Airbnb

[Guest Tam o' Shantie]

Anyone checked this out yet? Heard of?

Airbnb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basically a more upmarket/commercial version of the 'couch surfing' concept. People can lease their rooms or flats/apartments for free from as short a stay as per night to travelling customers, who pay a percentage based booking fee to the company. Owners, accomodation and customer/resident are individually reviewed after each stay so that a profile is built up with an honest picture of what to expect from each.

From what I gather, there was one horrible, high profile incident where a woman's flat was entirely ransacked, burglarised & wrecked which appears to have marred their image a bit.

Around The World and Back Again: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

In the company's defense, the woman herself said they had been incredibly helpful offering her support every step of the way & working with the police as much as possible. They offered a proper, public apology afterwards which is something that you don't see that often. Furthermore, since then they have doubled their support staff who deal with these sorts of problems and have brought in insurance policies etc that protect the property owners. Apparently prior to this they had dealt with 2,000,000 bookings with no such incident.

I've gotta say having had a quick browse for apartments in NYC i'm amazed at some of the prices (ie. nicely decorated Bushwick apartment w/ accomodation for 4 people, 45 per night). I'd definitely consider using them purely to stay elsewhere. Can't say I'd touch the concept of leasing with a bargepole at this stage though...not that Aberdeen is gonna fill up with bookings I'd have thought anyway.

What do you guys make of it?

[Teabags]

Burglary N Breakfast of the Day [uPDATED] - The Daily What

All I've heard about it. I think the story it mentions is the same one as you brought up, and apparently Airbnb have been a bit bitchy about it. Another victim has apparently since came forth (see bottom of the article.)

[Guest Tam o' Shantie]

Do you think on the whole they're being responsible enough then? And would you avoid using their services to find a place to stay out of principle?

I think I still would. Or at least consider it as an option.

[Teabags]

Well, the only problem they seem to have had is with people staying in other people's homes, not people offering shitty accomodation. So I think I'm trustworthy enough that I wouldn't burgle and ransack someone elses home when they let me stay in it. SO in that case, I'd definitely consider.

I just think, if all that has been reported in that article I linked is true, they haven't been very supportive to the woman that it did happen to.

Sorry, I didn't have time to read her whole blog post so not sure if its been updated since.

[ca_gere]

I know people who have been using it for a while and haven't got a bad word to say about it. They recently secured a huge round of funding too so expect it to expand. There's always an unflattering article that appears right around the time a company goes from small startup to big player. It happened to Groupon when they filed their IPO. Bad news brings in more readers I guess.

I (and everyone else signed up I suppose) got a letter from the CEO explaining the whole situation and it wouldn't put me off using the service, eventhough I haven't needed to yet. By all accounts he seems like a good guy. Apparently he lives in a different place every night as a way of promoting his company and living by the philosophy. Their app is nicely designed too.