Airbnb's success story stands out in stark contrast to the struggles of other startups. Unlike Zillow's disastrous attempt at house-flipping, Airbnb has flourished for over a decade. Their revenue skyrocketed, tripling from $3.3 billion to nearly $10 billion. Even more impressive, they flipped profitability, going from annual losses of $4-5 billion to earning the same staggering amount. Perhaps the strongest indicator of their dominance is their resilient stock price. Unlike the post-IPO crashes
Hotels were a nightmare, cabs were a nightmare. These companies indisputably changed the game in the favour of the consumer all around the world.
Where we are now having an issue is large swaths of housing taken over by companies and investors wanting a return. As long as housing and renting are attractive for investment over and about housing and transitory renting, it will attract lots of money.
Supply must be improved to improve the housing market. This should be a continuous government function at least at the low and middle income level not just a private endeavour.
Density and public transport is the answer - not killing something that absolutely changed the game and took the hotel and cab market back to their customers begging for a chance.
Agreed on cabs but hotels haven’t changed anything significantly and they’re looking much better than AirBnB at this point.
They ripped out the carpets. It made everything better.
Sure, but AirBnB and Uber didn’t improve the hotel and taxi markets, they just joined them. They each took advantage of a tech debt and then lowered the barriers for entry to the market. In doing so, they made a shit ton of money by carving out market share from the fucked up systems you described.
Also by doing and end run around regulations by pretending to be people just renting their house when they are away or giving rides to people going in the same directions. That is why they have names like ‘ride share’ instead of ‘contracted cabbies who drive their own cars’.
Seriously? Not sure about airbnb since I use booking, but Uber was so much better than cabs it wasn’t even close. They didn’t even make that much money. They lost money last quarter
What wasn’t a nightmare was bed and breakfasts. They also weren’t an excuse to keep property off the housing rental market at scale.
These companies aren’t saviours, they’re businesses who rode public tech optimism and common frustration at established industries in the same fields to stay ahead of regulation and have the public demand it. Surprise, they’re the same businesses.
Yes, bed and breakfasts rock, and I try to use them when I travel because the experience is way better.
Don’t have bed and breakfast money. They are regularly more expensive and have less choices than Airbnb
The ones I’ve been to are comparable to a hotel and include a good breakfast. So yeah, a bit more than an Airbnb, but not that far off from Airbnb + good breakfast restaurant.
True. But given that houses were off the market even before, I don’t think it is exclusively their fault.
For example Milano historically always had about 30% of the available homes empty, and that even before Airbnb.
Yeah, I think the main issue is supply. Airbnb works because of a mix of supply and costs. There just aren’t many nice places to stay in resort areas, and the few that exist are extremely expensive (e.g. fancy hotels). Likewise, hotels are often more expensive and less convenient if you have a large group (e.g. my family likes to vacation together, and there’s like 20 of us).
The problem seems to be long term residents feeling the pain of increased housing costs. If you legislate against that, those tourists will still need to go somewhere, which means more hotels or more strain on transportation from the outlying areas to the tourist area. If mass transit is effective, that’s not a big issue, but far too often that’s not the case, so you’ll just end up with tons of traffic.
My proposal is to not ban it, but instead limit it to residents, so in order to do short-term rentals, you need to be physically present a majority of the year. Otherwise, you need to apply as a regular rental, which can be limited to certain areas near transit hubs to keep traffic under control. Then improve transit into the area so tourists who don’t fit in the city can easily get there.