[lipanski]

Airbnb enabled a great range of people to see places they might have never afforded to see before. It managed to commoditize travelling in a similar way low-cost airlines did. On top of that, it enabled regions with no previous tourism revenue to have a slice of the cake. Sure, the company made a good profit while there was a profit to make, but their service benefited consumers as well and I think it did leave a positive impact not only on the travellers but also on some of the communities that understood how to balance its pros and cons.

[lmm]

> Airbnb enabled a great range of people to see places they might have never afforded to see before. It managed to commoditize travelling in a similar way low-cost airlines did.

By running illegal hotels. It's easy to be cheaper when you're breaking the law. The whole thing is a criminal enterprise: without the crime, none of the rest of it works.

> Sure, the company made a good profit while there was a profit to make, but their service benefited consumers as well and I think it did leave a positive impact not only on the travellers but also on some of the communities that understood how to balance its pros and cons.

It benefited their clients at the expense of the surrounding communities. Even if you think the laws those communities set weren't in their interests, they were the legitimate laws of those places. The price of living in a society is respecting the law even when you don't agree with it, and AirBnB et al have been tearing that apart for the sake of their profits.

[gjulianm]

It also created a market that pushed prices up in residential zones in major cities, kicked out neighbors and screwed up the rental market. For example, in my city, rental offers for residents almost duplicated when COVID hit due to AirBnB rentals being empty. If we're talking about people not affording things, we need to focus on people not affording housing before tourism.

> some of the communities that understood how to balance its pros and cons

AirBnB worked against a lot of those communities that tried to balance the pros and cons

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-airbnbs-guerrilla-war-aga...

[boringg]

I know a guy who airbnb out one of his apartments he rented so he live in a larger nicer apartment. Feels bad that people did that.

I think Airbnb when it first came out was great. Like all things tech (a bit broad of a statement) once it got out into the world in a real way it lost its allure. Facebook was great when it started, reddit, instagram, google, etc. Once people figure out how to co-opt the technology for their own uses (or maybe just the drive for ad revenue kills off all the fun or novelty wears off) it loses its lustre quite a bit. Sorry to be downbeat - technology doesn't feel as fun as it was even like 3-4 years ago let alone back in the 00s or the 90s. Or maybe I'm just aging out.

[season2episode3]

I feel the same way in the sense that I'm much more cynical about tech than I used to be.

I take solace in the fact that writing code and building things (especially physical world things!) is fun. Web backend is getting duller by the minute, though.

[boringg]

Agree with this. I do get enjoyment out of writing and executing code. Is that just dopamine rewards - I can’t tell.

[randomsearch]

I guess it’s VC demand for returns. Bootstrapped tech and tech that only takes a small amount of investment doesn’t have to follow this path.

[wolco2]

That's a great hack and good for him. It won't last forever.

[hogFeast]

I live in a huge AirBnb market relative to city size (for scale, the city is 400k people, and we have had more peak listings than the capital which is a huge tourist city itself of 15m people)...it has destroyed the community here. Totally. Every spare of piece of land is built on because properties were converted overnight (against local regulations), aggressive rental practices that you only see in larger cities became commonplace (small three bedroom flats are being broken up into six bedrooms), whole areas of the city are now deserted most of the year, properties lying empty with homeless people lying in the doorstep. I used to live somewhere that was full of families and young people, every single flat in the block is now AirBnb...bar one, which is occupied by a 91-year old woman whose husband recently died of cancer and can't move...she gets treated as "the help" by angry AirBnbers (she has people trying to get in her apartment, ringing her door late at night, etc.) but...

...I don't think that is what angered people. That was bad. But AirBnb not only circumvented the spirit of local laws (taxes being one example), they actually assisted property owners in breaking laws. Not just the spirit of the law. Not just a weird loophole. Because we had a big rental market before AirBnb existed, we had laws that existed for every eventuality but one assumption was that holiday rental companies would comply with local licensing laws...AirBnb refused. So we had a local council, budget cut 70% by central government, having to make the choice about whether to cut care services to disabled and the elderly or cut back on road maintainence, having to employ people to look at listings online and work out where properties were for licensing. Needless to say, that didn't work (the story has a happy ending, the council is introducing fines that will bankrupt property owners for failing to comply, is banning listings altogether in some cases, and has said that more severe measures if neither works).

That is why AirBnb is successful here. People often complain about hotels or the lack of regulations...where I am: every single city had regulations for holiday rentals. AirBnb ignored all of them. AirBnb didn't invent tourism, we had them before and we will have them after, they didn't lead us to become richer. A small group did, everyone else became poorer. And this is a case of a company that only exceeded competitors in its willingness to break and ignore rules, and assisted others in doing the same. I will invest in O&G, miners, social media, gun manufacturers, I don't care...they are just filling a need. Never AirBnb. Even grouped amongst companies doing shitty things (palm oil, payday lending being two that occur immediately), they are definitely up there.

[poisonarena]

I am one of those people, AirBnB enabled me to travel the world, especially to places I would have never thought to go because I always could fall back on AirBnB for support (and I have, as lousy as it sometimes can be)

[fnord77]

> Airbnb enabled a great range of people to see places they might have never afforded to see before.

Hostels have always been cheap. And most of the time, AirBnB is more expensive than a hotel when you include their "cleaning fee". It only works if you have a large party or you're staying someplace a while