Just point out one example of this that I think has been very successful, and that's MisterBnB for gay travelers.<p>I think a lot of straight folks don't understand the mental calculus that goes through a gay person's mind when they travel. I'm at the stage of my life where when I go on vacation, I want to relax and feel at ease. Why would I spend money to go someplace where I may feel unwelcome, or worse, unsafe? For example, there are a few Caribbean nations that are beautiful, but notoriously unwelcoming to gays. Jamaica can have someone else's money.<p>In an Airbnb, I don't think I've ever felt unsafe, but I'd also rather not feel unwelcome. I don't want to have to worry about some last minute thing coming up making the place unavailable if I mention my partner. With MisterBnB I know I never have to worry about that, and I know my sexuality won't rise to the level of anyone even caring. Even if that's true 80 percent of the time on Airbnb, I just don't want to have to deal with that 20 percent chance of having a bad experience.
Every time I travel, I spend insane amounts of time browsing AirBnB to find a suitable place.<p>For example, I miss a "good table" option on AirBnB.<p>I have to manually discard over 90% of the listings after looking at the images because there is no table suitable for work. That is so time-consuming.<p>It's not that I want to work at home all the time, but still I need a proper table to put my laptop on. A proper chair and a monitor would be golden of course.<p>And there are a bunch of additional things I do manually too. For example reading the reviews. Meanwhile, I am pretty good at predicting the quality of a place by reading the reviews. The stars are somewhat of an indication. But not reliable at all. I had really bad stays at places that got 100 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars. Hosts have too much influence on this metric.<p>Here are two examples of positive signals that help me find nice places:<p>1) How long the reviews are.<p>Hosts can remove bad reviews. And they can manipulate their guests into writing 5-star reviews. But they cannot really manipulate them to write long, enthusiastic reviews with many details.<p>2) How many of the reviews say "I have stayed at many AirBnBs and this one was one of the best".<p>This is something I usually write when I particularly liked a place. And it turned out a good signal to find nice places.<p>I often wonder if one could build a business by creating a site that lists a small subset of AirBnBs that are manually vetted like this. I already wrote my own web based tool to organize and sort AirBnBs that I am interested in. So it would not be a lot of work to make these lists public.
What’s funny is that in France we had various alternatives to Airbnb for so long before Airbnb that Americans are completely baffled by the choice when they learn of them.<p>Actual upscale bnb? Gîtes de France.<p>I’m coming with 20-30 friends -> gîtes pour groupes, you’ll get an industrial kitchen and dormitories.<p>Those things existed long before the internet.
or you can up-bundle airbnb. I would like to be able to pick "2 years in <nice place>" as a package that includes everything from home to food/gym/car etc
I would gladly pay a premium for an Airbnb style home in my chosen location with an emphasis on month long stays for digital workers. This basically boils down to amenities like high speed WIFI + a comfortable office chair and desk. Airbnb's 'dedicated workspace' is a joke of a filter with hosts claiming a side table with a stool is one.
Also there needs to be an in-unit laundry filter!
I think I missed how the article’s initial premise is worked around by Wander. How is it avoiding competing with AirBnB unbundling itself (ie Luxe)? Isn’t that basically what the author says not to do? Is the only difference that Wander managed to acquire a large VC round?