Writing this from a nice, quiet room in London that my wife and I found via Airbnb. We arrived to find that our guesthouse had flooded and most everything not outrageously expensive in London was booked, so we posted to the standby list on Airbnb and had a great place at a great price in less than an hour. We showed up a few hours ago and met the owner, a very (very) nice lady in her 50s who decided to try and bring in a bit of extra cash by renting out her spare room. She made us tea while we swapped life stories and then she showed us around the neighborhood. All in all, a <i>great</i> experience with Airbnb and I highly recommend giving it a try.
it was on the cover of today's travel section, i initially posted it with airbnb in the title.<p>there's an interesting paragraph towards the end about the legal issues<p><i>When I contacted AirBnB about its stance on the questionable legality of listings in some cities, a spokesman declined to comment.</i><p>i'm also curious if they've had any safety issues (thefts, stalkers, etc).
This sounds great, but I see problems on the horizon. If you are using a site like AirBnB I assume you are able to avoid paying hotel related taxes. Many cities get a significant portion of their revenue from these taxes. There are already laws on the books in many cities that restrict AirBnB style rentals. It's only a matter of time before cities begin enforcing those laws.
I was very hopeful for AirBnB as we are travelling around the world and any way to save on accomodation is great. However, we just had a terrible experience with our first let in Montreal, Canada. To be fair - AirBnB support staff is helpful but the apartment we picked up was a disaster - the owner didn't live there - it was just a letting company. And they gave us wrong instructions to pickup the keys so we ended up trying to find a hotel at 11PM in the night just so we don't sleep under the bridge :( Hopefully next time it will be better...
Excited to come across this article as I just quit my job to go backpacking across Europe for a few months with my girlfriend. I had planned to stay in hostels and use couch surfing but I'm glad to see a few more options available. Thanks!
Single page: <a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/travel/18couch.html?ref=travel&pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/travel/18couch.html?ref...</a>