My first encounter with Airbnb was this past summer. My best friend and I were lying on her bed in our small, shared room in our Jamaica Plain apartment, planning a vacation we would never go on. We scrolled through pages and pages of beautifully decorated rooms and apartments for rent. We fell in love with pictures of homey stitched quilts and rooms that overlooked the tops of trees.
Hosts offered anything between a free ride from the airport to complementary craft beer. One couple renting out their back bedroom even included the option of taking their guests on a guided bike tour of the local farmers markets. What did all of the listings have in common? For one, all of them were within three blocks of our apartment. But even more, they all shared a common goal: to introduce a sense of community into the travel by offering a holistic hosting experience.
For those who aren’t familiar with Airbnb’s structure, the service works as follows: people in 34,000 cities in over 190 countries around the world create online profiles advertising living space for travelers to rent. The spaces available can be anything from a single room in an apartment, a floor of a house, or even an entire villa.
Hosts decide their price, when the rooms are available, and what services they want to offer (breakfast, maid service, shuttling, concierge, cool-local-hangout-buddies, etc.). Others looking to spend between one night or even an entire month traveling can search these available spaces by city and date and make a reservation as they would for any average hotel.
The website listings include information about the area and the house itself, including professionally taken photos. It’s a simple business concept: people offer up their extra space for people that are passing through. Most of the listings are cheaper than the average hotel (unless, of course, you opt to rent one of the 600 castles that are listed through the service.)
It is a simple business concept based on the recent phenomenon of people having more space than they need or can afford. It was started by two guys that couldn’t make rent by renting out air mattresses on their floor to people at a tech conference in San Francisco.
While it initially started as merely a simple money making venture, it has snowballed into what I (and many, many others) argue is actually one of the greatest revolutions of our time in travel and hospitality. Additionally, the philosophy the company works on is closely aligned with that of a liberal arts education.
So why does this matter? Cheap travel options give college students the opportunity to explore the spaces directly around them. Students are of course given the option and, dare I say, are even expected to spend time traveling abroad. That’s great, but can sometimes be to the detriment of students who are equally as willing to explore the regions closest to them.
What I think is interesting about Airbnb is that it eliminates the need to stay within your own community. While the idea of entering a stranger’s house is unnerving and provokes Criminal Minds-esque nightmares at first, there is something liberating about not needing to travel within the confines of an already established network of people. Staying in someone else’s home allows for a new level of interaction with the places you travel.
By creating this sense of community, travel options can transcend at least some of the socioeconomic barriers that determine who can afford to travel at all. A typical chain hotel can cost anywhere between $70 and $200 per night, which renders travel expenses immediately insurmountable for students depending on their own work-study paychecks to cover leisure expenses.
Another thing I find interesting about the Airbnb phenomenon is the aspect of trust. In a sense, a lot is left up to chance in choosing to stay in another person’s home rather than opting for the more sterilized version of travel that comes with traditional hotels. Airbnb is a step above a hostel, where everything is communal. People can only rent or post spaces for rent if they make a profile with Airbnb. However, people can only report negative experiences with hosts or guests after the fact because there is no pre-screening process.
According to a New York Times blog, the more information one posts about themselves on their profile, the more people are willing to make reservations. It is transparency and openness that entices the most people. This is interesting because it introduces a level of performance that is not a factor in traditional travel. Because there is so much more contact between an individual as a host and an individual as a guest, there is a consciousness of presentation and interpersonal connection that is not generally a requirement.
Lauren Vunderink, a Conn senior, used the services offered by Airbnb to find housing for her CELS internship this past summer. Because she would be staying in the area for a relatively short period of time, Vunderink was looking for a more temporary living situation than a typical subletting agreement would allow for.
“The situation worked out great, I made friends with my roommates and lived close to my internship location. Finding that balance between guest and tenant took some doing, but the host, location, and price were excellent.”
Oliver Ames ’17 offered a particularly interesting perspective on the Airbnb movement. In the past two years, his mother has taken her role as a host above and beyond and turned it into a career and a legitimate source of income.
“Most of the people that come through are looking for community and conversation,” said Ames. When asked what their main demographics were, he told me it was mainly college students, post-graduates and traveling dads.
The Ames family listing is a beautiful oasis on the ground floor of the family home in Vermont that offers a beautiful and quiet country setting with breakfast in the morning. This is definitely an example of an “upscale” host situation. Even so, when divided between several friends, it remains manageable for the typical student.
Of course, Airbnb has challenges of its own. As of now, many of the listings in New York City are considered illegal. In a New York Times article from October 16, auditors found that the majority of the listings in the city are in violation of the city’s zoning and renter laws. Money is going directly into the pockets of those that offer listings. While this would be beneficial in lower-income areas, those that are able to offer desirable space are often from Manhattan and the Upper East Side (the Bronx and Queens have very limited representation in the New York City listings). There is, of course, an ethical issue. While Airbnb offers the opportunity for students and other low-earning demographics to travel, it eventually does not bring money into the communities that need it most.
There is a certain merit to the idea of shared ownership of space for even brief periods of time. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky noted, “The world is becoming a village again, where people know and trust one another.” It is a nice thought, but I wonder how quickly we are willing to give up the traditional idea of owning space.
It is wonderful to imagine a world of more people being able to afford a quasi-nomadic lifestyle, but there seems to be a gap between current legislation and our increasingly restless personalities. San Francisco, the company’s hometown, is beginning to recognize the value of changing current zoning laws, but actual change still has yet to come.
Ames added, “It takes away the stigma of being a tourist and makes us feel like we all belong.” •
