HN Explorer

Selling Airbnb host addresses to hotels and landlords

19 points by jamesJones ↗ HN
Am building a service that harvests Airbnb listings and identifies the address of apartments being rented out by hosts. I then want to package the information in a saas application allowing hotels to see Airbnb rentals around their hotel. This will give them the ability to see how big is the impact surrounding their hotels and an opportunity to act legally against the landlords and hopefully pressuring them to stop their tenant from further renting out their apartments. It can also help landlords by guiding them to terminate leases for those tenant or asking a cut of the revenue from their Airbnb rentals.

What do you think about me product HN? How do I go about pricing my product?

note: I am neither crawling or scraping Airbnb's listings, just connecting patterns pragmatically to identify hosts addresses.

37 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 85.1 ms ] thread
danso
> Am building a service that harvests Airbnb listings and identifies the address of apartments being rented out by hosts.

> note: I am neither crawling or scraping Airbnb's listings, just connecting patterns pragmatically to identify hosts addresses.

Could you clarify?

jamesJones
oops that's a typo. Am screen scraping some of the Host's basic information and then looking into other sites to find a pattern that identifies them. From there I look up their address.
tehwebguy
Are you doing it to make money, or to right an injustice you perceive? Or some other reason?
robotkilla
Why the fuck would you want to help corporations crush the small guy?
ffumarola
Airbnb - $20B* Hilton - $30B Marriott - $22B Choice (Holiday Inn, Best Western, etc) - $3.4B

* http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-01/airbnb-sai...

They aren't really the "small guy" anymore.

robotkilla
The Airbnb hosts are the small guys I was referring to. Ratting them out to their landlord? Selling their contact info to hotels? That's some dark shit and I hope it fails spectacularly.
Eric_WVGG
Though I have never tried it myself, I know numerous people who have done AirBnB "hosting." It has enabled them to afford trips and vacations they could otherwise never afford; their tenants have always been cool people who loved the experience and left the spaces in immaculate condition (I served as the "key man" many times).

Every AirBnB experience I've witnessed has been win=win; the absurdly unbelievably filthy rich landlords can go cry in their beds stuffed with money as far as I'm concerned.

akulbe
I'm an Airbnb host. Love it. It has changed our lives. This idea of the OP, it pisses me off, to no end.
mobiplayer
Well, but why those don't go out and buy a flat they can rent in AirBnB instead of sub-renting someone else's? Most rental contracts explicitly forbid sub-renting and I'm pretty sure these cool people don't pay taxes on the money they get from the short-term tenants.

This is a greeeeey area.

sergiotapia
If owned a house next to these rentals, I would be PISSED. I think OP has a good idea going.
giaour
I live in an apartment next door to an AirBnB in Manhattan. It seems to only get rented out for big, noisy parties.
schrodinger
I live in an apartment building in which one of the tenants is constantly renting the apartment out on airbnb. It means we've constantly got random people coming in and out of our building, partying, making a lot of noise and not caring what anyone else thinks, since they'll never see them again.

If airbnb had a policy where you could only rent out your apartment for say 3 weeks a year, I'd be all for it. i sympathize with someone renting out their place while they go on vacation to fund their trip. But instead it's abused to create essentially a hotel, that's a nuisance to neighbors and raises rents.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
wodenokoto
The small guys are already being pushed out of airBnB by professional that buy up apartments and rent them out full time.
akulbe
THIS. I am one of the "small guys" that something like this could harm.
dragonwriter
AirBnB is as much a corporation as any hotel is.

At least as many small guys depend on the hotel industry as depend on AirBnB.

pr0vitamin
I think you'll find this is against Airbnb's Terms of Service on a few fronts, so be wary of that. "...you may not and you agree that you will not: - use manual or automated software, devices, scripts, robots or other means or processes to access, “scrape,” “crawl” or “spider” any web pages or other services contained in the Site, Application, Services or Collective Content;"

There's quite a few other clauses that you'll be breaching, so it might pay to have a read: https://www.airbnb.co.nz/terms

jamesJones
Every major site has such clause. It's a matter of how careful and aware your scripts are.
pr0vitamin
I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, nor that you can't. Personally I think it's a terrible idea and bordering on evil, but that's neither here nor there.

Just be aware that if people find out what you're doing, it probably won't be looked at very fondly - legally or morally.

_delirium
Considering that most AirBnB listings are themselves breaching something like a ToS, only usually a more enforceable one (such as a tenant agreement or condo deed conditions), I don't think pointing to a website terms of service being potentially violated gives much of a high ground in itself. It also seems like a pretty unlikely combination of positions: someone who takes an "ignore the rules / pro-disruption" position on illegal rentals, but is hardcore pro-enforcement when it comes to a ToS? I'd think almost everyone who agrees with the first position also takes an EFF-style anti-enforcement position on the second one.
pr0vitamin
I'm not advocating illegal rentals, or Airbnb, nor am I "hardcore pro-enforcement" of a ToS. I merely advised the OP about the ToS, so he can make sure he's covering himself.
jamesJones
morally? Seriously. Step back a little and look at it from a landlords perspective. Airbnb can facilitate lease violations and that's okay, but helping Landlords identify lease violations is morally wrong?
pr0vitamin
I don't disagree that the situation sucks for landlords if their tenant breaches the tenancy agreement and uses Airbnb as a tool for sub-letting. This of course also places the tenant in breach of Airbnb's TOS too.

But you're now suggesting that this injustice to landlords justifies harvesting Airbnb's user's personal information and then selling it? That's morally and legally questionable any way you look at it.

lgsilver
Seriously? the information isn't that personal if it's publicly listed on AirBnB...
akulbe
You're painting with a VERY wide brush. Your idea, in action, would be damaging to those on Airbnb who do business within the bounds of the law.

Just because some folks might violate the terms of their {lease, rental agreement} does not mean ALL of them do. Your actions would hurt the honest hosts, as well as those in violation of their rental terms.

Don't be a schmuck. Seriously. You are not the moral police for those renters.

DISCLAIMER: I am an Airbnb host. I violate no rental terms, as I own my home.

brudgers
Another potential client category for such business intelligence is municipal planning departments. Around the country they are all scrambling to adjust to the changes in use.
rrich
I wonder if there is a use for an SaaS that spits out the license plate number for Uber drivers. Uh Oh, I think this time I may have stated something that deserves being banned. Evil is as evil does.
_delirium
If you had a large-scale set of data of AirBnB listings that was reasonably accurate, that could be valuable to many people, for all sorts of reasons.

I'm slightly skeptical of some of your specific suggested markets, though. I would guess landlords are not likely to be a big market. The apartment and condo buildings that want to shut down AirBnB in their building already have a fairly easy time looking through nearby listings and identifying the ones in their building. The ones who aren't paying enough attention to do that will probably not be paying enough attention to find out that they can buy a list from you, either, unless you do a lot of marketing. And governments so far are going more the route of just trying to force AirBnB to hand over listings directly, instead of buying from a third party.

somberi
If obtained with consent, I for one will find this service valuable and will be willing to pay for it. All the best.
akulbe
I hope I'm not the only one here who thinks this is incredibly ANTI-entrepreneurial. I'll even go so far as to say this would be a really JERKY and EVIL thing to do.

Are you a hotel owner who has a grudge against the little guy who is trying to make some extra income?

What's your beef with Airbnb hosts?

And just because "every major site has such [sic] clause" doesn't mean you looking for the loophole is ethical.

As someone who hosts on Airbnb, the thought of this kind of action that would very likely harm MORE than those intended... it's evil.

I hope it falls flat.

dragonwriter
> I hope I'm not the only one here who thinks this is incredibly ANTI-entrepreneurial.

How is it anti-entrepreneurial? Seems like a perfectly entrepreneurial response to the market opportunity created by overlap of the AirBnB vs. hotel conflict with the AirBnB vs. existing law conflict.

> I'll even go so far as to say this would be a really JERKY and EVIL thing to do.

Some people say that about the way that AirBnB and AirBnB hosts have openly flouted laws governing short-term rentals. Any disruptive entrepreneurial activity is going to "jerky and evil" from someone's perspective.

And, maybe it is jerky and evil -- but that's not a category opposed to entrepreneurship. At best, its an orthogonal concern.

DanBC
Do you also link to local legislation and local enforcement agencies?
[dead] DanBC
Do you also link to local legislation and local enforcement agencies?
andrewkitchell
Don't love the application, but the tech is interesting.

I work in the space - would be fun to talk further.