- Airbnb stock tumbled 14% in one day after the company predicted slowing demand.
- Some former Airbnb diehards say they now prefer the consistency of hotels.
- Airbnb said it might increase travelers’ ability to book hotel rooms through Airbnb.
The thing is, it was never the original model. It was what was marketed at us. The model was always dumping to monopolize the market. Perhaps the original software nerds didn’t have that in mind but the moment MBAs came along to “help them grow” the program was to win Monopoly in that market. And that was very early on since VCs were involved nearly from the get go in most of those cases. The original idea as you describe it ends at the singing of the VC contract.
PS: Software nerd myself that used to drink the Koolaid, now a very senior, jaded software nerd.
It was the model for a very long time. It was all about renting excess capacity. It was a brilliant move. It wasn’t till much more recently people turned it into a business by buying properties just to air bnb.
Not sure when do you refer as recently but where I am this has been a common practice since at least 2015.
Don’t get me wrong, if you wanted to make a spare rooms rental system, nonprofit or otherwise, you could. But if you wanted to do that you would put restrictions and hoops to jump in order to limit rental to spare rooms only and maybe you wouldn’t charge 17% in fees.
Perhaps the original software nerds didn’t have that in mind but the moment MBAs came along to “help them grow” the program was to win Monopoly in that mark
So…… it was the original model. And yeah airbnb literally grew because of renting out extra rooms, it didn’t grow from turning entire homes into rentals. It became that much much much later.
