I'll agree with the previous post that renting a room or a flat on airbnb is a terrible experience. People really have crazy expectations and you need to be a professional hotel to handle it.

I'm a firm believer that most hosts will stop renting after a few guests. The turnover must be high, only covered by the new supply of hosts following the hype. It will dry up eventually and mostly professional hotels will remain.

I felt the same way about eBay back in the day. I quickly came to the conclusion that there were very few items I wanted to get rid of that were worth the hassle. The last time I had some camera equipment to get rid of I just sold it to Amazon. I'm sure I could have gotten more $$ through other channels but it was so hassle-free that it was worth it to me.

I actually have bad reasonably good experiences selling random stuff around the house on eBay. I also thought it had been overtaken by professional sellers, especially when bidding is basically no longer a thing on eBay anymore, but I set up 7 day auctions for a dozen items I wanted to get rid of (books, computer accessories, old games, etc) and all but one sold without much hassle.

I'm guessing the dollar amounts involved for the sorts of things you mention would be less than I could be bothered with. I pretty much decided that less than $50-$100 was about my floor where I would consider eBay.

What do you think would make this better for people who don't fit the profile of a semi-professional hotelier?