Welcome to “travelling like a human”. Sounds appealing doesn’t it? Ten seconds on Airbnb and we were already hooked. Airbnb is like a slicker version of Craigslist with places to stay everywhere we’d like to go. It allows anyone from average joes to stately homes to rent out their extra space to visitors. Listings include crashing on someone’s sofa to renting a castle or treehouse for your trip. Sites like Airbnb (and similar smaller services like istopover.com and crashpadder.com) are turning the travel industry on its head. Sadly, rather than up their game in the face of competition, legislative action and the health & safety police has begun to protect the established travel industry. We love the idea of sites like Airbnb, which bring value, inspiration, and homeliness to the business of tourist accommodation, so we’ll be behind the NY sub-letters movement to call Gov. Paterson for support. This is yet another example of the growing trend for going-it-alone, successful young entrepreneurs creating services that we really wish we’d thought of.

Image Credit
Washington Post via Google Images

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.