An Overview of Airbnb Company

Airbnb is an online marketplace that enables people to list and rent rooms in their flat or home to travelers. Budget travelers choose Airbnb because it’s usually cheaper than a hotel and gives them an opportunity to know local culture by staying with local people. Airbnb shows no sign of slowing down. More and more people sign up to become an Airbnb host/guest and take advantage of Airbnb’s unique platform to rent out their properties and earn extra income.

I used Airbnb as a guest for a while and can say that the overall experience was good for me. However, like all other forms of accommodation, Airbnb has its advantage and disadvantage which should be known to get an idea.

Airbnb has a broad range of properties, so you can find an affordable place that matches most of your criteria. You can find a much cheaper flat or room that is located near where you want to be e.g. conference, university, business venue. Airbnb works great for people traveling in a small group with friends and family. A triple room doesn’t cost three times more than a single room. A triple room sometimes costs the same. Many hosts put more beds or sofa-beds in one room and list a fixed price for the room. So you pay the same for one person, a couple or as many people as long as the number of persons doesn’t exceed the maximum occupancy specified by the hosts.

So, from this point of view

Airbnb surely beats out hostels in term of prices when it comes to group accommodation. Hostels charge per person, so as the size of your group grows, booking a hostel room becomes costly. Eventually, it might be more expensive to stay in a hostel. As a guest the experience for me was good and satisfying. It helped me allot to know about the place where i was staying and the way how the whole system worked at that place was told to me by the owner of the house. So, this was like another advantage of airbnb for me.

When I was a guest there, I was able to get some free access to some facilities like stocking my fridge with free stuff to make a basic breakfast: milk butter, jam, tea, coffee, eggs etc. until i got settled there properly.

Airbnb allows both the hosts and guests to cancel their reservations. Although this is rare, cancellation does happen. The hosts can’t do this a whim because they will be penalized by Airbnb. As a guest, you don’t lose your money and get your full money back. However, you will have to find other places to stay when you expect that all your travel arrangements are finalized. If you travel during a popular holiday season, all good and affordable rooms are already booked, and you might have to pay a lot more to pay for other Airbnb rooms or switch to hostels or hotels. Hotels and hostels don’t cancel your reservation. Once you reserve a room, it’s yours.

However, you and the hosts might have different standards of cleanliness and orderliness, and you might find yourself living in a place that does not match your standard. Or you might expect privacy and peace during your stay but end up booking a noisy place or sharing the space with noisy people who live there. So this can be another con which is to be considered while booking a place.

In conclusion, Airbnb have a no. of pros and cons but it should be kept in mind that it is creating a big loss for government tourism agents and firms greatly which affects the economic growth of country. So Airbnb should be controlled and should be used unto a certain level which will be good for both government and Airbnb users.

Works Cited

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