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Ask HN: Are the insides of Airbnb listings being commercialized?

27 points by jasonbarone ↗ HN
I recently stayed with Airbnb and had a fun conversation with the host regarding his past experiences. Does anyone know, or has anyone seen listings being used to promote products or services?

I guess the examples would be product placement, bathroom samples, posters, painted wall murals, magnets of real estate agents, fashion, etc.

I love Airbnb but my gut says this is inevitable and I'm curious if anyone has seen this happening yet...

19 comments

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nate
Related: I had a Lyft ride recently where the driver the entire ride was trying to sell me health and life insurance. And he had clearly done this before and it was all part of his ride. He had a stack of cards right there on his dash ready with his pitch.
seanmccann
I'm sure this is against the terms of service for drivers. I recently asked a Lyft driver about in car ads that's what he told me. The reason we were talking about it was because he had his car wrapped with a Desk.com ad. He said he got $100 to put it on until the campaign expires.
nate
Yeah, and if it's not, it should be. It was a very uncomfortable ride. I take Lyft because it's so much friendlier and cleaner than cabs, but that ride had the opposite effect.

On another tangent though, being a Lyft driver might be be a great place for some folks trying to get consumer feedback on startup ideas. I was approached by three guys yesterday in front of a cafe asking if they could ask me 3 questions about a lean startup idea. Unfortunately my wife and I were on a walk with our newborn, and trying just to get home before another newborn eruption.

But that car ride would be a great place to engage in conversation about startup ideas and problems the passengers experience without making it a sales pitch.

AVTizzle
Where do you live? Both these scenarios sound like cringeworthy scenes from Silicon Valley (the HBO version).
nate
Chicago. :) The Lyft scenario was definitely cringeworthy. The lean startup questions outside the cafe weren't. I think it was good hustle and effort. They weren't pushy at all and handled "no, need to get baby back home" very well. They could probably change a few things to get a better reply rate on the street, and I wanted to help, it was just bad timing.
27182818284
The Lean Startup / "Get out of the building" mantra is in the Midwest too. I've seen people at coffee shops doing this. Heck, I've even done it in the early days, and it was super awkward and I'm glad it is getting parodied on Silicon Valley.
jasonbarone
Wow that's interesting I haven't seen that yet.
bichiliad
Funny enough, a lot of drivers I've had were in the insurance industry. Don't think any of them tried to sell me anything, though.
timhargis
This happened to me with Uber X. The driver was in an MLM company and was pitching me on it. He was a nice guy and I gave him 5 stars but I thought it was out of line to be pitching network marketing to your passengers, and he said that was the main reason he drove for Uber was to meet people.
GuiA
Eep. Hats off to you; my first instinct would have been to tell him that I'm not paying him to give me a sales pitch and that if he doesn't stop immediately, I'm getting out of the car and leaving him a 1 star rating.
nilsimsa
Why did you give him 5 stars if he was pitching a MLM company to you. That is pretty terrible service.
charlesdm
Not direct promotion for products or services, but I rented an apt once from a luxury real estate developer. He told about some of the projects he was working on. Pretty impressive. We've actually become good friends.
jasonbarone
I guess if someone had experience, or was trained well, they could potentially be selling without coming across as selling. Like you rent from a real estate agent and he's sort of running through the typical questions in a conversational manner...

For instance, I just stayed with someone who manages music events and does promotion for bands. If I needed someone for those services in that area, that's my go-to guy because he came off knowledgeable and friendly.

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nichodges
I was messaged by a local business owner, asking if I'd be interested in putting his product in my listing photos, mentioning the business in the listing, and also in my "welcome to the apartment" notes for visitors.

Next time I was in his shop I told him I really don't rent the place out enough for it to be worthwhile, but asked him how the response from other people he messaged was. He said one woman was really angry in her message back, and a few others took him up on the offer. To be honest the ROI for him wouldn't be great, especially given many of the customers from AirBnB won't be returning.

If it is against AirBnB's terms and they take issue with it I can only imagine the irony-laden field day the media would have.

mcintyre1994
This is actually an interesting idea and not necessarily bad for the experience. If a place had certain demographics Sony or Microsoft could offer a free new console around/before release. Special feature for host to offer, bonus for guest, seems like a solid path to a sale for the company. It seems that could possibly work for other things too, and it'd surely be more interesting to advertisers than a typical hotel.

I guess the big thing is visitors probably aren't returning so local businesses aren't going to get much success- but I can see interesting opportunities for less location constrained companies. What if Netflix gave a free account to a chunk of places with certain demographics?