1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
blog.airbnb.com
1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
1–10 of 54 posts
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#2Congrats, as someone who has seen the hard side of the Travel Industry these are truly remarkable figures.
Good luck for 2011.
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#3Posterous fail
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#4For perspective, a single large Vegas hotel books that many nights each year. (For instance, Mandalay Bay has 3300 rooms.)
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#5I booked a room on AirBnB when I visited Los Angleles. I spoke with the owner of the room and he said he made $4000 in 3 months off of his 2 rooms. AirBnB is on to something.
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#6I booked a room on AirBnB when I visited Los Angleles. I spoke with the owner of the room and he said he made $4000 in 3 months off of his 2 rooms. AirBnB is on to something.
I wouldn't say the calling to the site is based on monetary gain. By comparison, he'd make that same amount if he rented each of those rooms for $670/month (a pretty cheap price for California) - and it'd require a lot less work. I think the bigger call to it is that you can meet new people in an interesting context. It's a fun thing to do, in my opinion.
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#7I booked a room on AirBnB when I visited Los Angleles. I spoke with the owner of the room and he said he made $4000 in 3 months off of his 2 rooms. AirBnB is on to something.
I wouldn't say the calling to the site is based on monetary gain. By comparison, he'd make that same amount if he rented each of those rooms for $670/month (a pretty cheap price for California) - and it'd require a lot less work. I think the bigger call to it is that you can meet new people in an interesting context. It's a fun thing to do, in my opinion.
Having a boarder is VERY different than having people drop in for a night here and there.
He could rent a room for $700 a month or $90/night. The latter works out better assuming he can rent it for 8 nights per month AND allows him to keep in available for friends/family who are coming into town, etc. I think the "fun" aspect of it is definitely part of it for some folks, but I'd wager it's less than you think.
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#8I booked a room on AirBnB when I visited Los Angleles. I spoke with the owner of the room and he said he made $4000 in 3 months off of his 2 rooms. AirBnB is on to something.
I wouldn't say the calling to the site is based on monetary gain. By comparison, he'd make that same amount if he rented each of those rooms for $670/month (a pretty cheap price for California) - and it'd require a lot less work. I think the bigger call to it is that you can meet new people in an interesting context. It's a fun thing to do, in my opinion.
But he couldn't find anyone to rent the rooms. AirBnB fixes that inefficiency and fixed that problem for him.
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#9Glad to see a lot of people were able to book rooms there. I wasn't, but not for lack of trying.
I wish they would offer hosts more flexible controls for showing availability (and make sure hosts use them) so that people don't try to book places only to get negative responses from hosts who don't know if it'll be available at the time and to check back later. I was trying to book a place in SF for Google I/O and got a lot of responses saying that May is too far out for them to say for sure. It got pretty frustrating.
I don't have a place to host so I can't see what the controls exactly look like right now, but from browsing available properties it looks like the default case is that the place shows up as "available" unless there's an Airbnb booking in effect for a given date or the owner explicitly has blocked it out.
Given my experience searching for places, it'd be nicer if hosts had the option to say things like "don't show as available further out than X time into the future" or "default as unavailable except on specific days."
Re: 1 million nights booked at Airbnb (YC W09)
#10For perspective, a single large Vegas hotel books that many nights each year. (For instance, Mandalay Bay has 3300 rooms.)
Mandalay bay does not have 100% occupancy 365 days per year. They probably don't even have 50% occupancy 365 days per year. But yes, it's about the size of a VERY large hotel.