I think 2020 misses the window to strike when the IPO market is bubbly. Lyft and Uber timed it just right -- and those won't be the only four-letter words their investors will be screaming!
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Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
121–130 of 174 posts
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can relate. I used to use AirBNB exclusively. I hated hotels with a passion. Maybe I just got older. Maybe Booking.com got a lot better. Maybe AirBNB got worse. I'm not sure what it is, but now AirBNB is always my last resort.
Same. Agoda, Booking, Kayak and hotels are my place now. It isn't the same anymore. What airbnb was in 2013-2014 was magical. Now, with 300+ reviews, it's, sad, and maybe I was part of the change because I rented places and lived 50/50 in different parts of the world and it was possible w/ airbnb and I only tried to be cost negative.
> It isn't the same anymore. What airbnb was in 2013-2014 was magical.
I'm a host (a single "entire" house) and started in 2015, which in Australia was early-ish.
As host it's getting hard and thankless. Supply is driving prices down (about $40 a night less than a year ago) and vacancy is higher too. Guests are more than likely new or only have 1 or 2 reviews, and are not the early adopters looking for something different, they are people looking for cheap and easy accommodation (where easy means no responsibilities).
The review process is painful and hosts live constantly in fear of guests that leave glowing reviews, 5 stars for each category but 4 stars overall -- overall is the only rating that counts. Remember that hosts need an average of 4.7 to remain on the platform, so a couple of 4-star reviews can be devastating.
The other thing is that Airbnb keeps dictating terms for hosts. Children and infants are free!
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#123I really really love Airbnb, and I've mostly stayed at Airbnb and ignored hotel in the last 5 years perhaps. I now find hotels dirty, impersonal, and a chore to stay at to be honest. Now, I've become increasingly irritated by Airbnb's pricing tactics. They are blatantly lying to you when it comes to how much you're going to pay. I have two recent examples if you are not used to booking Airbnb: * 99$/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).
Yeah, and we can come up with a story of why a hefty AirBnB fee should be hidden until the last moment as well.
Or we can notice that 99.99% of AirBnB users aren't going to have their taxes and fees rebated, and would be better off seeing the total price right away.
Yes, including the cleaning fee.
The users enter specific days anyway. The rate changes depending on which days those are. You can't infer the price for another date range without getting a quote specifically for that date range anyway. Separating the cleaning fee out achieves nothing.
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#124I 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.
>You know upfront what you're going to pay; there's no bait and switch.
The map only displays the nightly price, IIRC. And not being able to filter by total is a hostile UI.
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s not actually true. A certain real estate leasing firm could give away the first year on a three year commitment to book the revenue at a very high COGS, allowing for unsustainable revenue growth. The internet 1.0 had many great examples of this.
True, but I didn't mean to say revenue was completely immune to the same manipulation - Microsoft was notorious for deferring windows revenue to show QoQ growth stability in the 90's, like you're eluding to. Still, there are fewer levers to manipulate revenue than profits, and I'd have more faith in that for AirBnB than profits.
Well, I think in We's case, they are pulling revenue which should be deferred forward, but like the Dotcom companies, you can also grow revenue by selling $2 for $1, which shows up when your losses are growing more/close to your revenue growth.
As you mentioned, net income can easily be massaged, adjusted EBITDA, etc. Cash flow is harder to fake. Airbnb should have decent to good unit economics though.
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm probably missing something, but I think the company is going down and they're pulling an exit scam. AirBnB is doing fine. They've posted healthy profits for the past few years, which is more than can be said of nearly every other tech/startup company that has announced an IPO recently (Uber, Lyft, Pelaton, WeWork, Cloudflare, Slack, Postmates, and Pinterest are all unprofitable).
Revenue is a better thermometer than profits here, especially since most startups leading up to an IPO manipulate their profits into looking great. It seems the regulatory product lifecycle is that AirBnB enters a new market, and then some time later that market starts to regulate and restrict it. How many new markets does AirBnB have left to exploit regulation?
> most startups leading up to an IPO manipulate their profits into looking great.
What? This isn't true at all.
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#127Something I've long wondered about in Airbnb's communication platform and guarding their earnings: When a host answers a customer and attempts to put a phone number, an email address, a URL, the word "craigslist", or spelling out a number like three six seven..., it gets replaced by "(HIDDEN FOR YOUR PROTECTION)".
The frustration at that point leads one to suspect that it's actually hidden to prevent anything that could lead to transactions outside of the platform, where Airbnb would be unable to take their cut.
If there does turn out to be a means to establish contact, and a rental then happens outside of Airbnb's systems, do the terms of service actually restrict this? It just seems strange to me at the outset. As far as I know Amazon sellers aren't prohibited from also selling off-Amazon, but maybe housing and other industries have some conventions that are comparable?
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#128I 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…
AirBnb employs all sorts of clever people.
It’s pretty easy to show an average rate that incorporates the various fees and make the detail available later.
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#129I 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…
The legitimate reason is that momentum causes even frustrated and annoyed people to finish most transactions even after they realize that AirBNB has tricked them about the price. Let's not pretend there's something nobler then that.
The whole travel industry is chock full of this bullshit where vendors hide the full price (taxes, resort fees, etc.). It sucks.
Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020
#130I am a big time traveler. When AirBnB appeared on the scene, it was a life changing event for me. So much better then hotels. Since then, AirBnB have not added anything that benefits me. But booking.com have catched up massively. To the point that I prefer booking.com again these days. I would have never expected that to happen. Some of my pet peeves with AirBnB: AirBnB's reviews are not chronological. So you have to…
> By the way, anybody here using something other then AirBnB or booking.com? Would love to hear if there are other good options to consider.
I usually go with hostelworld.com. I was a bit anxious in the beginning but in the last 3 years I've stayed in more than a dozen hostels and overall had a good experience. For example, there are two lovely small hostels in the Bay Area, one in Marin Headlands and one in Pigeon Point.