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Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

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Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#151

Post by decafninja »

subsubzero wrote: post #132

Some of my experiences with airbnb, always a guest not an owner: Bads - Had a really bad house with cabinet doors torn off the cabinets, trash in the garage, place was a total dump. Stayed one day and got the rest of my money back. Another place had a bad mouse infestation, this was dealt with by the owner but it was still pretty shocking as I have never lived or stayed in a place that had a single mouse my entire li…

$400 definitely seems absurdly high, but I wonder if covid related disinfecting has anything to do with charging higher than usual cleaning fees?

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#152

Post by IshKebab »

grailed wrote: post #8

I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. However, it feels like Airbnb has solved a truly hard problem: how to make people trust your service. People are using this app to go stay in random people's homes. How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hea…

Is it though? There are plenty of other platforms that people don't think twice about booking on. Booking.com, Trivago, etc.

Their real value is that when a lot of people think "I'll book somewhere", they now go to Airbnb first, much like when people think "I'll buy something" they go to Amazon first. But I think that's a fairly weak "moat" on the scale of things.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#153

Post by ghufran_syed »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #61
grailed wrote: post #8

I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. However, it feels like Airbnb has solved a truly hard problem: how to make people trust your service. People are using this app to go stay in random people's homes. How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hea…

> I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. Why do they need a moat? What happened to all the free market capitalism everyone believes in? Let the better company win out in true competition? Or is that just a taking point, and everyone actually believes in building moats to avoid competition?

I think the unstated context is that “moats” might justify a higher stock valuation than otherwise, which is relevant because of the behavior of the stock on IPO

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#154

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

I recall that Facebook's first day closed at or near the offer price: Opened at $38 and closed at $38.23. That's a masterful IPO pricing accomplishment, meaning, FB left $0.23 per share on the table.

Moreover, the stock traded below the open for 5 quarters before starting it's impressive rise. Even with that pause, buying at the open and holding till now would have yielded nearly 27% annualized return.

It's just my opinion, but ABNB missing by more than 100% ($140 close vs. $68 open) is a major fail on the part of their CFO.

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-stock-price-ipo-6th...

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#155

Post by oldprogrammer2 »

itronitron wrote: post #30
grailed wrote: post #8

I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. However, it feels like Airbnb has solved a truly hard problem: how to make people trust your service. People are using this app to go stay in random people's homes. How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hea…

I've had better experiences with VRBO than AirBnB

Agree, largely because AirBnB tends to have higher platform and cleaning fees.

I also have a hard time understanding why AirBnB is treated as crown jewel of success for using $6 billion in raised capital and more than 6,000 employees to copy what VRBO already did well (and with substantially less resources).

(Honestly, I would like to understand this, if someone can explain it to me).

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#156

Post by ialex »

Ekaros wrote: post #107
bob33212 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume most investors are smarter than that and are hoping AirBnB will build a monopoly similar to how google did with search and Wikipedia did with online encyclopedias. A 5% monopoly tax on most rentals/hotels does give you a huge profit eventually.

I really wonder if these monopolies will happen. Is there any paid service with actual monopoly yet? Amazon has market share, but also competitive prices. To me all of these big markets like taxi, food delivery and online booking seem rather low barrier of entry. And that the customers will be price aware. That can't be really compared with free services like Google, Wikipedia or Youtube...

VISA and Mastercard are close to monopoly there are also debt rating companies that control a market but cannot remember their name.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#157

Post by whimsicalism »

andy_ppp wrote: post #141
whimsicalism wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically how I rent and I've also had great experiences. I have rented a "non-Whole place" and I would say that was a pretty bad experience. Our room was supposed to be the only Airbnb, but two nights in, they rented out a room with a frosted glass separator next to us as "420 friendly" and the couple that moved in proceeded to have quite loud sex. We gave them pretty scathing reviews, which I am not wont to…

And how did you review the room?

Poorly, but Airbnb's website has poor support for historical reviews so I can't actually see what I wrote. This was 4 years ago or so.

I likely would have been kinder if it weren't advertised as "whole condominium".

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#158

Post by goatinaboat »

ionwake wrote: post #98

As a great fan of airbnb having stayed 10 times in Denmark in different ones, I was suddenly burned by a fake review from a first time host ( she got into trouble with her housing association I think ). She destroyed my feedbacks "image" with made up statements in her statement. After several appeals airbnb did not help at all. I got so burned that I still don't quite understand whether I was unlucky or failed to rea…

she got into trouble with her housing association I think

The vast majority of AirBnBs are people violating the terms of their leases and/or making undeclared income. A legal AirBnb is just called... A BnB.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#159

Post by jonny_eh »

vmarsy wrote: post #149
subsubzero wrote: post #132

Some of my experiences with airbnb, always a guest not an owner: Bads - Had a really bad house with cabinet doors torn off the cabinets, trash in the garage, place was a total dump. Stayed one day and got the rest of my money back. Another place had a bad mouse infestation, this was dealt with by the owner but it was still pretty shocking as I have never lived or stayed in a place that had a single mouse my entire li…

> Ugly - Alot of owners now are pulling a perfectly legal scam of listing a place at a certain price point and then charging an extremely high cleaning fee. When booking it, you are then shocked by the extreme fees, one place (5 days stay) was charging $400 for their cleaning fee. I'm not sure I follow here, the cleaning fee is announced before you confirm the booking isn't it? In a way it's similar to airlines havin…

> seat-choosing fee, bagage fee

Those are optional, cleaning fees are not. They should be included in the price shown on the map.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#160

Post by [deleted] »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #135

I decided I'd had it with Airbnb a couple of years ago now and mostly haven't looked back. I prioritize more traditional hospitality options now. I'll save a long diatribe and instead say that when I added up the little details I didn't like about the platform, and the ways I'd fix them, I'd "invented" ... a hotel. It may be my age now (over 30), but I've come to value knowing that Hilton uses a certain type of bedsh…

[deleted]
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