Can’t find a hotel for TechCrunch50 or the next conference you are going to? If you don’t mind roughing it, try AirBed and Breakfast. Anyone with an airbed (or couch) can “post a room” and how much it costs. Thrifty travelers can make reservations on the site and pay for the stay.
The site is spare but it does the job (it was pulled together for less than $20,000 in seed capital from friends and family of the founders—San Francisco designers Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, and software engineer Nathan Blecharczyk).
AirBed and Breakfast will definitely appeal to younger travelers, and conventioneers who can’t find a regular hotel room. In overbooked Denver, where 20,000 people will be descending for the Democratic National Convention, hotels are already sold out. More than 600 people have found alternative accommodations through AirBed and Breakfast, and 50 to 100 new listings appear every day. Prices range from $20 a night for an airbed to $3,000 for an entire house.
In general, the prices are usually much cheaper (rates in San Francisco, for instance, range from $10 to $175 a night, with the median being $85). And you get to stay with a friendly local who can steer you to restaurants and stores you probably would never find otherwise.
Typically, each person offering a room puts up a picture of themselves and the apartment or house, along with some very basic information. For instance, for $99 a night, you can crash in this 24-year-old’s room in San Francisco:
Accommodates: Single Person
Bed type: Airbed
Room type: Common space
Breakfast: I’ll leave something out
Smoking: No
Description:
My unit is a 700-square-foot loft in the historic Clocktower building, a 100-year-old warehouse renovated by architect David Baker. It has a shared courtyard space and rooftop view of downtown.
Located in the heart of South Beach only a few blocks from the Moscone Center.
Airbed is an AeroBed® raised mattress.
The combination of the AeroBed and the Internet has now made everybody into an innkeeper.
See all
Post
http://www.couchsurfing.com/
Has been around for a while
Couchsurfing is an amazing resource that’s been available to the backpack/hostel community for a while.
A fantastic idea.
Great to see some other groups joining the market and working to streamline the process a bit.
Thank you. Couchsurfing.com is better. Why pay?
I don’t think I’d be able to get a minute of sleep in a stranger’s apartment, without knowing his or her background (person could turn out to be a serial killer?)
And vice versa, letting a complete stranger stay in your apartment with all your stuff (person could steal or break stuff?)
The person could just take you away and that would cause a bigger problem. I think it’s still better to find a hotel somewhere and stay where you’re safe!
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
What was the song? Psycho Killer…cha cha cha…
http://www.airbedandbreakfast....../show/1571
What happened to this post:
“I’m getting the dirt on this right now but it seems that Pat Phelan of MaxRoam just unlocked his iPhone 3G and will be giving away the app shortly. He has his running on Vodafone right now.”
Did Apple make you take it down?
This site looks awesome.
deadpool!
The site is getting traction and its a simple idea. You are totally off.
This is so cool! I’m blogging at the DNC and I will def use this.
“I don’t think I’d be able to get a minute of sleep in a stranger’s apartment, without knowing his or her background (person could turn out to be a serial killer?)”
I’ve seen people offer this type of arrangement on craigslist for sexual favors as well.
What?!
Who in their right mind would sleep in someone’s random house…
what about all the legalese for both parties?
Too much trouble for more than it’s worth.
Umm, hundreds of thousands of people have been using couchsurfing.com doing exactly that for years.
Couchsurfing is cheaper, but activity in this space is good.
gay brothels in the mist.
“gay brothels in the mist.”
BedandBathHouse.com
It won’t be long. This has got to be coming in the next iteration.
Consider the growing importance of an efficient society, one in which no space left unused, no food left uneaten, no service left unacquired, etc. is the basis in which we will live as more and more people compete for the fixed raw material and resources we have on earth. India and China are growing economies that will make all other prices go up and the standard of living that developed nations used to experience will be shifted to more efficiency as people look into ways to make money and save money.
This is one example when hotel/motel is more expensive than the alternative. I welcome this new service. Whether it will grow to sustainable business will be seen but I for one will use the service one day when needed if I’m in town for a couple days in Canada.
This is a cool idea…as it grows the service will become better and more legit.
schoolshift.com
online resource for current and prospective college students
People have been crashing with strangers on CouchSurfing.com and Craigslist for some time. Our online marketplace aims to make it easier to find a place that meets your quality and safety standards. With regards to safety, we do everything possible to allow our members to showcase their reputations. For example profiles may contain links to LinkedIn profiles and feedback from past guests/hosts. Going forward we hope to innovate further on this interesting problem so that our service will appeal to those who would otherwise be uncomfortable.
lol
only hippies have allowed someone else to crash in their homes.
I’m pretty sure no normal person would use this service. As for safety, you could checkout their linkedin profiles…lol, yeah.
‘feedback from past guest’…there is no feedback, once you get raped, robbed, or killed - that’s it.
Actually, I have been staying with random strangers on and off for years and I wouldn’t consider myself a hippy at all. I’m a very well employed, well traveled person who loves meeting new people and hearing their stories.
Having a little faith in humanity as a whole doesn’t mean you’re a hippy. It just means you’ve got some balls and an open mind.
I once let a german couple I’d never met live in my gorgeous Vancouver apartment for free while I took a 10 day trip to Mexico City. We met at a coffee shop for about 10 minutes, I gave them the keys and headed to the airport. They took fantastic care of my place and if I ever make it to Germany I know I have a place to stay.
Good things can come from being open to new people in your life. I’ll be damned if I’m going to live my life in fear of other human beings.
While I still plan on using CouchSurfing regularly, I think this website fits in a nice little space between crashing on someone’s couch and getting a hotel room. I look forward to using it when CouchSurfing doesn’t have something to offer me.
Nice work Nathan et all.
I would feel clearly insecure letting someone I don’t know into my house. You need a spare key if he stays for more than one day, and what if he does not give you the key back or make a copy of it to break into your house later on?
To that effect, a linkage to social networking sites and FoaF-kinds of searches would be useful.
I have had some friends use couchsurfing.com and they love it. Great verification process to weed out the flakes and riff-raff.
I’ve already hosted a guest through this service and had a very good experience. You can get a pretty good sense of people online, and they provide links to Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as ratings from previous hosts or guests.
I not only earned some extra cash, I also met an interesting traveler and got some good conversations from the transaction.
(Full disclosure: I also did some web development for the company.)
I’m not exactly sure when the internet spawned such paranoia about making real life contact, but if any of you have used the likes of Facebook or Match.com (seeing as you’re all so tech savvy), you’d probably work out that not many serial killers lurk in such open spaces. Plus, there’s actually an element of enjoyment in meeting, vis-a-vis.
Since when did the Web create such a horrific image of the world outside anyway? The Web was created by people of the real world. If you think you’re safe in here because you’re protected by your computer screen, think again! Google’s got you covered. Any minute now, somebody could knock on your door and say they saw your footprints on TechCrunch and strike a conversation with you! Is that scary?
As for sexual favors or gay brothels: these are actually highly sought after - whoever’s providing such a service could make big bucks off something like that. Why post a listing on such a boring website that couldn’t advertise them in the right way? Especially when the motto is about being “cheap”! I’m not sure a single human being would sell themselves for cheap. If you found that on Craigslist, at least that market has been tapped into - clearly it’s not necessary to create a new platform for such a service. So I would have to disagree that the next iteration would cater.
AirBed&Breakfast does something different. If it wasn’t a world apart from Couchsurfing or Craigslist, I’m pretty sure TechCrunch wouldn’t be blogging about it. They’re trying to solve a problem during a global economic downturn. What a perfect way to continue traveling when we’re having to tighten our belts! We’re a social species, after all. And the world doesn’t stop just because we’ve stopped! So if we want to keep up with all these events, get there on time, be there to witness things first hand, AirBed&Breakfast has a solution!
It’s awesome.
I’m an active member of the couchsurfing community and it is a completely different concept. It is more informal, hosts do not charge there, and it is meant for people who like making friends from different cultures, share ideas, hanging out, etc.
It would very impolite and wrong for someone to use couchsurfing as free alternative to a hotel room just for the night.
At $10 per night, this might become popular with the rapidly increasing foreclosure rates.
Perhaps the state can give vouchers to the homeless to use this service, which would actually save taxpayers money compared to the cost of operating homeless shelters.
Perhaps we should rent out our garbage cans as short term storage too.
Man, this alarmism about getting raped and killed is intense! My friends and I have been using CouchSurfing (couchsurfing.com) for a while now, all over the world, and it’s been great. The only reason I can see AirBed failing is that they charge (avg. $85 a night???), while CouchSurfing (CS) is totally free. Also, CS has an incredible number of hosts listed worldwide, and a good verification and vouching system in place.
There are also other services “less hippie” than CS which cater to different demographics (albeit without the Web2.0 shine), like EvergreenClub.com, which my older parents use. It’s fun to joke about rape and craigslist encounters (…I guess…) but online services like this already exist, are taken seriously by users, and are often very successful.
I wonder what the ramifications are on one’s home owners insurance in the event of a major accident or claim (i.e. the temporary tenant is incured or killed, a house fire, etc)? Since you have received money for use of your personal dwelling, I’d be inclined to say the insurance company could deny the claim and may even drop you as a customer.
Joe and Brian,
Great to see you guys going strong! When are you guys having another Jelly! ? We should meet up soon to talk!
Best,
Chad
When did we enter such a paranoid state that everyone is either wanting to sell sex or they are out to kill you?? Evidently there are many measures that can be taken to ensure the quality of the service that can be provided via this initiative. All new things have got to start from somewhere.. do you really think if your number was up someone would have less of a hard time killing you at a hotel where you are among many or at a space where everyone knows exactly where you are and who owns it?!
Granted it is not for everyone but then again nothing in life caters to every single person so if you don’t want to participate then just don’t, but don’t try to impose your close minded thoughts upon other people.
I wish them all the best and I think this could be an exciting new way of travelling and being able to enjoy a place without having to mortgage your house to afford a clean hotel and a good service not to mention that even if you pay a lot of $$$ nothing is ever guaranteed.
Wow - a very diverse set of comments. I cannot see this working at the higher prices which are often greater than a discounted OK hotel. I would not worry so much about the renter as the person coming in to my house - what mechanism keeps common robbers out of this system? Hotels have a lot less in the room than a house would.
Even if you could ID the person, how much could police follow up if I had charged the person money, given them a key, and then claimed they took some of my stuff?
such a *flickr* like feel to the site..
god wow most people here have not traveled around the world as this is a common practice elsewhere. if you leave valuables thrown about then yeah maybe they would be taken but if you keep things in check it should be ok. Ive done apt swaps with people from other countries and it was great. i got to use their kitchen to make food and saved but loads of cash.
people get their things stolen from hotels daily.
$175/night for an air mattress in someone’s home in SF when you can get a full hotel room (you know, with a bed that won’t break your back, no strangers in the room, even a decent breakfast) for half that ? Ridiculous.
This isn’t a comment on the site, but the market there will have to learn a thing or two about the proper valuation of its services if it is to remain competitive.
Some listings are good deals, some are not. It doesn’t look like you checked the site out completely.
“Going forward we hope to innovate further on this interesting problem so that our service will appeal to those who would otherwise be uncomfortable.”
Ha, ha! Ha ha ha ha hahahahahah Ha!
Flickr, anyone?
What on earth did they spend $20,000 on?
Yeah this is great!. Me too I wonder about people that are afraid to meet new people. Still I bet many of them have gone to stay for the night with an opposite (or same) sex after a night in bar…
“$175/night for an air mattress in someone’s home in SF when you can get a full hotel room”
$200/night in San Francisco, bed heater included.
http://www.frugaljohn.com
Ironically, this site was created by a victim(unemployed) of the Silicon Valley dotCOM bust.
This techcrunch crowd sure isn’t very visionary. I think it could change my travel and conference hopping dynamic considerably, plus it makes financial sense.
The goal is to try and make these alternatives the norm, so that you don’t get crazy people doing it. It used to be this way completely, pre 50s auto boom. More and more this is the case.
I’ve been traveling both staying at hostels/hotels and crashing with whomever. Crashing with whomever is always way more fun.
omg, my dorm room on Univ ave can now have a rev model too
There’s a secret society of people living in each others houses on that social netW thats soo big in NYC (its so big I can’t remember their name)
We had a couch surfer stay with us last night. He turned out to be an entrepreneur developing an epaper product in an incubator in Avignon, France.
It’s great to meet people through couchsurfers - if money changed hands it wouldn’t feel the same at all.
This site looks awesome.
This is freaking scary! I can’t believe people would actually stay at a stranger’s house and let someone they don’t know stay at their house. Not to be so skeptical, but it’s just scary.
They are claiming that this is a cheaper alternative to hotels and that the renter and property owner will become new best friends, but their revenue model completely contradicts this. They charge the RENTER, who is already paying the host, a percentage of the rent, looks like between 5%-10%. I guess your new best friend, who can invite you into your home, cook you breakfast, and show you a new town, cannot trust you to write a check or accept cash. Is it even legal per real estate laws to charge a commission on a real estate transaction without a license?
This is not “real estate.” Its renting!
Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather sleep in the back seat of my car than in some stranger’s house.
they got crunched
A few too many geocoding requests per second caused everything to get backed up. The site has been stabilized for the current traffic load Thanks for being patient.
I always give simple solutions to a given problem a thumbs up so this works for me. Of course they have to acknowledge the 800 pound gorilla in the room, which is Craigslist in this case. There are viable concerns stated here though, about shacking up with strangers and such. It is indeed a problem. For those of you who’ve lived in Germany and have ever used “Mit fahr zentrale” which is basically a ride sharing service, my friend had a story about how he caught a ride from a dude that drove his car with one leg out the window (true story). So the “stranger” problem must be solved and one solution is to have some kind of assessment mechanism embedded into the site so users can share their experiences. (Name drop alert) EventOrb uses the Event GPA to allow users to rate events organized by a promoter…that way promoters have a rep to protect. Same system of rating can be applied here to hosts and guests alike. Good luck.
Free homestays works, ie. couchsurfing, homewelcome.com, etc.. and paid holiday home rentals works, free-rentals.com and the millions of other vacation rental websites out there. This space that Airbed is in isn’t a sweetspot, it’s a deadzone. Additionally, their domain name severely limits them from gaining adoption outside of the US, where the term Airbed isn’t widely known.
i think this is a pretty good idea… if you can’t find a hotel or whatever.. there are always alternatives
Couchsurfing.com is free and has an international community. Airbed and breakfast, could have easily been futon and favors or FFWB (Futon, friends with benefits) or just plain couchhump.com
“A few too many geocoding requests per second caused everything to get backed up. The site has been stabilized for the current traffic load Thanks for being patient.”
Yes, Nathan, but going forward do you hope to innovate further on this interesting problem so that your service will appeal to those who would otherwise be uncomfortable?
(Ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha!)
With some room prices in Boulder, Colorado going for $2500/night I can’t help but wonder if this is the kind of thing Elliot Spitzer would use.
Nobody has brought up the problem with Taxation - offering a “hotel” room for rent requires you to pay local and state lodging taxes - is this collected by the service or user?