Airbnb – For a Different Vacation
Airbnb was founded in August 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia & Nathan Blecharczyk. The company is based in San Francisco, California and is now focussing its efforts and investments in the Indian subcontinent. The portal – www.airbnb.co.in – is basically a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world. Experimental travellers can book an apartment for a night, a castle for a week, or a villa for a month — online or from a mobile phone or tablet. The company helps you connect with unique travel experiences, at any price point, in more than 191 countries, across over 34, 000 cities. They have, till date, catered to more than 60 million guests with more than 2 million listings worldwide. In India, the number of enlisted homes is more than 17, 000 and is rising than ever before.
Airbnb is the most convenient way for people to leverage on their extra space as it is showcased to millions of travellers. All this coupled with world-class customer service and a growing community of users, makes your experience with Airbnb a very unique and memorable one.
How it Works
Airbnb connects independent travellers to trustworthy and authentic vacation homes. All the pre-verification work is done meticulously by a team of experts to ensure that neither of the parties is at risk or loss. The portal facilitates direct contact between travellers and the owners and property managers of apartments, villas, bed and breakfast (BnB) accommodations and private residences across the globe.
The travellers can choose this kind of accommodation as they are able to –
- Save Money – travellers could save up to 50 percent of expenses as compared to lush hotels bookings and could use the savings to enrich their travel experience.
- Enjoy More Space – they can enjoy large rooms, private kitchens, roomy living halls, and comfortable dwellings, all at very reasonable prices
- See the Real Destination – travellers can experience sights and colours of their place or destination as they don’t need to go by the book. A local can guide a traveller better about the authentic and worth-travelling place rather than what’s written on brochures and guide books.
Not only the travellers, but even the hosts are in a win-win situation with Airbnb.
- 100 percent Free - It is absolutely free to list your home or extra space on Airbnb; No hidden costs, no investments required to start your side income. You can choose to save for home repairs or take a dream trip; use the extra income to fund your passions.
- Extra Income – One can not only earn extra income by renting a spare room out to travellers, but even widen your network of friends by connecting to hosts like you around the globe.
- An Integrated Platform – hosts are given freedom to exchange messages, set prices, manage their availability and accept their guest via Airbnb’s advance booking management system. Hosts can even state their preference for guests beforehand. You can also pre-state when you want to host and how often.
Airbnb is leveraging on this unique concept owing to changing norms and conventions. Younger and educated lot of people are increasingly preferring to see more of the world by staying in a home that is more affordable and comfortable; whereby open-minded homeowners are thrilled by the idea that they could earn extra income by renting out their spare rooms to travellers. The concept has two-thronged benefits – for the travellers and for the home-owners- in every way.
Airbnb applies a holistic approach in connecting travellers and the host. They connect Host and Guest who are similar in religion, gender, age-group and many such more criterions. So travellers can have much more enriched experience by staying with someone like-minded.
Airbnb does not provide this service at the cost of anyone’s safety. They go an extra mile to keep their travellers as well as hosts safe. Following are certain verifications that are done for the two parties before the booking is finalised-
- User Review
- Social Media Verification
- Online Audit
- Passport/ID Verification
- On-site Property Inspection
- Mobile Phone Verification
Fringe Benefits Continue...
- Guests pay through Airbnb when they book a listing. Hosts receive payment through Airbnb 24 hours after guest check-in. So all the monetary transactions are taken care of by Airbnb.
- Hosts are protected up to INR 6,00,00,000 with the Airbnb Host Guarantee.
Airbnb coupon codes are made available from time to time to attract more and more travellers. The promo codes and deals are available on their own portal as well as on other coupon vendor websites. Travellers are excited to avail exclusive Airbnb coupon code as they can travel their dream destination at much lower costs. Airbnb can also be connected through social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; one can checkout these portals as well for their seasonal deals and offers.
The website is exhaustive and user friendly. There are many travelling tips, safety measures, travel guide and many other useful information uploaded for travellers and hosts. The company’s dedicated customer support desk is always happy to help its hosts and travellers in case of any issues or queries.
Indian travel markets are flourishing and Airbnb is firm to cash on that. They are offering lucrative deals for Indian travellers who are travelling abroad and are encouraging them to use Airbnb properties for their stay. These travellers are also expected to post their reviews on website which will further enhance the company’s overall image in the Indian landscape. The indicators about Indian markets are very positive — the number of homes that got registered in India in 2016 grew 150 percent year on year, and the number of travellers coming to the country rose 185 percent to five million in the same year.