akhunt1002

Yeah — I mean all of the hosts that don't fit into this mold will be looking for a new home.

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

I think transaction is important because it's explicit, and people are far likelier to respond. Couchsurfing is free, so the incentive is low, but the community is the most important part of it. I think combining community and transaction is a huge opportunity (I'm also biased :))

You're totally right and this use case is important — friends. Most people would never list publicly. How often do you host friends?

Would love to see your place on Overnight. Our core focus is people who are open to hosting friends/members of their communities.

Way to level up! I actually think this combined with the new superhost incentives are a very well-considered, combination to elevate the overall quality of the platform overall.

The down side is: it seems like this may alienate new hosts by creating an (overwhelmingly) high bar for a listing. Not everyone is a semi-professional hotelier. How will that be balanced out?

Be careful not make would-be hosts feel too self-conscious to list their space. It's a fine line between building community and alienating it when curation bias turns into a core pillar of a company's identity.

I think discouraging new hosts by setting the bar (and company identity) so high is a net-negative for long-term community building. It makes total sense short-term, and it makes sense for an OTA like Booking. Long-term: it shoots the notion of home-sharing in the foot and without new hosts feeling welcome, a growing market can't sustain the demand.

Personally (I'm obviously biased lol), I'm obsessed with the notion that everyone is a host. Everyone would host someone, and it's a platforms job to help match those people to public listings, homes privately listed (networked via communities / friends), homes that have professional photos, homes that even have no photos (because if you're booking a friend's home, who cares). I'm not saying lower the standards, I'm saying change the frame; it's as a matching game threaded by community.