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There's actually a lot of "AirBnB for Activities." Our company used to be Skyara (http://www.skyara.com). We ended up pivoting to RAVN (http://ravn.com), which is more of a "Amazon for Activities," per se. I think we were definitely one of the first ones to try to enter the "AirBnB for Activities" space but had a very hard time. While in theory it sounds like a great concept, the key to realize is that no "AirBnB for Activites" can ever be an "AirBnB for Activities." What I mean by that is: the part of the "AirBnB for X" business model that makes it work is the part where you have a very low marginal cost to renting out an existing resource that, presumably, is getting very low utilization. I.e. a car sitting in a garage, an empty couch. The marginal cost of renting those out... is basically zero. However, with Activities, the resource at play is actually time! A person needs to take two hours out of their day to offer a walking tour, cooking class, etc. Arguably, time is the most scarce resource we have. People value their time highly, which means the marginal cost (in this case the opportunity cost) of them offering an activity is very high. Add to that the fact that individuals do not benefit from any sort of economy of scale, and that most likely means that they cannot compete with businesses on price (which is arguably where AirBnB is winning in its biggest market, NYC). So of course, I'm not saying an "AirBnB for Activities" is not possible, but some fundamental problems make it significantly more difficult than one might initially expect. Personally I think Vayable is doing a great job, but time will tell... Oh also, AirBnB took something that already was happening (sublets on Craigslist) and just rebranded/made it better. Not much "Activities" activity going on on Craigslist. It's mostly for services, like painting, plumbing, car mechanics, etc. So you sometimes question if the demand actually even exists? Anyway, I could write a loooong post-mortem on Skyara but you get my point. |