Is Airbnb for me?
Sharing your home can fatten your wallet while broadening your travel horizons, writes Josh Martin.
Poolside cocktails and the clear Pacific waters lapping at your feet don’t instantly spring to mind when cleaning strangers’ hair from the shower drain or wiping bacon grease from your oven hobs. But a growing number of Kiwis are funding their travel dreams by turning their own homes into would-be hostels and hotels.
The sharing economy – where technology matches the excess supply of a good or service (rooms, car rides, meals, labour . . .) – means earning a bit-on-the-side to supplement your primary income is fast becoming the new normal.
The travel industry has been shaken by the now colossal room and home sharing website Airbnb. Unsurprisingly, it has rattled established hotel, motel and hostel providers who are losing out on traveller cash now handed over to locals for use of a house or room to stay in.
There are home-sharing rivals and similar holiday accommodation websites, such as the well-established Bookabach, but none have the global barrierbreaking gravitas of Airbnb.
The silver lining for an underfire tourism hospitality industry is that the extra income earned by small-time players and new accommodation hosts is being funnelled back into their own travel dreams.
One such Kiwi is Maureen Sarney, who offers guests the downstairs level at her Campbells Bay property. She even chucks in breakfast and now spends a good chunk of her time washing linen.
Initially built for her teenage children with its own access, living space and kitchenette, her son suggested she rent the downstairs out to travellers to earn a bit of extra cash once Maureen became an empty nester.
The income generated on average for a New Zealander playing host is about $3800 annually, the accommodation website said. The extra income has allowed Maureen to renovate as well as plan a trip over to London to visit her OE-adventuring daughter as well as seeing France with her husband.
Maureen is one of 15,000 New Zealand based Airbnb listings. Four thousand of them are in the tourist gateway of Auckland.
The North Shore hostess said it’s fairly common for guests to spend a couple of nights at her spot before heading off for longer stays in the Bay of Islands or the South Island.
Because of the legal complexities of sub-letting (as standard, landlord approval is usually needed for any renter looking to list a room on a website like Airbnb) the average age of hosts is older in New Zealand – 47 years old – than those I’ve stayed with in Airbnbs throughout Europe.
Far easier to rent out a room in your own home to pay for travel and bills – and maybe even some of the mortgage – than to convince a landlord of the benefits of a parade of tourists staying in their property.
Maureen owns the home but got herself up-to-speed on council bylaws and insurance T&Cs: ‘‘We checked local council regulations and contacted our insurance company and for a modest fee increase on our insurance it now covers the unexpected event.’’
With cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berlin cracking down on the website – because of some landlords making a killing off the site at the expense of the cities’ permanent residents – hosts need to keep up with rule changes (such as city tourist taxes), in the event that they’re even allowed to sublet rooms at all.
But Maureen also loves the host experience for more than just a hefty haul of pocket money: ‘‘Such a wide diversity of people, some on a budget, but also senior executives. They came from far and wide: England Scotland and Wales, the rest of Europe, Japan, China, Singapore, Canada and the US.’’
Although all travellers are different in terms of how much interaction they desire, Maureen said some relish the opportunity to have Auckland shown off to them by a local.
‘‘Another young lady arrived by bus and we invited her to join us . . . we took in city sights one day, some northern beaches the next and she was thrilled to have the opportunity to join me on the ferry to Waiheke Island.’’
For travellers who would have usually been the archetypical hotel dwellers, hosting has opened up the idea of staying in this type of accommodation. ‘‘We are keen to visit London next year to visit our daughter so we definitely plan to use Airbnb for our accommodation,’’ Maureen explained.
The levels of service at Airbnb properties can be volatile and review reading and research is needed to avoid taking a leap in the dark, but avoiding the sometimes sterile or cookie-cutter accommodation can often be worth the risk. For some the experience is so rewarding they want to continue the feeling when their own holiday ends.
‘‘A delightful older couple from Switzerland stayed for three weeks and they loved the experience so much they were going home to set up an Airbnb within their own home,’’ Maureen said.
Little do they know they’ll soon be multi-lingual experts in city tours, breakfast menus . . . not to mention shower drain declogging.