61 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] thread
It always strikes me how nice their website is. I really like the design and layout.
Liechtenstein is 160 km². That's only $437.5 per square kilometer!
Compare to your average room at your average Holiday Inn Express, which is 25 square metres and rents for $100 a night. That's four million dollars per square km. Liechtenstein is a bargain!
(comment deleted)
April 14th. Hm.
AirBNB sure knows how to pull a nice marketing stunt.
is it only me that "I dont get the idea"... (I was wrong many times before)
What exactly is your question? I admit I can't imagine spending $70k/night on entertaining my guests, but Googling for "airbnb liechtenstein" or variations shows that this has already got them a good amount of press, including e.g. TechCrunch. If they're lucky, and good, they may even get mentioned in the trivia section of a big newspaper.
I doubt you're their target market for renting a country. If you can drop 70k for a night without breaking a sweat, feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

Given this is a partnership with Xnet, and:

>Rent a Village by Xnet partners with these destinations to transform them into highly customized settings for events, corporate retreats, conferences, and more.

I imagine this is more about "events" than a single person renting a country so they can sleep in it for the night. But that, too, is a possibility, if they wanted to just so they could say they did.

If you can drop $70k/night, do you really need airBnB to secure an island for a week?

Definitely more marketing stunt than anything, but also definitely brilliant.

"An island", not really (usually). "A village" or "an entire country", that's a bit harder - people live there. The location's purpose isn't entirely to be rented. Tourism, absolutely, but not temporary ownership.
So I wonder what happens if someone had a trip booked and someone else decided to rent out the village for that day?

Presumably they could be denied access to any public or private venue.

Hmmm... that's a good question...

Personally, I hope the village-renters have to agree that any current tourists retain access to any normally-public venues. Private is debatable.

Are legislative powers included?
Should be, otherwise how would that be different from renting a room in Liechtenstein at $70 a night ?
Rich people need ways to show off. Probably get to sleep with the prince or something...?
I can see lot of potential for this.

1. The buyer. He benefits from a unique and authentic experience. He amazes his audience because he doesn't just rent a hotel or a room, but a whole location and customize it to fit.

2. The seller. $70K/day, if they get booked 50 times a year that's $3.5 million. The country habitants benefits too from the incoming tourists and currency.

3. AirBnb. It's like having 1,000 clients in one time.

Who's in with me? :D
I'll pitch $500! Just need 138 more...
I'm in. Now we better be getting our money's worth! Now that I think about it. 1 day for a country for 70k is fine. Means we can throw one fucking helluva party!
Not absolutely sure what the fine print is, but $70,000 is a bargain for such a huge cOncert venue. invite all your favorite bands to play in towns named after then and streets named after the songs.
If it includes controlling the army and police, i'm in

it is a hell of a party when you have your own army running beer runs to Germany for you

It wont because I believe both of those are rented from Switzerland. I know border patrol is for certain.
I'm in for $500! 137 more...

(this would be cool, but also hell to arrange haha)

Better be for a full 24 hours - none of this 11AM checkout crap.
I'm in for 500$, Liechtenstein is just around the corner for me.
It must not come with legislative powers, because at $70K per night, that's only $25.55M a year. The GDP of Lichtenstein is 5.05B according to a quick google search (google for "lichetenstein gdp" and you get a result from google public data sources). I'll pay $25.55M for the right to tax the people of Lichtenstein for one year! Even if I only raise taxes 1%, that's a cool $25M profit!
collect 700 people using groupon like site and then it is just $100/night.This is an idea for a site if there are more deals like this
At that point, you may as well stay in a 700-suite hotel for your $100.
You might as well? Isn't that at least two orders of magnitude less awesome?
Warning: Minimum stay: 2 nights.

And no indoor fireplace? Pfft. I'll pass.

Do they kick out all the 34,000 people that live that for the time? What do you actually get?
I'd guess: a parade, meeting the mayor, key to city/country, some dedicated accommodation, organisational support in running a major event, etc. Think of it more as a novel way to host a massive launch event or corporate end-of-year party than actually running the country for a day.
It's actually a pretty good deal. The country sleeps 500 so that comes to about $140 per night. This is comparable to rates on Kayak for the cheapest 4 star hotels in nearby Zurich.
If those 500+ rooms are all included, that's only about $140 per night. Not free, but one hell of a (hacking) conference destination.
Let's get an HN super-meetup going. If everybody pitches in $100 it won't take too many members to rent out Liechtenstein for an all-HN users weekend!
I call dibs on controlling that army
You can't control chaos.
The next thing would be to rent the moon, or mars, or any other planet...
Somehow this feels like the uncanny valley of human reality. Along the lines of renting a family for the afternoon, or a puppy for a walk, only on a massive scale.

I once had a dream that I was the king of the city, and they marched in parade to honor my name. No wait, that was last weekend in Leichtenstein at SuperBlingFest2012.

Wouldn't it be cool to rent this in the name of Hacker News for 2-3 days? With 150 people, it's not that expensive.
...Just how far does this rental extend? Can I declare war? 'Cuz this kid from high school still owes me $50.
I wonder if Richard Branson will be listing his Necker Islands anytime soon ;-)
Double the regular price and say that all proceeds would to his Virgin Unite charity. You might actually stand a chance.