Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

press.airbnb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 174 posts

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#111

Post by mdorazio »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #51
mbesto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Impending recession 2) Not enough IPOs so lots of investor interest to deploy capital into something ( (thus driving up the price, making it more attractive for startups) 3) We're near the end of a 7~10 year cycle where lots of private VC capital was deployed and needs to be returned 4) 500 private investor maximum SEC rule

Could you elaborate a bit on the cycle part. Why is it a cycle at all assuming money gets invested all the time instead of once-a-x-years?

Simplifying a lot, but...

VC companies themselves raise money from investors to create a fund, which is then used to invest in startups. Generally, funds are raised with a specific timeline pitch for returns to the investors - often 7-10 years. In order to return money to investors, the investments in the fund have to actually pay money back to the VC firm - the best way to do this is via IPO (although acquisition is also an option).

Due to overall market conditions, a glut of investment happened in the VC space 7-8 years ago (i.e. a bunch of funds were started), and those funds now need to get money back to the investors to prove a nice ROI, so there's a push to get the startups that were funded by the fund to exit one way or another.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#112

Post by avar »

baby wrote: post #110

I really really love Airbnb, and I've mostly stayed at Airbnb and ignored hotel in the last 5 years perhaps. I now find hotels dirty, impersonal, and a chore to stay at to be honest. Now, I've become increasingly irritated by Airbnb's pricing tactics. They are blatantly lying to you when it comes to how much you're going to pay. I have two recent examples if you are not used to booking Airbnb: * 99$/night room end up…

AirBnB clearly uses low room rates and high service fees to pull you in, but there's a legitimate reason to display it like that.

The cleaning fee is fixed. So maybe you start out thinking you'll stay 5 days, but end up staying 10. If they showed "all inclusive" rates you'd have confusion in the other direction. What you thought was the cheap hotel suddenly isn't because the cleaning fee for the two is very different.

Similarly, it's important to display the local taxes separately, because some customers may be e.g. entitled to a rebate for that part (some localities e.g. only charge foreigners).

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#113

Post by tempsy »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #105

I used to only use Airbnbs a couple years ago. Lately the service really became horrible: Last minute cancellation, soulless places run like an industry. prices on the same level or even more expensive than hotels. Customer support is also completely unresponsive. I'm now going back to hotels 90% of the times where I can expect a consistent quality of services. They grew too fast and got arrogant in the process. I ho…

Another really annoying thing about the app is that they’ve seemingly increased the number of clicks/steps to complete a simple search for a place because they’re heavily pushing “experiences.” Very irritating

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#114

Post by Tiktaalik »

alephnan wrote: post #26
Tiktaalik wrote: post #25

Seems like a good time to cash out. I don't know where the growth is going to come from at this point. Major cities have recognized the negative externalities that Airbnb has on rental vacancy and land values, and are starting to add on regulations of various strength. That will drag on growth. The company gained its valuation from days past when people were buying new condos exclusively to rent 100% of the time on A…

What are the negative externalities?

Leakage of new supply to people who run new apartments as permanent Airbnbs instead of renting them out to locals.

This also distorts the underlying value of the land, since you can make more money renting out on Airbnb than you can renting long term.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#115

Post by chrononaut »

mbesto wrote: post #43
OedipusRex wrote: post #16

Why all the recent IPOs?

1) Impending recession 2) Not enough IPOs so lots of investor interest to deploy capital into something ( (thus driving up the price, making it more attractive for startups) 3) We're near the end of a 7~10 year cycle where lots of private VC capital was deployed and needs to be returned 4) 500 private investor maximum SEC rule

Wouldn't an impending recession be particularly impactful on their business? I mean, if I had to buy stock now with knowledge that an impending down market is guaranteed I don't think it would be in the hospitality industry, unless I overestimate how much that industry is influenced by recessions.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#116

Post by hrjriei9 »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #105

I used to only use Airbnbs a couple years ago. Lately the service really became horrible: Last minute cancellation, soulless places run like an industry. prices on the same level or even more expensive than hotels. Customer support is also completely unresponsive. I'm now going back to hotels 90% of the times where I can expect a consistent quality of services. They grew too fast and got arrogant in the process. I ho…

Don’t bother with Vacasa. Same story. Arrogant and expensive. Cashing in on tech startup hype while looking to buy up as much real property as possible to sit on.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#117

Post by meowface »

baby wrote: post #110

I really really love Airbnb, and I've mostly stayed at Airbnb and ignored hotel in the last 5 years perhaps. I now find hotels dirty, impersonal, and a chore to stay at to be honest. Now, I've become increasingly irritated by Airbnb's pricing tactics. They are blatantly lying to you when it comes to how much you're going to pay. I have two recent examples if you are not used to booking Airbnb: * 99$/night room end up…

I've found this annoying, but they always show you the total on the initial booking listing (if you've specified the dates and number of people). You know upfront what you're going to pay; there's no bait and switch. It makes searching by nightly price a little more tedious than it should be (search by total would be nice), but I've never felt deceived.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#118

Post by meowface »

opportune wrote: post #97
davnicwil wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. Some of my fondest travel memories are staying in airbnbs. But in the past few years, at a seemingly accelerating pace, what an airbnb is has changed. In the last few years when I've used them, not all but almost all of them have simply been unlicensed hotels run by investor-landlords who aren't present and at best will pay someone else to come meet you with a key, but usually just leave it in a…

In some ways I actually prefer the cheap-investor Airbnb experience. I recently stayed with a very kind lady at a low rate. I didn’t dislike her at all but I was staying in her house with her and it was just an odd experience for me. Usually when I get an Airbnb it’s because I know the hotels/motels in the area are a racket and I want somewhere that is cheaper, bigger, and in a better location than the hotels. It’s e…

I feel the same way as you, but Airbnb lets you filter for this when searching ("whole apartment", "one room", etc.). I've been in one where the owner lived in a different apartment upstairs, but there was no sound travel or anything.

The weird cheap investor units I've been in never had the owner around, but there was a lot of noise leakage between guests in different units because the units were low-quality industrial "pods" retrofitted into some warehouse space or something.

Post reply on HN