I have always been a fan of Airbnb. But now I am having my doubts. We know that Airbnb brings in tourism money but this is concentrated in the hands of a few real estate owners. On the other hand, it drives up housing prices and displaces a lot of people who can’t afford those prices. People may argue that tourists that use Airbnb contribute in other ways to the economy, for example by spending at local businesses but this is true even if the tourists chose to use regular hotels for their stay. Airbnb has a great engineering team and they are definitely having an impact on people but I am tending to believe the impact is negative and plan to reduce or stop my usage of Airbnb. Vote below. Overall, Airbnb has:
I love Airbnb and looking forward to interviewing with them sometime soon
Sure, our platform has some negative impacts, but I would say the positives outweigh the negatives by a long shot. Democratizing the hospitality industry by empowering individuals to be entrepreneurs (hosts) is not only benefiting both hosts and guests (cheaper and more authentic hospitality experiences) but also local economies through tourism. Also brings attention to portions of cities that are often brushed over, since the majority of hotels are located in central tourist areas whereas Airbnbs are way more distributed. The negative impact that Airbnb has on housing markets is minimal, in my opinion.
The negative impacts are more the result of wealth inequality than the platform. Relatively few people buy huge chunks of real estate and turn them into soulless Airbnb’s. The best Airbnb’s are never owned and operated by real estate companies. The root issue is wealth imbalance.
One can always find something bad about the impact of any company. Google shares a lot of people's info with advertisers, FB gets people addicted with Instagram, Uber and Lyft exploit drivers, Apple sells overpriced tech even in poor countries, Slack incentivizes people to be always on, Amazon kills retail jobs, etc. Don't buy this kind of crap. Tech is not the problem with the world, tech is creating opportunities.
I really like airbnb's UX design, but does airbnb have a great engineering team? Is there any regular airbnb user who has never been troubled by bugs?