I'm going to Vancouver soon with my family; the first thing I did with my wife this week was pull up AirBNB (where is your ipad app, guys?) to check out what sort of deals we could get.
I'm not saying I wouldn't check hotel deals, but reading honest reviews from people who really stayed in each room, and sometimes getting to half off a hotel works great for me. They are definitely moving into 'high on my list' for travel, personal and business. I'm guessing I'm not alone here.
I've been out of the travel/hotel game for about 4 years now, but I worked in it on and off from ~'97 through to '07.
It's an industry ripe for a new player to do a Paypal style end run around the traditional banking/creditcard industry.
I don't know whether Airbnb are that player (I'm 100% sure pg and Fred are _much_ better judges of that then I am), but I'm also at least 99% sure that it _won't_ be any of the existing big players (Sabre, Gallileo, Pegasus, MyFideleo, Worldres were the large players I worked with) that revolutionise the hotel booking business.