. There was little filtering available and the owners were listing their properties as anything.
I’m sure this could vary by price/location though.
Is it a whole flat, or a room in a property with the landlord living in, or a room in a property fulled rented on airbnb (how many people?), or a bed in a bunk of beds (yes that's a thing). There's listings for everything and quite a few are misleading. It doesn't help that you have no idea what is the normal price range when traveling abroad and may not speak the language very well.
If you're interested by the way. My counter experience renting a flat on airbnb over the summer, is that guests are evaluating everything they could use including beds and couches and ground space. The guest renting a one bedroom could be anything from a person or a couple to a family (maybe with extended family/cousins joining in) to a group of many friends. It's always a surprise whether there will be 1 or 6 people showing up.
> In September 2020, we received a Draft Notice of Proposed Adjustment from the IRS for the 2013 tax year proposing an increase to our U.S. taxable income that could result in additional income tax expense and cash tax liability of $1.35 billion, plus penalties and interest, which exceeds our current reserve recorded in our consolidated financial statements by more than $1.0 billion.
Outside of brand / name recognition I don’t know any reasons why someone would pick Airbnb over VRBO or another service.
Is there some sort of data play that they are making? Why would I invest in Airbnb when I could buy into a REIT or some other real estate asset? Would love some ellucidation.
I did some initial research on Airbnb vs. VRBO, and they do seem like very similar companies. However, VRBO started in 1995, while Airbnb started in 2008. VRBO had a head start, and yet has only 2 million listings in comparison to Airbnb's 7 million[0]. The faster growth of Airbnb in comparison to VRBO might be one reason you'd want to invest in Airbnb over VRBO, especially in an America that allows monopolies to thrive under certain conditions.
[0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/airbnb-vs-vrbo-which-is-the-best-v...
It's not really a problem from a financial perspective because law is lagging decades behind the real world and there's way too much money on the table for renters to care about the restrictions/bans (and there's almost zero enforcement of restrictions anyway).
Uber/Airbnb don't need near the amount of product/engineering they actually have.
AirBnb is...a database of static listings and a search engine on top. Their top technology problems were all solved by Expedia like 20 years ago.
They have thousands of engineers sitting idle or making pet projects, struggling to justify their existence, as regularly attested by internal employees when an article pops up.
Expedia, hotels.com. booking.com and most airlines are handling more requests than Airbnb in more challenging environments.
Once demand and supply of the shares is established, they can announce a public price for the share on the date before the IPO.
My initial guess is that we can expect pricing of the IPO on the week of 12/14
Any airbnb=er here wants to invest in a travel company? lol you never know..
airbnb sides too much with the host in my experience.
When a host left me and my family in an unsafe environment due to a gas leak, airbnb was impossible to work with. It took months of escalation with airbnb to get things fixed, despite providing all the documentation required the same day that I didn't stay at the property and had to book a last minute hotel at increased cost.
:)
We had drug dealers moving product from one. We told airbnb not to contact the guests. They contact them anyways trying to "resolve" the situation.
Every time guests break rules like smoking that have clearly posted fees, airbnb says they can't help. Even when the guests admit to it.
When we needed to call CPS on morons endangering their one year old, we were not able to get the guests information to give to the police.
Their support will straight up lie to you to resolve cases faster.
It is the host's fault for charging me damages outside of my control. It is also Airbnb's fault for refusing to take a side.
You seem to insinuate that because it wasn't within the host's control that I bled on their towel that it somehow falls on me instead. What? Did I choose to bleed, then? I mean, obviously it seems to me that it should fall on Airbnb itself to pay in cases like these. Perhaps the owner of the house should have demanded funds from Airbnb in exceptional cases like these. The outrage here is that the owner of the Airbnb - and you, apparently - seem to think that it's somehow a burden that I myself have to bear, as if I chose to get punched in the face.
Oh and by the way I did pay a standard multi-hundred-dollar cleaning fee. Apparently that wasn't enough, though.
If I got in a car crash in an Uber, because another car backed into me, do you think they would have fined me if my head hit the headrest in front of me and I got a bloody nose? To suggest as much would be outrageous. In fact, I have gotten into a car crash in Uber, and even Uber, one of the scummiest companies out there, knew to do the right thing. They immediately comped the ride and gave me another one for free. (OK, one could argue they could do even more...)
If I went to a hotel that was located in a shady area and walked outside and got punched in the face and bled on the floor when I came back in, do you think their first reaction would have been to charge me to clean it up?
The person who really ought to pay is the guy who punched you in the face. Unless you deserved it but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.
* I've had two shit hosts that left me up a creek scrambling to find housing, as has my S/O. As a consumer, I am way less likely to use the platform now because my experience has shown me that AirBnB either doesn't care or doesn't have an effective lever to pull to improve this situation.
That said, I think you'd be foolish as a potential investor to not consider that AirBnB appears to have some unresolved platform issues that could create opportunity for a competing product to make inroads. And while the voices we hear may well be the loudest ones, they can still be influential in driving change, positive or negative.
Does the company have a legitimate business advantage that can establish market dominance?
How easy is it to replicate the business?
Consumer trends - Who is using the product - young people vs older?
Revenue: Quarter over quarter increase? or a logical explanation if the rev is not growing.
*Consumer comments: Do people like the company so much that they tell their friend about it?
Based on this, I think AirBnB is a winner all around. The company has developed a platform and a brand loyalty that has basically eliminated most competition in this space. In fact, their competitors are so small that most could not even name them.
From a technology standpoint, it is relatively easy to replicate but the branding and loyalty to AirBnB is unrivaled so this is what creates their moat. First-mover advantage is strong is this sector and it is clear AirBnb has gained the first-mover advantage by a wide margin.
Consumer trends - Young people love it. As these consumers get older, their income will increase and they will book more through AirBnB. The very young will most likely start off using AirBnB and never use hotels directly.
Revenue - Showing consistent growth prior to COVID-19. With COVID-19 apparently on the way to being vaccinated away the "COVID-19 slump" is not a concern for me. I could see vacation spending soaring once COVID-19 fears subsidies with consumers.
Consumer comments - People love AirBnB so much that they tell their friends about it. There are some issues with fraud but my guess is over time, AirBnB will figure out how to snuff these bad hosts out of their platform.
I think for the average user Chrome/Edge are pretty much interchangeable now. For advanced users it's pretty annoying but it's less than a second to switch off.
A lot of that document talks about COVID-19 and how it's effected their business (no surprise there) but also several mentions of vaccines. Mostly in the following phrase (repeated 3 times in the document, I think):
> The extent and duration of the adverse impact of COVID-19 on the Company over the longer term remain uncertain and dependent on future developments that cannot be accurately predicted at this time, such as the severity and transmission rate of COVID-19, the extent and effectiveness of containment actions taken, including mobility restrictions, the timing, availability, and effectiveness of vaccines, and the impact of these and other factors on travel behavior in general and on the Company’s business.
2. Every single company in the world had to list COVID as a potential source of adverse effect to their business. It turned around whole economy and further impact is still unknown. And by every I literally mean every. Even companies like Zoom, that are super hot as a result of COVID - for them getting control of COVID will mean potentially big slides down.