Airbnb and Uber are two darlings of disruption, adored by one segment of the population (their users) and despised by the people they disrupt.
If something goes wrong—a party breaks out, somebody gets robbed, the cops show up, someone slips and falls—it’s not the tenant, or some sharing-economy guru in Silicon Valley, who’s going to be held responsible. It will be the owner’s problem. That’s why at the first hint of Airbnb usage, Podziba explains, “I tell them to do what I did: Get surveillance cameras. Hire a private investigator. And do the necessary steps to get them out.”
Disruption frequently involves a short cut, finding a way to avoid paying the price that comes with the territory. Since the disrupted businesses are all bound to following the rules, the disrupting force has a clear advantage. Sometimes this can be good news, as an inefficient business model is turned on its head, forced to reinvent itself to be more efficient. Good for consumers, good for the economy.
But sometimes disruption creates a false economy. A disruptive force uses a short cut to dramatically improve service or cut costs, a short cut that is not viable in the long term. But in the short term, the disruptive force races through an industry, wreaking all sorts of havoc.
What sort of disruptive force does Uber and Airbnb bring to the table? The jury is still out.
In the BusinessWeek article, I notice it refers to a “tenant”. Is the tenant they refer to the AirBNB user, the person who sublet the apartment, or the owner of the building?
I had a little bit of a hard time following the article because of ambiguity of this nature, or at least my perception of ambiguity.
“Tenant” would refer to the person who rents from the landlord and is subletting their apartment to the AirBNB user (although I guess they’re also an AirBNB user by the metric.) Hope that clears it up.
It seems much of the difficulty is that the current laws place the onus (fines, sanctions, other externalities) on the owner rather than the tenant doing the subletting. Airbnb sounds like a neat service, but it has a great impact beyond just its users, and (improperly, IMNSHO) actively rejects responsibility for those effects.
“The second step is to work with landlords and co-op boards so they understand that this activity is beneficial.”
Beneficial to whom? The CEO of the company whose business model is dependent upon this? Surely. Occupants, owners or renters, who augment their income with un- or under-occupied residences? Probably. Other occupants who live in a building where strangers come and go at various frequencies? Not so much.
That makes sense. The lease or owner agreement should have a clause about said activities to make it clear, and many do.
I think there is definitely something disruptive about AirBNB. The problem I have with hotels is that they offer a ton of services that are useful for some people (especially those on business), but that I don’t particularly care for nor do I want to pay for (gyms, concierge, bellboys, rooms cleaned every day). AirBNB allows me to get a room at much lower rates without all of the overhead of a hotel room. I also like being able to rent a place with a kitchen.
It does seems like there are a lot of kinks to work out, however. Obviously, the city should be entitled to get its tax revenue. Also, I can imagine that there could be zoning restrictions about where or how often people are allowed to rent out their places.
I think that Uber is also disruptive, but for different reasons. My understanding of the taxi systems that are in place seem to be very inefficient and unfair. The profits from taxis seem to go disproportionately to the businesses that run them, and the poor taxi drivers seem to get too little. Most of the complaints about Uber seem to be related to the fact that they are disrupting an existing system, not that there is anything in particular wrong with the service they are offering.
Real disruption is when Apple makes a smartphone that everyone else tries to replicate or mimic. Shortcut disruption is when one company just copies that smartphone to jump ahead of the pack.