Hacker News Reader

Comment by YokoZar | Hacker News Reader

While I understand the author's point comparing a wave of groupon-only customers as a swarm of locusts moving from deal to deal, I don't agree with lumping AirBNB in there. If a business is offering a groupon at a loss on the hope of spurring future customers, the deal-hunters can act like locusts by breaking that hope, causing a net loss of value.

AirBNB, by contrast, is creating new supply, and that supply is in turn only being sold to AirBNB users. As an AirBNB host, it would be very good for me if I was constantly full of people making one day stays and then disappearing forever.

Similarly, if the businesses offering groupons were still profiting from them at the margins even without assumptions of repeat business, then these "locusts" wouldn't be taking value away either.

View on HN

As an AirBNB host, it would be very good for me if I was constantly full of people making one day stays and then disappearing forever.

Yes, it's like running a hotel with none of those bothersome permit, regulatory, or customer service issues.

OTOH, AirBNB in this mode might be a response to those permit, regulatory, or customer service issues becoming too bothersome and routing around them like a broken wire.

Hotels are a 'meh'-style business. They are either expensive or shabby. And they don't match modern lifestyle that much. Hotels are lame. Why should one back hotels' profits?

That's a wide mischaracterization. There's a very continuous spectrum from eight room highway roach motels to $8,000+/night vegas penthouse suites. It's not either dirt or gold. Most middle-ground hotels end up being okay (Best Western, La Quinta, Holiday Inn, Red Roof Inn: http://www.theonion.com/articles/red-roof-inn-announces-new-... ).

Why should one back SF over-indulgent startupwankers' profits by participating in their closed marketplace (instead of paying for a service employing local workers who are happy to have a job to support their family/drug habit/whatnot)?

I believe his point about 'meh' style business is that there is a wide range of prices, but that hotels are largely similar at every given price range. They lack real differentiation that might make any of them particularly compelling for a particular type of consumer at a given price level (hence don't match modern lifestyle).

Most hotels are an expensive overkill when you want to get somewhere fast and for cheap, do some sighseeing/do some job/visit some event and leave. That's the modern lifestyle: fast, cheap, in bulk yet personalized. Why have one long and expensive trip in a year when you can have five short inexpensive ones?

They are also misguided: I don't need somebody to sneak into my room each day in order to "clean" it (I'm staying three days, is's not that I produce much dirt during stay) but I would appreciate having a small kitchen and a fridge (not minibar, those are like the stupidest thing ever).

Well, AirBNB supports your local populace directly by letting them rent out their propety to support their family/drug habit/whatnot.

And the fun thing, it's not even a job.

supports your local populace

That's the operative thought. I'd rather support Rosaria The Housekeeper and Brent The High School Junior Front Desk Clerk helping at a hotel rather than have everything go to Overextended Hipster Douche who bought more apartment than he can afford and now rents it out to cover his high lifestyle (plus, as we've teased out, the Overlay Country of AirBnB fee/taxes go back to a single company for stays all over the world. Convert your thinking into scorn for exploitative capture, not praise for "omg amazeballs sky high rocket local social mobile viral growth!").

At least we agree sneaky daily room cleaning is bizarre and completely unnecessary.

(and this is hilarious: Why have one long and expensive trip in a year when you can have five short inexpensive ones? -- have you seen my profile?)

I would choose supporting Hipster over Rosaria The Housekeeper every time.

Rosaria The Housekeeper consistently votes for scary people every time who then do abominable things. I'll surely try to starve The Housekeeper demographics for cash every time I can.

Or she is an illegal immigrant whose job I do not want to help create.

Overextended Hipster Douche is my Class friend, of course I'll back him.

WRT taxes, it's job of the state to regulate and tax markets. Why don't they do that? Regulate != destroy if they wonder.

P. S. Your travel log is impressive but makes you not representative of general trends. That is, casual travel.

Rosaria The Housekeeper consistently votes for scary people every time who then do abominable things.

Neither the Rosarias or Hipsters in this country vote much at all, and when they do it's for the same guy.

I wasn't talking about USA specifically and I predict even in USA it's bound to change.

Your comments don't make any sense if you weren't talking about the USA.

Why? I wrote them, they make sense to me, I've never been near USA.

I've found that cheap hotels are usually cheaper than AirBNB if I want the whole place to myself.

Completely agree. I searched the article for airbnb to see if he ever expanded on that point.

Nope. He lumped them in with Groupon as if it were a foregone conclusion.

Yes. Color me skeptical. Groupon seems like a mediocre idea in practice (certainly not worth its original market cap) but for the others? We have these services which reduce transaction costs and barriers to entry into the marketplace. Those are the textbook preconditions of an efficient market. These service help deploy capital more efficiently... and then people take advantage of that, instead of lavishing their money on the ever-so-noble "9% / Jeffersonian middle class", and we're going to say that they have the morality of locusts?

Gee, I really like comparing people to insects, because insects have no brains, then I can pretend that I know better than everyone else out there how their money ought to be spent for their own good! Which I guess involves spending extra to support unnecessary capital investments, like hotel-oriented real estate (AirBnB) or cars or what-have-you?

"To the extent that your belongings are a logical expression of your genes and memes sharing them amounts to allowing others to eat them." WHOA DUDE!!! Renting out my house is like HAVING SOMEONE EAT MY SOUL??!? Give me a break. I won't even get into the rest of the tendentious assumptions; that one's enough.

Insects have brains more importantly groups of insects can have highly complex behaviors.

Also, AirBNB feeds off of the community at large by avoiding paying taxes. Consider, hotel taxes are often used to pay for the reason people want to visit in the first place ex: convention hall. That's not to say longer stays have the same issues just part of there profitability comes from people avoiding hotel regulations.

Hotel taxes are almost universally applied because it's one of the only ways for local governments to raise revenue without taxing their own residents. This is not something to laud and praise.

how their money ought to be spent for their own good!

It's not for their own good. It's for the greater good.

I fear for the world if everybody starts modeling their world view based on SF-visionary "me me me only me me me no taxes ever me me me" attitudes espoused around here.

As Retric mentioned, all of this airbnb money transfer is completely cheating local taxes. You pay airbnb fee tax instead of local travel taxes, thereby turning airbnb into some sort of defacto municipal overlay around the entire world.

It's not so hard to regulate. You can have AirBNB handing over their list of renters to the country's authorities in order to tax the renters.

But you should be adamant that you're going to tax them not close them, otherwise it won't work.

In the absence of externalities, their own good is the greater good. AirBnB's neighbors are the only ones I know of with a decent case for that (and in multi-tenant buildings, at least, there are surely some provisions for resolving such conflicts already...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com