Last summer, I stayed at an Airbnb in Long Beach, CA in order to pick up my kids from the Boy Scout Camp on Catalina Island. It was billed as a vintage 1920s residence with all the period finishes, was two blocks from the beach, and was a short drive to the Cataline ferry, so it seemed like the ideal place.
But the second I walked into the place I was overcome by a ghostly Twilight Zone type feeling. Everything seemed strangely familiar. What really freaked me out was that the grill on the electric wall heater exactly matched the scar on my sister’s hand. Even though the place was 100 years old, I had been here before.
When I returned home, I headed straight for a voluminous genealogy file that I maintained. After an hour of going through all the family records, I hit paydirt. The address of the Airbnb was listed as the home address of my grandmother when she was married in 1925.
When the pandemic hit in February 2020, I figured Airbnb (ABNB) was toast. Global travel had ground to a halt, and competitors like Wynn Resorts (WYNN) and Hyatt Hotels (H) saw their share prices plunge to near zero.
Instead, the opposite happened.
While the big hotels continue to roast in purgatory, Airbnb catapulted to a new golden age, and how they did it was amazing.
They turned all travel local. Instead of recommending that I visit Cairo, Tokyo, or Rio de Janeiro, they suggested Carmel, Monterey, or Mendocino, all destinations within driving distance.
It worked spectacularly well, and the company is now moving from strength to strength. Since the pandemic bottom, the shares have rocketed from $69 to $210.
My neighborhood in Incline Village, NV was almost always deserted outside of holidays. Now it is packed with Airbnber’s awkwardly moving in every Friday only to flee on Sunday.
How would you like to get an 80% discount on all of your luxury hotel accommodations?
During my recent trip to Dubrovnik in Croatia, I rented an 800-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath home inside the city walls for $300 a night.
A single, cramped 150-square-foot room in the nearest five-star hotel was $600 night.
All that was missing was room service, a handout for a big tip, and a surly attitude at the front desk.
Sounds like a massive, game-changing disruption to me.
Thank you, Airbnb!
The big question for you and me is: Will the valuation soar tenfold from the current $106 billion to $1 trillion?
Is (ABNB) your next ten bagger?
To answer that question, I spent six weeks traveling around the world as an Airbnb customer. This enabled me to understand their business model, their strengths and weaknesses, and analyze their long-term potential.
As a customer, the value you receive is nothing less than amazing.
I have been a five-star hotel guest for most of my life, with someone else picking up the tab much of the time (thank you Morgan Stanley!), so I have a pretty good idea on the true value of accommodations.
What you get from Airbnb is nothing less than spectacular. You get three or four times the floor space for one-third the price. That’s a disruption factor of 7:1.
The standards are often five-star and at the top end, depending on how much you spend. I found I could often get an entire three-bedroom house for the price of a single hotel room, with a better location.
Or, I could get an excellent abode in rural settings, where none other was to be had, whatsoever.
That’s a big deal for someone like me who spends so much of the year on the road.
You also get a new best friend in every city you visit.
On most occasions, the host greeted me on the doorsteps with the keys, and then introduced me to the mysteries of European kitchen appliances, heating, and air conditioning.
Pre-stocking the refrigerator with fresh milk, coffee, tea, and jam seems to be a tradition the hosts pick up in their Airbnb orientation course.
One in Waterford, Ireland even left me a bottle of wine, plenty of beer, and a frozen pizza. She read my mind. She then took me on a one-hour tour of their city, divulging secrets about their favorite restaurants, city sights, and nightspots. Everyone proved golden. Thanks, Mary!
After you check out, Airbnb asks you to review the accommodation. These can be incredibly valuable in deciding your next pick.
I had one near miss with what I thought was a great deal in London, until I read, “The entire place reeks of Indian cooking.” Having caught amoebic dysentery in India once Indian cooking does not exactly bring back fond memories.
Similarly, the hosts rate you as a guest.
One hostess in Dingle, Ireland shared a story about picking up her clients from town after they got drunk and lost in the middle of the night. Then they threw up in the back of the car on the way home.
Guests forgetting to return keys is another common complaint.
Needless to say, I received top ratings from my hosts, as fixing their WIFI to boost performance became a regular and very popular habit of mine.
After my initial fabulous experience in London, I thought it might be a one-off, limited to only the largest cities. So, I started researching accommodations for my upcoming trips.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Just the Kona Coast on the big island of Hawaii had an incredible 300 offerings, including several bargain beachfront properties.
The center of Tokyo had over 300 listings. The historic district in Florence, Italy had a mind-blowing 351 properties. When I stayed there, six of seven floors of the building I stayed in were devoted to (ABNB) accommodations. The one full time resident was pissed and often slammed his door.
Fancy a retreat on the island of Bali in Indonesia and tune up your surfing? There are over 197 places to stay!
Airbnb has truly gone global.
Airbnb’s business model is almost too simple to be true, involving no more than a couple of popular applications. Call it an artful melding of Google Earth (GOOG), email, text, and PayPal (PYPL).
While no one was looking, it became the world’s largest hotel at a tiny fraction of the capital cost.
The company has 6 million hosts in 100,000 cities worldwide in 220 countries who so far have earned $150 billion, and 150 million users. The all-time number of guests is 1 billion. The company recently shut down all of its Russia listings.
That supply/demand imbalance shifts the burden of the cost to the renters, who usually have to fork out a 12% fee, plus the cost of the cleaning service.
Hosts only pay 3% to process the credit card fees for the payment.
To say that Airbnb has created controversy would be a huge understatement.
For a start, it has emerged as a major challenge to the hotel industry, which is still stuck with a 20th century business model. There’s no way hotels can compete on price.
One Airbnb “super host” in Manhattan managed 200 apartments, essentially, creating out of scratch, a medium-sized virtual “hotel” until the city caught on to them.
Taxes are another matter.
Some municipalities require hosts to pay levies of up to 20%, while others demand quarterly tax filings and withholding taxes. That is, if tax collectors can find them.
Airbnb may be the largest new source of tax evasion today.
In cities where housing is in short supply, Airbnb is seen as crowding out local residents. After all, an owner can make far more money subletting their residence nightly than with a long-term lease.
Several owners told me that Airbnb covered their entire mortgage and housing cost for the year while paying off the mortgage at the same time.
Owners in the primmest of areas, like mid-town Manhattan off of Central Park, or the old city center in Dubrovnik rent, their homes out as much as 180 days a year.
It is doing nothing less than changing lives.
That has forced local governments to clamp down.
San Francisco has severe, iron-clad planning and zoning restrictions that only allow 2,000 new residences a year to come on the market.
It is cracking down on Airbnb, as well as other home-sharing apps like FlipKey, VRBO, and HomeAway, by forcing hosts to register with the city or face brutal $1,000 a day fine.
Ratting out your neighbor as an off-the-grid Airbnb member has become a new cottage industry in the City of the Bay.
Airbnb is fighting back with multiple lawsuits, citing the federal Communications Decency Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the First Amendment covering the freedom of speech.
It is a safe bet that a $91 billion company can spend more on legal fees than a city the size of San Francisco.
The company has also become the largest contributor in San Francisco’s local elections. In 2015, it fought a successful campaign against Proposition “F”, meant to place severe restrictions on their services.
An Airbnb stayover is not without its problems.
The burden of truth in advertising is on the host, not the company, and inaccurate listings are withdrawn only after complaints.
A twenty-something-year-old guy’s idea of cleanliness may be a little lower than your own.
Long-time users learn the unspoken “code”.
“Cozy” can mean tiny, “as is” can be a dump, and “lively” can bring the drunken screaming of four-letter words all night long, especially if you are staying upstairs from a pub.
And that spectacular seaside view might come with relentlessly whining Vespa’s on the highway out front as I was once confronted with in coastal Italy. Always brings earplugs and blindfolds as backups.
Researching complaints, it seems that the worst of the abuses occur in shared accommodations. Learning new foreign cultures can be fascinating. But your new roommate may want to get to know you better than you want, especially if you are female.
In one notorious incident, a Madrid guest was raped and had to call customer service in San Francisco to get the local police to rescue her. The best way to guard against such unpleasantries is to rent the entire residence for your use only, as I do.
Another problem arises when properties are rented out for illegal purposes, such as prostitution or drug dealing. Near my San Francisco home five people were shot and killed in an illegal block party nearby in a Airbnb weekend rental that was supposed let out to a “quiet couple.”
More than once, an unsuspecting resident woke up one morning to discover they were living next door to a new bordello.
Coming out of the pandemic, my conclusion is that the travel industry is entering a hyper-growth phase. Blame the emerging middle-class Chinese, who are going to be everywhere.
The real shock came when I left Airbnb and stayed in a regular hotel. Include the fees and the cleaning charges, and the service is no longer competitive for a single-night stay. Total costs now regularly run double the posted one-night price posted on websites.
In any case, most hosts have two or three-night minimums to minimize hassle.
When I checked in at a Basel, Switzerland Five Star hotel, all I got was a set of keys and a blank stare. No great restaurant tips, no local secrets, no new best friend.
I spent that night surfing www.airbnb.com, planning my next adventure.
Grandparents at Future Airbnb in 1925
