geronb's comments

Airbnb hires former Apple designer Jony Ive's firm for multi-year partnership

Almost all BMWs from the past few years have it. We have a 2017 X5 and wireless CarPlay works very well and is very convenient.

Thanks for posting this. I will relay this feedback to the relevant teams.

- I want to see prices listed as total price, not price before fees which add 30%-50% on top of the listed price

* The total price display is something that is being experimented on at the moment and will likely launch to everyone soon. If you manage to get assigned into the experiment you can actually see this live now.

- I want to select properties where there is no one else on the property grounds. Airbnb allows people to claim "Separate property" for somebody's basement suite where you're sure to encounter the host/other residents

* Agreed this would be useful. Basically a privacy level designation instead of just binary Entire home vs not, although I can see this getting tricky with the diverse ranges of properties people list. For example, where would you put a condo on this scale?

- I want the pool/hot tub checkboxes to be limited to private pool or hot tub, and to not include results where the property has some membership to a shared pool in a HOA or whatever

* Also agreed this would be useful. Typically the listing describes this, but having a search filter would be helpful. On the host side, there are already designations for private vs shared amenities so it should be possible.

- I want the ability to search for keywords, such as "backyard" or "creek"

* This is an interesting idea. You see this on car selling websites and it's definitely useful. One challenge would be handling of multiple languages and the diverse ways people would describe the same attributes even within the same language, but agreed if implemented properly, it could be a super useful feature. Airbnb used to have a free text search engine and it didn't work well so it's been scrapped for now.

- I want to be able to exclude certain hosts from results. In some cities the same host runs multiple properties and they all have bad reviews. I want to hide their properties.

* Would a review rating filter basically accomplish this? Agreed this would be useful.

- I want to be able to easily flag or report listings that are abusing the search terms - claiming a living room as a bedroom, for example

* You can do this by going to the listing and clicking on "Report this listing" link under the book button.

- I want to be able to search for properties by driving distance from a location

* Stayed tuned on this one!

What are some amenities you aren't able to search for?

The recovery is very surprising and counterintuitive so you are right to be skeptical.

Here's some additional datapoints:

- Similarweb traffic: VRBO traffic is above February traffic levels https://www.similarweb.com/website/vrbo.com/

- Airbnb traffic shows a V shaped recovery https://www.similarweb.com/website/airbnb.com/#overview

- VRBO drives Expedia group recovery https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2020/07/07/expedia-g...

- Airbnb shows unexpected growth https://fortune.com/2020/06/30/airbnbceo-brian-chesky-bookin...

- May article showing early signs of V-shaped recovery https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/airbnb-booking-data...

- "Airbnb saw more nights booked for U.S. listings between May 17 and June 3 than the same period in 2019, and a similar boost in domestic travel globally." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-12/airbnb-re...

VRBO/HomeAway, Booking, Tripadvisor are all competitors. There are also a lot of smaller upstarts focusing on specific segments like Blueground (work trips), Lyric (upscale city accommodations), Plumguide (vetted listings).

I'm not sure why people are downvoting the comment. The link I included indicates there were 1 million bookings in a single day, signaling recovery.

A quick Google search shows multiple articles with more data points as well:

- Similarweb traffic: VRBO traffic is above February traffic levels https://www.similarweb.com/website/vrbo.com/

- Airbnb traffic shows a V shaped recovery https://www.similarweb.com/website/airbnb.com/#overview

- VRBO drives Expedia group recovery https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2020/07/07/expedia-g...

- Airbnb shows unexpected growth https://fortune.com/2020/06/30/airbnbceo-brian-chesky-bookin...

- May article showing early signs of V-shaped recovery https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/airbnb-booking-data...

- "Airbnb saw more nights booked for U.S. listings between May 17 and June 3 than the same period in 2019, and a similar boost in domestic travel globally." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-12/airbnb-re...

Regarding layoffs:

Business tanked right after COVID began, and people were laid off because of that, but business recovered unexpectedly in the summer.

Whether this is a temporary recovery:

This is anyone's guess, and it may very well be temporary, but take a look at Airbnbs and VRBOs in less dense getaway destinations near urban centers. You will find a lot of them are fully booked through September and October.

Layoffs happened when bookings tanked when the pandemic began (February and March). The recovery happened in the later stage of the pandemic, in May and later. Nobody expected this internally or externally and it's alright if you are skeptical. The official numbers will be made public pretty soon anyway.

What do you mean by "shady tactics to prop up positive reviews over the years"? I'm an employee and we have very strict policies around review fairness. If anything, most review-related complaints come from hosts who want to have negative reviews removed due to perceived unfairness. By policy, negative reviews are rarely if ever removed this way much to the chagrin of hosts.

Reviews are usually ranked chronologically, but in some cases there may be sorted by predicted relevancy ranking based on review length and language.

Not really. Airbnb has fully recovered, same as VRBO (which is growing about 60% YoY) and having proven that the business has been resilient even during the pandemic can be a good story for the IPO. https://www.financial-world.org/news/news/business/6074/cali...

Airbnb is actually doing very well right now, and is essentially fully recovered if not growing, same as the competitors like VRBO. There's been a huge surge in nearby getaway trips. https://www.financial-world.org/news/news/business/6074/cali...

I'm an employee and Airbnb is actually doing very well right now. People have been taking a lot of trips to less dense areas as nearby getaways. https://www.financial-world.org/news/news/business/6074/cali...

Same for VRBO, which is also doing very well.

Rents are down 10-30% in SF. I received a 10% discount on my lease renewal along with 8 weeks free.

"A new French law compels internet giants to remove pedophile and terrorism-related content within an hour or face a fine of up to 4% of global revenue."

Can France even do this? It seems crazy. The 1-hour requirement also seems unreasonable. So if Facebook is caught not removing illicit content within the hour 25 times, they will owe their entire global revenue to France?

The Wikipedia number is incorrect. Actual number is ~7K with most being non-tech employees. About 1K engineers. If you break down the functions, the numbers start making sense. For example, Airbnb has a global payment processing platform, which is basically like mini-Stripe. That org is probably ~100 eng. Then there’s Homes, Experiences, Transportation, Lux, Plus, experimental projects etc. Each team owns a particular page in the flow. Each team needs a backend, frontend, iOS, Android person. Designer, PM, data scientist etc

Yes, most is non-tech

Current employee here. The burn rate is ~$100M/mo, not 1B/mo, after cutting marketing and reduced CS costs due to fewer bookings. You can see this in publicly available data from the WSJ and The Information. Not sure where people get these wildly inaccurate numbers.

Current employee here. The employee count is actually 7000, half of what you stated. Not sure where you got 14,000.

Does this mean a low carb diet like keto is bad for brain aging?