AirBnB… What’s Your Take on This? [POLL]

With the nice weather coming, people want to travel and get adventurous. People get jammed by hotel prices though. IN recent times though, AirBnb has allowed YOU to be the hotel.

Last summer, a friend of mine last summer got into the AirBnB thing. At first I was kinda shocked. "You're gonna let total strangers use your house?" I said. The concept seems like a normal practice to Europeaners as so many love to travel as part of daily life, but people overseas are a lot different than Americans. They are willing to travel light and live by the seat of their pants as part of the experience. Americans like comfort, piece of mind, breakfast buffets and ice machines. For those unaware of what AirBnB is, let me explain easy enough...

The basic jist; through the AirBnB website, you can locate people around the country and world really, who are willing to rent their homes, apartments, carriage houses, etc. to people like you who are sick of hotel prices and who might want more of a real life situation upon arrival. The flip side is that you can also rent your place to people looking for a different type of accommodation once they hit your neck of the woods.

AirBnB is the middle man so to speak so they maintain track records and reports on the people renting places and the people who rent places from people. So, if someone rents places from people and he or she trashes those places or steals from it - the people renting the place can report back to AirBnB so future home and apartment owners can watch out.

Basically, you or the people you connect with are the hotels. Which means if you're renting, YOU make the money! Cool right? But wait, they sleep in your bed. Use your kitchen, your shower, your BBQ, your remote control, your WiFi and hey lets be honest - they could use your underwear too should they choose to and if it's made available.

Personally, I can't do it. Sorry. I just don't want anyone near my stuff. Not my underwear or my records. I wouldn't be happy coming home and seeing a pile of my boxers in the hamper and my Roy Orbison collection or Metallica Garage Days Revisited vinyl missing. Sorry! I just don't trust most people these days and it's PEOPLE that make me not trust people! I don't leave my car unlocked when I go inside to pay for gas. I'm not at all an alarmist or a paranoid nut. People on the wide scale just haven't earned that kind of trust from me lately. So there's no way whatsoever I'm gonna let someone stay in my home with my stuff. Just freaks me out; someone I don't know from a hole in the wall is using my house the way I do and I can't be there?

Now the flip to my way of thinking is many people don't care and they don't have their walls jammed with A to Z vinyl and CD. So they don't worry about things as much. That's cool too. To each their own of course! Also, to those people's delight, renting your place can make you some good money. My friend was going out of town for a while so when she left, she rented her place for the week. She figured rather than it sitting there silent and empty, why not make some dollar dollar bills y'all. She did great! Needless to say you have to pay taxes on the money you make and AirBnB get their cut of course, but it's pretty small.

So, have you tried AirBnB at all? As a renter or traveler? Let us know below and if you have any stories to go along, go back to our FB page (or below) and let us know!