Ten airmazing Airbnb breaks
As the revolutionary online rental firm hits its 10th birthday, Frank Barrett reveals the tricks that will stop your brilliant bargain turning into a disaster
AIRBNB, where you traditionally went online and rented a spare room in someone’s home, marks its tenth birthday this year. It has always seemed to be the digital company with all the gifts: it was immediately popular, grew spectacularly and racked up healthy profits. What’s not to like? In its early days, Airbnbers had the choice of interesting accommodation at very cheap prices.
Surviving 12 months for any new company is a huge achievement – the failure rate for start-ups is about 90 per cent. Airbnb has been no mere survivor: after ten years it bestrides the world like a colossus. The company has more than four million lodging listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries, and has ‘facilitated’ over 260million check-ins.
More recently, however, there have been bumps, mostly related to the site’s wild success. The original name of the app was ‘Air Bed & Breakfast’ because the business started when San Francisco college friends Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia blew up an inflatable mattress, put it in a spare room and attracted online bookings from out-of-towners visiting a local computer show.
But click around the bulletin boards and you find disappointed people who rue Airbnb’s shift away from its ‘alternative’ origins.
It didn’t take long for property owners to twig that they could make more money letting flats to holidaymakers via Airbnb than through making them available in the social housing rental market to local people who desperately need a home at a reasonable rent.
The result is that in popular holiday places – such as Barcelona and Venice – there have been demonstrations protesting that Airbnb is forcing local people out of their local community. An increasing number of cities from California to Paris have passed laws with the aim of restricting the Airbnbisation of rental property.
The old airbed has been consigned to history as Airbnb embarks on world domination. It intends to establish its site not just as a place to book property but to organise all elements of a holiday – it is looking at starting its own airline.
Last year it moved into ‘experiences’ – adding value to the holiday with approved tours – and it is also listing more traditional holiday properties: hotels and self-catering apartments and villas.
The digital world is fickle. Facebook, for example, was once the unchallenged king of the jungle – but after a few weeks of damaging headlines, critics are beginning to wonder if the company may fall into an irreversible decline.
Here, we mark Airbnb’s milestone with a look at how to get the best from the site – and at some of its most eye- catching offerings.
THE OLD IDEA HAS GONE. NOW IT’S ABOUT WORLD DOMINATION...