[appleshore]

In general, it’s a great question: why does it take such extreme overhead to run a digital company that’s like Craigslist with better pictures. I understand it’s more than that but it’s still a valid philosophical question to ask it there’s a way to run it with say 1,200 employees? Or maybe there’s not.

It’s analogous to the size of government and this trend of doing less with more.

Craigslist has 50 employees. I know there’s a ton of counter arguments to minimize my point but surely there’s a third way between 50 and 12,000.

[onion2k]

Craigslist is only the listing part. Airbnb does listings, but it also does booking management, cancellations, payments and refunds, host support, etc as well.

Plus Airbnb has reps all over the world helping hosts. If they had ten staff (photographers, sales, etc) in every city that has more than a million population that'd account for more than 5000 people alone.

[thelittleone]

Not sure how much "helping" of hosts Airbnb does, at least when it's really needed. They quick and thick with platitudes but thin on support when push comes to shove as they almost always side with guests.

I'm a superhost with only 5 listings one has over 100 reviews with 4.98 average rating. So far Airbnb has remotely adjudicated 2 guest disputes (on my 4 years of operations) that cost me $5k. Not trivial.