I don’t keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason I don’t travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost.
The less you carry the more you will see, the less you spend the more you will experience.
We built a basic website, and Air Bed and Breakfast was born. Three lucky guests got to stay on a $20 airbed on the hardwood floor. But they loved it. And so did we. We took them on adventures around the city.
Airbnb is about the nexus of the online and offline to create the perfect customer experience.
When I learned about Airbnb, I was like, 'Wow, this is an amazing, new way to travel; it's about community, and there's a lot to figure out to clear the way,' so I was really drawn to that.
People don't use Airbnb overtly to trust people more. They use it because they want to get a better sense of the culture and to save money. A by-product was that they live in someone else's shoes.
What we've demonstrated is there's an immense appetite to travel more authentically and immerse yourself in culture... as opposed to having a commoditised experience.
I really admire Airbnb as a pioneer of the sharing economy and for building community. They've found an elegant way to help hosts make more money and for guests to have authentic experiences. It brings those people together in a unique way.
I think the key that makes Airbnb is the fact that we're a community, not just a series of commodities.
Airbnb is about travel.
The way you get to explore a city when you are on shoot is so different from when you are there as a tourist.
When we founded Airbnb in 2008, our dream was to help create a world where you could belong anywhere, and that vision has taken root in almost every country in the world.
I love out-of-the-way, rugged places. For me, holidays are about the experiences, and the people, and the memories, rather than sitting on a nice beach getting tanned. I try to plant myself where I am and embrace what is there in front of me.
There has been a real influence on young people, whose travel is experiential. For them, their values change when their experiences change; travel is like a university without walls.
Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.
