AirBNB

What is the difference between a hotel and staying at a person’s home for free?

My axiom in this blog post is that the difference is that in one case you are paying money, and in the other you are not - and that that key fact defines the social relationship.

A small caveat: there may be instances where you stay with somebody and you contribute a small amount, either in direct finances, a bottle of wine, etc., to show appreciation or to help with costs that have arisen. This I am not including.

If we look to the origins of Airbnb, if the founding stories are to be believed, it was supposedly a way that people could offer up literally an air mattress for, say, a night in San Francisco, where otherwise you’d be paying ridiculous money for hotels.

The idea is you give out something cheap and relatively low quality, and, yeah, this is staying in somebody’s home, so maybe it is not exactly a hotel–customer relationship.

But this is not where we are today. Once people get the scent of a little bit of relatively easy, relatively passive income, then very, very rapidly it becomes: we want to acquire some prime flats in Edinburgh and we want to put the price as high as we possibly can, particularly during the Fringe. Oh, and by the way, we want you to also treat it as if you’re staying with a valued friend, and not as a paying customer at our hotel.

So one of the core experiences people have with the business model as it is today is this weird confusion of roles, whereby you’re made to feel that you are staying in somebody’s home and you’re made to forget that you are a paying customer.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. When you stay at an Airbnb, you are staying at a hotel. It is no different whatsoever from staying at the Marriott or the Premier Inn.

And if the Premier Inn were to ask you to take your rubbish bags down to the dump, you would be shocked. You would refuse: What the hell am I paying for?

...

We have such a thing in Scotland, it’s called a bothy, you look after it as a home and it is free to stay in.

Photo: Lairig Leacach bothy, Scotland, by Chris Eilbeck / Lairig Leacach Bothy / CC BY-SA 2.0

I always try to avoid Airbnb, particularly because what ends up happening is other guests feel the need to comply with this perversion of a social relationship, and then I am left in a difficult position of: “I would, on principle, like to refuse to be part of this perversion. But at the same time, am I going to leave this burden (whether it’s justified or not) to the person I’m travelling with?”

But if I am the last one leaving, or if I am able to convince the people I’m travelling with, then no - I never take bins out, I never fill dishwashers. I think: what would I do if I was at a hotel? Oh, wait - I am at a hotel!