Airbnb – good, cheap housing for conference attendees
By tony | 3 Comments
A few weeks back, I heard a famous tech investor raving about a disruptive new investment. Airbnb, is a vacation rental website that takes all of the spare rooms, couches, and in-law units in a city and makes them part of the liquid hotel and vacation inventory. Innovative? Yes. Practical for conference attendees? Let me tell you.
I’m headed to Dallas next month for a conference, I’m staying at an Airbnb, I saved $400, and I got great tips for local BBQ.
Location
If you’re considering Airbnb, you need to figure out if there is an option within walking distance of the conference and if there isn’t, are you going to rent a car or are you going to take public transportation. Thankfully, almost any city of more than 200k people will have at least a few options.
When I researched Dallas I found only one choice within walking distance, but it involved sleeping on someone’s couch in a studio apartment. It was $25/night, but there were other, much better, places a little further away.
I also found that parking and car rentals were cheap–so I decided to go that route. I’m staying a few miles away and renting a car. That way I don’t have to worry about transit schedules and I’ll have a trunk to stash any conference materials that I don’t want to lug around.
Quality
Airbnb is short for air-bed and breakfast, and yes, they have options for sleeping on an airbed in someone’s living room. But they also have lots of nicer options. For $55/night I ended up in an in-law unit over my host’s garage. I have my own bed, kitchen, and bath. Plus the owner is a fountain of information on local eateries.
Is this safe?
I ran this idea by another conference goer and he said, “I would definitely have tried this before I was married.”
I couldn’t tell if he meant that his wife wouldn’t let him or that pre-marriage, his life wasn’t worth protecting. Either way, lots of people will have safety concerns. Airbnb encourages you to use common sense and then makes it easy to bail if things don’t feel right. For the worst case scenarios, Airbnb holds off on charging your card for 24-hours after check-in and provides 24-7 phone support to help you quickly find a new lodging.
Who is this for?
Brave cheapskates. Seriously though, this is a down economy, so this is a great option for helping attendees save money. Including the car rental, I’m saving $400.
Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that a lot of interesting attendees are careful about conserving travel expenses. It doesn’t mean they are homeless lobby crashers. For years, OSCON (the first conference I ever attended) has been helping attendees save money by sharing rooms or camping in local attendee’s back yards. Here’s an example of one penny-pinching attendee from their room-share program:
I am a male developer planning to attend for the week and willing to share a room – I am also flying a small plane down from Seattle on Sunday returning Friday and can take one person willing to share gas.
It’s definitely a sign of tough times when you’re looking to split the gas bill on your private plane.
See also:
Washington Post Tips on Booking an Airbnb Bed
Top 40 Airbnb Accomodations
At least in Hanover, Germany for CeBit staying in peoples apartments is very common. For the 3 years that I attended our company rented out someones apartment (they moved into a friends place for a week). They provided everything we needed – Breakfast, internet access, cleaning, etc. all for a fraction of the price of any hotel (not that these were even available.
Maybe it is a cultural thing that people from the US may find this kind of weird?
Glen, I do think there’s a cultural thing at play. There are probably parallels to hitchhiking, a practice that seems to have been aggressively rooted out in the US through severe fear mongering. I can’t imagine that any US corporation would book rooms for employees on Airbnb, but brave independent conference goers should definitely give it a try.
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