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Unbundling Airbnb

peterfabor.com

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Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#21

Post by zdkl »

mg wrote: post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

> I often wonder if one could build a business by creating a site that lists a small subset of AirBnBs that are manually vetted like this.

s/AirBnB/lodging --> A travel agency?

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#22

Post by dorchadas »

philihp wrote: post #10
nraynaud wrote: post #2

What’s funny is that in France we had various alternatives to Airbnb for so long before Airbnb that Americans are completely baffled by the choice when they learn of them. Actual upscale bnb? Gîtes de France. I’m coming with 20-30 friends -> gîtes pour groupes, you’ll get an industrial kitchen and dormitories. Those things existed long before the internet.

One contributor to Airbnb's success was making things like this accessible to international travelers. It's that whole "live like a local" vibe.

"live like a local" while actively helping to destroy local communities. Such a great vibe!

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#23

Post by mg »

postsantum wrote: post #20
mg wrote: post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

I think it could be implemented as a browser extension. 8/10 people found this property has a suitable workplace. The lenght of the average comment is 56% shorter than usual

Where would the "8/10" number come from?

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#24

Post by rjh29 »

mg wrote: post #18

Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place. For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB. I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming. It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair an…

There is 'laptop-friendly workspace' as a checkbox, but not always accurate.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#25

Post by nraynaud »

philihp wrote: post #10
nraynaud wrote: post #2

What’s funny is that in France we had various alternatives to Airbnb for so long before Airbnb that Americans are completely baffled by the choice when they learn of them. Actual upscale bnb? Gîtes de France. I’m coming with 20-30 friends -> gîtes pour groupes, you’ll get an industrial kitchen and dormitories. Those things existed long before the internet.

One contributor to Airbnb's success was making things like this accessible to international travelers. It's that whole "live like a local" vibe.

I think a lot of them are not on Airbnb, that's the trick. American people might be a bit chocked, but a lot of those places are not really made to make money, or their owners are not trying to grow that business.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#26

Post by rjh29 »

jdrc wrote: post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

Those things are a pain to sort out in the short term, but irrelevant in the scale of 2 years, or even 6 months. Which is probably why it's not a thing.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#27

Post by rjh29 »

dazc wrote: post #11
jdrc wrote: post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

I tried this via Airbnb in Spain and ended up moving from place to place instead. I never actually found a location where I could work properly, to the extent that I rented a separate office some of the time. Patchy internet almost always, cheap furniture, base level electricity that would trip out if you had two appliances running at the same time, and #1 problem NOISE all of the time. I'm not sure that Airbnb is th…

Problem is, the neighbours of airbnbs are often airbnbs themselves, so you get a stream of incoming people who don't care about noise.

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#28

Post by postsantum »

mg wrote: post #23
postsantum wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it could be implemented as a browser extension. 8/10 people found this property has a suitable workplace. The lenght of the average comment is 56% shorter than usual

Where would the "8/10" number come from?

From other users of this extension

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#29

Post by marcohernaiz »

jdrc wrote: post #3

or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in " as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc

I tested this concept with smarthubs.club (digital nomads living and traveling around the world with everything included). We started in Spain, and used 4 stars hotels to standarize the experience. Although it worked during the pandemic, hotels are now reluctant to change their business models, and they will not accept the required conditions to make the business model viable and expand the concept to other hotels/cities

Re: Unbundling Airbnb

#30

Post by Ntrails »

mft_ wrote: post #9
nraynaud wrote: post #2

What’s funny is that in France we had various alternatives to Airbnb for so long before Airbnb that Americans are completely baffled by the choice when they learn of them. Actual upscale bnb? Gîtes de France. I’m coming with 20-30 friends -> gîtes pour groupes, you’ll get an industrial kitchen and dormitories. Those things existed long before the internet.

(As someone whose family has often hired gites for holidays) Airbnb just offers simplicity and centralisation over the previous offerings. Less regular gite-hirers might not know of the precise businesses to go to, to hire a gite. Taxis existed before Uber; but it was the app (handling location, real-time updates, and seamless payment) that changed things.

> Taxis existed before Uber; but it was the app (handling location, real-time updates, and seamless payment) that changed things.

I disagree - the game changer vs previous minicab offerings is the centralisation. Instead of ringing 4 companies and being given different waiting times by each etc, a single source tells me (initially, before the inevitable split into lyft et al) what the next available cab time is.

In the same way that early netflix felt like a game changer because I had loads of stuff in one place. A lot of the utility drains away as soon as competition appears again and you're back where you started.

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