Airbnb News

It is interesting to see that the Travel Technology Association, which takes the online travel agency side on the hotel tax issue, is siding with members HomeAway and Airbnb on short-term rental legislation.

There are holes in the arguments of both the City of San Francisco and HomeAway. The new short-term rental law would indeed put HomeAway in the new position of collecting taxes from renters, and HomeAway could find a way in its business model to make that happen. Still, the new law does appear to favor Airbnb, which already collects fees from guests.

Airbnb's business model (3% commissions) is more host-friendly than HomeAway's (10% commissions). It's good news, except that it runs contrary to all the company's marketing messaging.

Airbnb is far past the early adopter phase, but it is just now entering the phase where its hosts and guests may not be there just for the sharing and belonging.

Airbnb is either quietly building out host services for launch or keeping tabs of the growing crop of startups, which are ripe for acquisition once their product is stabilized and customer base large.

Not that HomeAway isn't above doing these sorts of things, but Airbnb's lobbyists sure were adept at getting a seat at the table in San Francisco.

Conley's focus on the guest gives him an understanding of the peer-to-peer business that few others can lay claim to.

Despite some differentiation, Only Apartments faces a daunting task of standing out in new markets where some of its competitors are advertising on TV and have so much money to burn. If it can scale up by using channel managers, so can everyone else.

Conley joined Airbnb in time for many of its earlier challenges to lead way to legitimization, making him confident not only of the company's success but his ability to spread the tenets of hospitality to a previously ignorant host set.

By focusing on illegal hotels, the coalition may have a good rallying cry, but it doesn't capture how quickly short-term rentals have evolved into something much more sophisticated.