Airbnb: Why & Why not
I recently sent the Airbnb-logo scarf from Grace Hopper Conference as a gift to one best friend, who is totally thrilled. She is an avid and professional hiker who has conquered quite a few tallest mountains around the world and every time she travels for her adventure, she ALWAYS uses Airbnb.
“The hosts are so nice and every time I can enjoy the new place with exceptional advice from them! It’s very exciting to live like a local too! Eva, definitely you should try too if you have not.” Her eyes are full of light and vigor when talking about her Airbnb experience.
However, I happened to be among the few people who has never tried Airbnb yet. Yes, never. It is kind of akward situation for someone like me who travel at least twice long-distance every year and have been to 20+ States in US. How did that happen?
Two main reasons
- My husband was strongly agaist using Airbnb service
- My daught is only 1-year-old and still need a crib
Before diving deep into those two reasons, I would like to list a few protopersonas who would use and love Airbnb a lot
| Persona | Need | Airbnb Offers |
|---|---|---|
| Student | Save money | Cheaper than hotel |
| Adventurer | Experience something new | Diverse residence |
| Tourist | Local guidance | Local interaction with hosts |
| People who concern about privacy | Privacy | Stand alone house |
| People/Family who have a large group | Space | Large affordable unit |
| People who have empty properties | Money | Easy listing |
| People who want to temporarily lease their properties | Flexibility | Controlled time frame by host |
| … | … | … |
So, how did my family not take advantage of all those benefits?
I would like to start with my husband. Originally, I thought he was so concerned about the hygiene, privacy and discomfort about living in others’ home. Yet he surprised me with an ethical concern about the whole concept of Airbnb. To be exact, he insisted that the externality (yeah, he is an economist…) of Airbnb host should be strictly regulated.
“For example, I have an apt in Chicago” He said, “and my neighbour made his apt an Airbnb host without the notification/permission of the building management and his neighbours. Due to the fact that Airbnb in nature is a renting service, the value of other apts in the building would be negatively affected. If his apt is rented for the purpose of overnight party, the noise would greatly affect his neighbors as well. A lot of things can happen to this Airbnb-ed apt, while it is hard to make the tempory tenants be responsible for anything they have done.”
“Stand-alone single house won’t have such problem.” I muttered, trying to persuade him to try single house.
“What if any accidents happened to the tenants during the stay?” He continued his argument on another aspect. “If a little kid was drowned in the Airbnb host’s swimming pool, who will be responsible?”
“OK, OK. Can we at least try one safe and nice house before you overthink the whole situation?” I was still trying to persuade him to take the first step.
“If you insist, we can do it, without the baby.” Finally, my husband conceded. But, wait, without the baby? Leaving our little with grandma again in order to try Airbnb? “Because they do not have crib for little kid.” He added.
At once, I started to search for an Airbnb host who has a crib in the house @ Seattle on Airbnb.com. Yet, I gave up in 10 min. Even though there is an option saying “family/kid friendly”, I still do not know if they have a crib or not. Click around a few houses, none of them mention having a crib. Frustrated and distracted by another task, I stopped nagging my husband to try Airbnb.
However, that is not the end of the story. When writing this post today, I suddenly found another solution by searching “airbnb crib Seattle” directly on Google (should ask the magic Google earlier!) and found a cute a house even my husband likes! Who-ray! Really looking forward to booking our first trip with our little girl on Airbnb in near future!
I am wondering, if Airbnb has an internal general/free-style search engine like many other website (e.g. Zara.com) in addition to filtered time/place search, probably hesitator/cold-starter like me will get answers more easily at the same time offer Airbnb information about what is missing in free-style text format? An A/B test is probably needed :D