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Airbnb expands to experiences

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Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#71

Post by abduhl »

bsimpson wrote: post #37

I just got an EULA-wall asking to agree not to treat anyone on Airbnb "with bias or judgment" based on their origins. That's not how bias/judgment work. You can't just agree to be unbiased, though you can certainly try to be aware of your biases and to be accordingly more sensitive to situations where you may be biased. I wonder what the impact of this is. So many people blindly click "Agree" when presented with lega…

Since when is it a faux pas in the tech industry to deny someone for a poor "culture fit"?

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#72

Post by legulere »

bsimpson wrote: post #37

I just got an EULA-wall asking to agree not to treat anyone on Airbnb "with bias or judgment" based on their origins. That's not how bias/judgment work. You can't just agree to be unbiased, though you can certainly try to be aware of your biases and to be accordingly more sensitive to situations where you may be biased. I wonder what the impact of this is. So many people blindly click "Agree" when presented with lega…

It's probably mostly a legal protection for them so that they can blame someone else when they get sued.

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#73

Post by visarga »

GuiA wrote: post #24
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #2

This is awesome. My wife and I are planning a round the world trip to celebrate our last college tuition payment. We've talked about becoming 'Citizens of the World' and eschewing the canned tourist experiences to instead live the same lifestyle as the citizens of the countries we visit: Stay in a neighborhood instead of a high-rise hotel, shop at the same grocery stores, eat the same home-cooked meals, get around vi…

> to instead live the same lifestyle as the citizens of the countries we visit: Stay in a neighborhood instead of a high-rise hotel, shop at the same grocery stores, eat the same home-cooked meals, get around via the same transit, I mean as high-fidelity as is reasonable Until one of you gets severely sick or something like that, in which case you'll be very happy to not live like a local anymore and fall back on you…

So, people wanting to learn about the world should go to Somalia and North Korea to round up their experience?

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#74

Post by venantius »

hamitron wrote: post #14
venantius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is different. I work at Airbnb - we've been working on what was announced today for quite some time, and it has been our intent to fully own and provide an Airbnb-branding-appropriate offering.

a clearly un-biased viewpoint

I mean, at least I was clear about that up front :)

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#75

Post by venantius »

Fuzzwah wrote: post #50
rorykoehler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were your motivations for this? It seems like the opposite experience of what I use Airbnb for. If people were after hand holding tourism it's unlikely they'd be using airbnb. Does this signal a shift in strategy away from what made us all start using airbnb in the first instance?

From what I learned about AirBnB's origin story via an episode of NPR's How I Built This [1], the original idea of AirBnB was a kind of "stay somewhere with a local and experience the place not as a tourist" experience. The fact that this kind of idea never went away even when everyone else found that AirBnB fullfilled a different requirement doesn't surprise me. [1] http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-thi…

This is more or less correct - authentic, local experiences have always been top of mind. It was sort of an accident that in the process we also stumbled onto "stay somewhere cheap" with a better reputation system than CouchSurfer, et al.

Another way of thinking about this is to understand that Airbnb doesn't think of itself as an accommodations company, and hasn't for years. It thinks of itself as a travel company, and this has significant implications for its overall strategy.

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#76

Post by venantius »

ohazi wrote: post #27

Why is this an app? Why can't I use the airbnb website so that I can sit comfortably at a desk with a real mouse and keyboard and calendar? On a PC, you can open new tabs easily to read reviews, look at maps, make itineraries, and comparison shop. This is torture on a phone, and as a result, people just don't perform as thorough a search on mobile. Airbnb knows this because they have data on how many options we consi…

It's not a new app - this is built into the existing Airbnb app. It'll also be available on web.

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#77

Post by TheSmiddy »

GuiA wrote: post #59
ecesena wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're reading a bit too much in it. Say you hate Italians with a passion and I send you a request. You can surely tell me no, politely declining with any excuse you like. What you can't do is reply me in an offensive way, asking me for more money or anything else which strictly related to your hate. Or at least, you can but if you do that they can now ban you from the service. I was pretty surprised when I f…

I think you're interpreting it too charitably. If you're Italian and send me a request, which I refuse on the sole basis that I hate Italians, no matter how politely, I am certainly acting with bias.

and if airbnb discover that you are doing this they can see that you are violating the terms of service and stop listing your place.

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#78

Post by hueving »

malloryerik wrote: post #29
GuiA wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to instead live the same lifestyle as the citizens of the countries we visit: Stay in a neighborhood instead of a high-rise hotel, shop at the same grocery stores, eat the same home-cooked meals, get around via the same transit, I mean as high-fidelity as is reasonable Until one of you gets severely sick or something like that, in which case you'll be very happy to not live like a local anymore and fall back on you…

You might try thinking about this from the other direction. I can tell you from first-hand experience that once-shocking levels of South Korean nationalism, and really, ethnic nationalism, have been calmed down to something far far friendlier and more cosmopolitan, and it very much seems that travel and exposure to other cultures (especially the West, but not only) are what has done the trick. Now as for being a Nort…

>Back in the USA, what percentage of Trump voters do you imagine hold passports? Sure, correlation is different from causation, but still...

About the same percentage as Hillary supporters? In my experience holding a passport is more correlated with income than any particular political leaning. What they do is likely a lot different (e.g. religious mission vs French wine binge), but there is nothing particularly Democrat/Republican about a passport.

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#79

Post by kriro »

I feel like they should have done this under a different name. Or am I missing something and "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind" is an outdated tome and not relevant anymore?

Re: Airbnb expands to experiences

#80

Post by malloryerik »

hueving wrote: post #78
malloryerik wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might try thinking about this from the other direction. I can tell you from first-hand experience that once-shocking levels of South Korean nationalism, and really, ethnic nationalism, have been calmed down to something far far friendlier and more cosmopolitan, and it very much seems that travel and exposure to other cultures (especially the West, but not only) are what has done the trick. Now as for being a Nort…

>Back in the USA, what percentage of Trump voters do you imagine hold passports? Sure, correlation is different from causation, but still... About the same percentage as Hillary supporters? In my experience holding a passport is more correlated with income than any particular political leaning. What they do is likely a lot different (e.g. religious mission vs French wine binge), but there is nothing particularly Demo…

I'm not quite sure that the numbers are as equal as you might think.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/americas...

Also we should note that being Republican and bring a Trump supporter aren't necessarily the same thing.

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