Basic HTML Version
BUSINESS
Users can connect with friends and locals to discover and
customise destination travel”
of a country. It’s not backpackers, it’s young professionals,
and I’ve had a few business people going to conferences.”
The Airbnb idea came fromSan Francisco, when two
youngmen, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, needed to
earn some rent money. They created a crude website to
rent their three airbeds to visiting delegates of a local
design conference and called it Airbed and Breakfast (now
Airbnb). They realised it was a good idea, recruited a web
developer and from there it went big. Its European success
has prompted them to open offices in London, Berlin and
Hamburg, and six further European sites are on the cards.
As the coverage and clientele have broadened for social
travel websites, they have also started – surprise, surprise
– to attract the big bucks. Airbnb has attracted over $100
million (€805,000) of investment (including some from the
actor Ashton Kutcher) and been valued at over $1 billion
(€805,000,000). Meanwhile, despite generating nomoney
fromaccommodation, CouchSurfing has also seen an
influx of millions, while the latest golden boy of the genre,
TripTrotting, recently received an investment of $1 million
(€805,000), including some fromGoogle’s investment arm.
“Social networking around specific interests and
activities is becomingmore important,” said Joe Kraus,
a partner at Google Ventures, when announcing the
Triptrotting investment. “Travel is one of the natural
markets, where users can connect with friends and locals to
discover and customise destination travel.”
But, some wonder, can this social networking boom
really last? “It’s not a bubble,” says Rossini. “This is
something real which can have even further development.
It is definitely a challenge to the established industry.”
In the future, he believes, all companies will try to have
a social aspect to their offerings. “Many important travel
companies are recruiting 20 or 30 people just to deal with
their Facebook presence and other social media, to try and
replicate that local relationship.”
The other concern for investors is that this newmodel
requires trust: from the small amount to act on advice from
other travellers, to the sizable portion needed to rent your
home to a stranger. This will require input from the websites
to shore up responsibility for wrongdoing – frommoderators
on TravMedia forums removing offensive content, to
liability insurance for those offering accommodation.
Airbnb is ahead of the game in this area, last year putting a
€750,000 guarantee in place, establishing a 24-hour support
line and hiring photographers as pictorial inspectors.
“Trust is an incredibly important thing on our site,”
says Chesky. “Trust is the currency that allows all our
connections to take place.”
As for me, I’mheading to Ljubljana with no guidebook
and no hotel booked, but the promise of meeting locals and
seeing their way of life. The investors may want guarantees,
but I’mwilling to take a little risk in order to bringme an
exciting, newway to travel.
110
TRAVELLER