Sonder's sales channel was and is primarily airbnb itself which could easily turn it off if they determined them to be a threat. So it's a business highly dependent on future competitive partners (see Airbnb plus). Their company was called Flatbook but the service and reviews were so terrible and so full or irate customers who had been scammed that they had to try and erase it from the internet and reimagine themselves as Sonder. You can still find a few places with flatbook review if you search ex. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sonder/@45.5198842,-73.587... . Anyhow miles of bad service, scams, and very serious negative reviews. Since they used Airbnb as the primary sales channel on a grand scale they would just wipe property listings once the reviews were negative and replace with new fresh listings. I do believe they have professionalized their service recently however I am surprised they were trusted with a large investment and shows you the poor judgement of VC. Their product message was cloned rather than originated, they have a history of scam level of service, their revenue channel is largely dependent on competition, not to mention their business is neither innovative nor defensible, the product is not great for cities and community. Really SV at its worst.
Ethics are super important, especially in this era of scandals and exposés. If they think changing their branding strategy alone without addressing the core issue of trust and honesty would get them far, that $135M will dry up real fast..
If the VCs continue to invest in poorly conceived and doomed ventures then they will lose money and eventually fail once they've lost investor confidence. There's evolutionary pressure at play here. VCs are incentivised to take risky investments with potentially high returns; but there is a limit. In a very real way we're exposed to the outliest out the outliers here in SV. It should eventually get better. However, nobody said that evolution, or capitalism for that matter, was efficient; so it may be quite a long time.
"Compared to your typical Airbnb, no one “lives” in Sonder apartments except for its guests. Each rental comes with a living room space and kitchen so people can cook and relax like they would in their own home. Units range from studios in a heart of a city to sprawling a six-bedroom unit in downtown Montreal."
This is bad news for cities that are already short on housing. You're taking what could have been space for housing and erasing it with larger, lower-density hotel suites. Very luxurious and pleasant for the travelers, sure, but you're ballooning the space taken up by the "hotel" and magnifying the market pressures on everyone else in the process.
What's pretty surprising about this article is the breathless, unquestioned enthusiasm for these kind of ideas. Is this really a sustainable model for urban centers and hotels? Is this how we want to conduct our cities and use our most precious, economically productive spaces?
I'm pro Airbnb--when the room is actually rented out by the renter, everyone including the little guy wins. But this is a very "rich get richer" style of tourism with the fig-leaf of the share economy strapped to its extravagance, right?
Only people to blame for ballooning housing prices are the politicians who have purposefully implemented restrictive building codes to make sure housing goes as sky high as possible. The reason it is like that is because we are under the impression that if housing keeps increasing then home owners will be able to spend more.
Aren't something like half of AirBnB rentals not owner-occupied? I had the distinct sense that a lot of landlords had found running an AirBnB more profitable
Sonder provides long term housing in all of its cities and is expanding into commercial zones with proper hotel licenses. This is actually relieving housing pressure because tourists stay in Sonders that are properly zoned as a hotel instead of tourists taking up residential space that would have been used for longer term residents.
Would we criticize Marriot or Hilton for making a hotel in a commercial zone?
Most Americans have spare bedrooms for when guests visit. You could have your guests stay at a hotel but typically that will be really far from your home which sucks for everybody. Having Sonder or Airbnb style short term rentals distributed throughout cities could allow people to live in smaller apartments, eliminating bedrooms that sit unused most nights creating more space for everybody.
To be clear I'm not talking about the model of renting out your spare bedroom on Airbnb because nobody actually wants to do that. I'm talking about full time airbnb studios / 1BR's obviating the need for guest bedrooms.
Maybe it's selective bias but I think of all north American metropolises Montreal would be particularly difficult to implement hotels in residential areas. Renters here have very strong rights, albeit backed by an understaffed authority. Tourism provides a substantial bulk to the local economy but it's not nearly enough that the local population will accept having fly-by-night partiers in otherwise quiet neighbourhoods. The article says downtown but I strongly suspect they mean neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown which have long been home to local workers and students, key to providing vibrancy and life which attracts the tourists to begin with (and the festivals).
It photographed really well which is why I stayed there, but the bedding was terrible. The worst of any Airbnb experience and it’s part of why I generally choose hotels for short stays now.
This rental had cheap pillows, linens that felt like sand paper, and the comforter was bare sandwiched between a large sheet. Towels were tiny and cheap motel quality. I was really disappointed. Hopefully their other locations are better than this one. I personally wouldn’t go back.
I filled in their after-stay survey and never heard a response.
A. The secret to AirBNB is that everybody had extra space, and Gig Economy allow you to get value out of your extra space.
B. When you are in the Gig Economy, you have two things that you need to do:
1. Have the extra space
2. Manage the extra space
Sonder initially focused on #2, and this worked out well. Bring professionalism to the management interface turns out to be very good deal because a lot of people with #1 is not good at #2.
My problem with the next step on their is that they are leaving the core of the gig economy.
Buying the facility and coming up with unique rooms with different paintings is simply getting into the hotel business. The fundamental driving force of the AirBNB business model is the use of an asset that is otherwise unused, and sparing somebody from needing to invest CapEx in building rooms. This is a massive lever to get into the hotel business, which is what AirBNB really is.
Obviously, I'm totally ignoring the moral choice of if having somebody else consuming and reselling beds is good or bad for cities. I'm simply on the point that hotels are a going business that is pretty competitive, with a series of operators at all levels. It's not clear to me how Sonder business model is superior to the standard hotel model once they are forced to spend CapEx for rooms, because having unique hotel facilities or rooms does not appear to me to drive a competitive advantage.
Secondly, if having unique rooms turns out to be brilliant competitive advantage, and I'm totally wrong on this point, I don't see how this drives a real moat (as Buffet would state) that is defensible. I would think that the entrenched hotel operators should be able to pivot and counter the threat.
Isn't this really a kind of regulatory arbitrage? Hotels totally could buy up condominiums all over cities and then manage them centrally, but they're not allowed to do that. Airbnb gets away with it by distributing the liability and claiming plausible deniability; they're the Napster of hotel zoning.
Isn't Sonder just trying to slip in under the radar, the confusing ostensible aegis of people renting out their rooms temporarily, to do what Marriott can't do?
Worth pointing out that "getting value out of extra space", in the long-term, only benefits property owners, as rents will simply rise to consume the generated surplus. Worst case being that if you want to live in a nice part of town, not only do you have to earn good money, but you have to become a part-time hospitality provider.
Surprised Airbnb doesn’t just do this themselves, though I suspect it might just be a matter of time?
Agree the one thing I really don’t like about Airbnb and why I still prefer hotels is the inconsistency of the experience from check-in to check-out. If I’m in a new unfamiliar city all I want to do is minimize the unknowns as much as possible and everything about Airbnb from key hand off to cleanliness to whether the listing is even real is a big question mark until you’re actually there.
>Surprised Airbnb doesn’t just do this themselves, though I suspect it might just be a matter of time?
Airbnb has gotten a lot of pushback for commoditizing spaces that would have likely been used as long-term rental properties. They very meticulously craft their brand and community relationships so as to avoid negative repercussions from operating in a city.
This is an attempt to directly capitalize on the prime, long-term rental stock drained by Airbnb's presence without damaging the Airbnb brand.
"Comfortable beds, nice linens, soft towels, and well-chosen amenities and essentials."
Clean linens alone has me interested. That is by far the biggest headache for me when comparing an AirBnB to a hotel. Can I trust that the host actually cleaned the bed sheets?
I heard about Sonder last year and have been surprised how under-the-radar they are. It's a great concept, and the pricing sure beats the cost of a high-end airbnb, which to me is their main competition.
We've had too many dodgy, misrepresented airbnb experiences and my wife has sworn them off. Looking forward to using Sonder when we're in the cities they serve!
Sonder is also a made-up word that means "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own." Originally from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which has a lot more beautiful neologism definitions like this you might enjoy.
I felt deep sonder thinking about the all the people who looked up this word along with me." [1] And in German Sonder means special and in Dutch Zonder (with a Z) means without.
This might be a far shot, but any landlords here who have leased to Sonder? I read through their About Page and Lease page but still am not clear on exactly what they look for, or what the catch is.
Also, crazy how under the radar they have been, really curious to see how they built up traction over these years without any mainstream buzz
Off topic, but people who use Airbnb over hotels, what is the primary motivation to do so - besides cost?
One of the experiences of traveling for me is the hotel experience where I can just let go of all my worries and let the hotel handle everything from clean laundry to changing the sheets.
I've been using Airbnb for maybe 7 years. The cost has been never a reason, and often might rent places on Airbnb that are more expensive.
My main reason is that with Airbnb, you can rent a fully functional apartment or a house, not a badly functioning/uninspiring room with no amenities, no places to chill, all the furniture is weird and everything looks fake. Then you need remind telling people to not to clean your room everyday at 8am, and hear people slamming doors from 6am to 10am. When I travel I like to have a little downtime at the house, shop local groceries and cook some meals at the house.
The second reason is that you find amazing and variety places in the world. Some of my favorite ones has been a modern loft on a hillside in overlooking the lake Atitlan and surrounding volcanoes in Guatemala, A-frame cottage in the forest of Mendocino Coast, and a penthouse loft with 360deg view, filled with vinyl records in Berlin.
I never stayed in a hotel that I found have enjoyed that much, or been that impressed by it. They are all the same and so bland, even the most high end or expensive ones.
I visited Tel Megiddo and Tel Hazor by asking my airbnb hosts to drive me there. One of them did for free, the other for a pittance. Given that I do not drive and these places are not really accessible without a car, this was quite a win. Also, there are no hotels nearby.
The place argument repeats elsewhere. I have been visiting friends in Europe who didn't have guest rooms and I was able to able find airbnbs nearby while there were no hotels. I was able to get an airbnb close to a train station in Milan where no hotels exist (admittedly this is a cost issue -- obviously I could've went elsewhere in Milan to get a hotel for significantly more).
Quality/place. I went to Bratislava for a concert and the only hotels in walking distance had terrible, terrible reviews, I know what a socialist hotel can be, I had the bad luck to be born in Hungary and could only fix the problem when I was 31 (now I am Canadian, yay). I was able to get a nice airbnb within spitting distance of the venue.
There's the kitchen problem. I love going out for dinner and often there is food I could bring to my temporary home -- only if it had a microwave. People with various food sensitivities find it easier to cook.
It happened more than once that a hotel maid found it acceptable to put my teddy bear on top of the freshly made bed. I heard some find this cute. But for me, a stranger touched the teddy bear I am sleeping with for thirty years. No.
Don't dismiss price so easily. Three times, five times savings happens all the time when I go to the head office in Bellevue. Or I could stay in a motel but I am too old for that crap.
There might be more but these come to mind easily.
The US already has hotels that specialise in apartment-type experiences. A couple I've stayed in for >1 week stays: Residence Inn in Seattle, and Staybridge Suites in Sunnyvale.
The main difference between them and pure serviced apartments is that they have a breakfast room, and rates usually include breakfast.
The logical stable point is that all city centers will be in effect hotels or homes of the very rich who can afford to bid against the expected return of those units.
Interesting... I suppose their game plan is to get bought by Airbnb for providing them with a convenient add-on service that could boost their revenue.
I am not sure if they will ever be acquired by AirBnb, the main difference is that they either own the apartments but most likely They have signed long term leases on the apartments, this is a completely different model than Airbnb.
They're much more closer to WeWork' Business model. This is typically a vertical where WeWork could make acquisitions.
The space is quite competitive, and a company like https://www.staylyric.com/ is doing pretty much the same thing.
[+] [-] sperling75|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smartbettor|7 years ago|reply
https://angel.co/sam-sperling
[+] [-] ptolts|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neya|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinjlynn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ordinaryradical|7 years ago|reply
This is bad news for cities that are already short on housing. You're taking what could have been space for housing and erasing it with larger, lower-density hotel suites. Very luxurious and pleasant for the travelers, sure, but you're ballooning the space taken up by the "hotel" and magnifying the market pressures on everyone else in the process.
What's pretty surprising about this article is the breathless, unquestioned enthusiasm for these kind of ideas. Is this really a sustainable model for urban centers and hotels? Is this how we want to conduct our cities and use our most precious, economically productive spaces?
I'm pro Airbnb--when the room is actually rented out by the renter, everyone including the little guy wins. But this is a very "rich get richer" style of tourism with the fig-leaf of the share economy strapped to its extravagance, right?
[+] [-] anonymous5133|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emodendroket|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clay_the_ripper|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnicholas|7 years ago|reply
I suppose this is true in some parts of the country, but in the areas where real estate is tight, "the little guy" probably doesn't own his home.
[+] [-] emphasis|7 years ago|reply
Would we criticize Marriot or Hilton for making a hotel in a commercial zone?
[+] [-] samclearman|7 years ago|reply
To be clear I'm not talking about the model of renting out your spare bedroom on Airbnb because nobody actually wants to do that. I'm talking about full time airbnb studios / 1BR's obviating the need for guest bedrooms.
[+] [-] ForHackernews|7 years ago|reply
Are there still Airbnb flats that are owner-occupied? Every one I've stayed in seems to be operated as a full-time holiday rental.
> the fig-leaf of the share economy
There's never been any sharing in the so-called sharing economy. It's just about outsourcing labor costs and ducking regulations to make money.
[+] [-] borne0|7 years ago|reply
Maybe it's selective bias but I think of all north American metropolises Montreal would be particularly difficult to implement hotels in residential areas. Renters here have very strong rights, albeit backed by an understaffed authority. Tourism provides a substantial bulk to the local economy but it's not nearly enough that the local population will accept having fly-by-night partiers in otherwise quiet neighbourhoods. The article says downtown but I strongly suspect they mean neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown which have long been home to local workers and students, key to providing vibrancy and life which attracts the tourists to begin with (and the festivals).
[+] [-] ec109685|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pathseeker|7 years ago|reply
If that space is more economically productive doing something else, then it will be easy to outbid Sonder.
[+] [-] sudonim|7 years ago|reply
It photographed really well which is why I stayed there, but the bedding was terrible. The worst of any Airbnb experience and it’s part of why I generally choose hotels for short stays now.
This rental had cheap pillows, linens that felt like sand paper, and the comforter was bare sandwiched between a large sheet. Towels were tiny and cheap motel quality. I was really disappointed. Hopefully their other locations are better than this one. I personally wouldn’t go back.
I filled in their after-stay survey and never heard a response.
[+] [-] theologic|7 years ago|reply
A. The secret to AirBNB is that everybody had extra space, and Gig Economy allow you to get value out of your extra space.
B. When you are in the Gig Economy, you have two things that you need to do:
1. Have the extra space 2. Manage the extra space
Sonder initially focused on #2, and this worked out well. Bring professionalism to the management interface turns out to be very good deal because a lot of people with #1 is not good at #2.
My problem with the next step on their is that they are leaving the core of the gig economy.
Buying the facility and coming up with unique rooms with different paintings is simply getting into the hotel business. The fundamental driving force of the AirBNB business model is the use of an asset that is otherwise unused, and sparing somebody from needing to invest CapEx in building rooms. This is a massive lever to get into the hotel business, which is what AirBNB really is.
Obviously, I'm totally ignoring the moral choice of if having somebody else consuming and reselling beds is good or bad for cities. I'm simply on the point that hotels are a going business that is pretty competitive, with a series of operators at all levels. It's not clear to me how Sonder business model is superior to the standard hotel model once they are forced to spend CapEx for rooms, because having unique hotel facilities or rooms does not appear to me to drive a competitive advantage.
Secondly, if having unique rooms turns out to be brilliant competitive advantage, and I'm totally wrong on this point, I don't see how this drives a real moat (as Buffet would state) that is defensible. I would think that the entrenched hotel operators should be able to pivot and counter the threat.
[+] [-] tptacek|7 years ago|reply
Isn't Sonder just trying to slip in under the radar, the confusing ostensible aegis of people renting out their rooms temporarily, to do what Marriott can't do?
[+] [-] JamesBarney|7 years ago|reply
Two things makes me suspect their model is basically just an end run around hotel regulation, and not gig economy.
1. All of the airbnb's I've stayed in over the last year were dedicated airbnb spaces.
2. I know a couple people who rent 2 apartments, live in one, and primarily support themselves off airbnbing the other.
[+] [-] citation_please|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawhizkid|7 years ago|reply
Agree the one thing I really don’t like about Airbnb and why I still prefer hotels is the inconsistency of the experience from check-in to check-out. If I’m in a new unfamiliar city all I want to do is minimize the unknowns as much as possible and everything about Airbnb from key hand off to cleanliness to whether the listing is even real is a big question mark until you’re actually there.
[+] [-] omegaworks|7 years ago|reply
Airbnb has gotten a lot of pushback for commoditizing spaces that would have likely been used as long-term rental properties. They very meticulously craft their brand and community relationships so as to avoid negative repercussions from operating in a city.
This is an attempt to directly capitalize on the prime, long-term rental stock drained by Airbnb's presence without damaging the Airbnb brand.
[+] [-] rrdharan|7 years ago|reply
https://www.airbnb.com/plus
[+] [-] dano|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycrutchfield|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drum|7 years ago|reply
Clean linens alone has me interested. That is by far the biggest headache for me when comparing an AirBnB to a hotel. Can I trust that the host actually cleaned the bed sheets?
[+] [-] nightfly|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robotnixon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnicholas|7 years ago|reply
We've had too many dodgy, misrepresented airbnb experiences and my wife has sworn them off. Looking forward to using Sonder when we're in the cities they serve!
[+] [-] te_chris|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatsstolat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rainymood|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sonder
[+] [-] jjmorrison|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtherion|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinyun|7 years ago|reply
Also, crazy how under the radar they have been, really curious to see how they built up traction over these years without any mainstream buzz
[+] [-] minitoar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puranjay|7 years ago|reply
One of the experiences of traveling for me is the hotel experience where I can just let go of all my worries and let the hotel handle everything from clean laundry to changing the sheets.
[+] [-] enra|7 years ago|reply
My main reason is that with Airbnb, you can rent a fully functional apartment or a house, not a badly functioning/uninspiring room with no amenities, no places to chill, all the furniture is weird and everything looks fake. Then you need remind telling people to not to clean your room everyday at 8am, and hear people slamming doors from 6am to 10am. When I travel I like to have a little downtime at the house, shop local groceries and cook some meals at the house.
The second reason is that you find amazing and variety places in the world. Some of my favorite ones has been a modern loft on a hillside in overlooking the lake Atitlan and surrounding volcanoes in Guatemala, A-frame cottage in the forest of Mendocino Coast, and a penthouse loft with 360deg view, filled with vinyl records in Berlin.
I never stayed in a hotel that I found have enjoyed that much, or been that impressed by it. They are all the same and so bland, even the most high end or expensive ones.
(Disclaimer, I currently work at Airbnb.)
[+] [-] chx|7 years ago|reply
The place argument repeats elsewhere. I have been visiting friends in Europe who didn't have guest rooms and I was able to able find airbnbs nearby while there were no hotels. I was able to get an airbnb close to a train station in Milan where no hotels exist (admittedly this is a cost issue -- obviously I could've went elsewhere in Milan to get a hotel for significantly more).
Quality/place. I went to Bratislava for a concert and the only hotels in walking distance had terrible, terrible reviews, I know what a socialist hotel can be, I had the bad luck to be born in Hungary and could only fix the problem when I was 31 (now I am Canadian, yay). I was able to get a nice airbnb within spitting distance of the venue.
There's the kitchen problem. I love going out for dinner and often there is food I could bring to my temporary home -- only if it had a microwave. People with various food sensitivities find it easier to cook.
It happened more than once that a hotel maid found it acceptable to put my teddy bear on top of the freshly made bed. I heard some find this cute. But for me, a stranger touched the teddy bear I am sleeping with for thirty years. No.
Don't dismiss price so easily. Three times, five times savings happens all the time when I go to the head office in Bellevue. Or I could stay in a motel but I am too old for that crap.
There might be more but these come to mind easily.
Ps. Wifi! How could I forget that.
[+] [-] joelrunyon|7 years ago|reply
Apartment type buildings w/ laundry + kitchens stuck in a hotel like building w/ front desk to check you in.
That's gotta be a way better use of city resources.
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|7 years ago|reply
The main difference between them and pure serviced apartments is that they have a breakfast room, and rates usually include breakfast.
[+] [-] duxup|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] babesh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] babesh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siruncledrew|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ibrahimcisse|7 years ago|reply
They're much more closer to WeWork' Business model. This is typically a vertical where WeWork could make acquisitions.
The space is quite competitive, and a company like https://www.staylyric.com/ is doing pretty much the same thing.
[+] [-] devmunchies|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|7 years ago|reply