[treis]

I think you missed the point about the local vs international services. AirBNB has potential competitors, but effectively those competitors need to have an international or at least national scope. AirBnB makes most of its money on tourists that will use their service over an over again in a different city. Most people will use something like ChicagoAirBnB.com once when they go to Chicago for their vacation that year. Thus, ChicagoAirBnB.com would need to make their entire customer acquisition cost back in one transaction. That's far less viable than AirBnB which can spread it out over dozens of transactions. AirBnB's problem (if it has one) is that there's dozens of competitors with that scope in the online travel industry. They are just missing the supply.

Compare with ride sharing. In that case, your business is almost entirely local. Someone that uses ChicagoUber will likely use it for as long as they live in Chicago. So you can spend $20 (or $100, or $200) to acquire that customer and make it back over time. The result is that Uber has to defend their turf against theoretically thousands of competitors across the globe.

[Spivak]

> tourists that will use their service over an over again in a different city

This is the part that I don't think follows. Why would they? There are a million different travel sites and people do their homework. There's nothing preventing people from using different booking sites for each trip. I see an advantage in having a large portfolio of hosts but I don't think they will ever be at the point of charging a premium because they have lock-in.

[valuearb]

Except that the Uber app works in every city and has lots of drivers in every city. Most People aren’t going to download the app for some local company to test if they have drivers. They know Uber works and that it will work when they travel. Brand matters and Ubers works.