Surface Magazine just republished this 2016 interview with Arne Sorenson. Sorenson was CEO of Marriott, but sadly passed away this week after a battle with pancreatic cancer. One of the questions he was asked in the interview was about the rise of Airbnb. This is… Read More
Life will feel a lot more normal by spring/summer (Q2). By this time, the various vaccines should be broadly available (at least in the developed world). This is something that never happened during the Spanish Flu. From what I have read, the Spanish Flu lasted… Read More
Airbnb’s IPO documents recently went public. Not surprisingly, their business as a travel company has been heavily impacted by COVID-19. Last year, the platform saw 326.9 million nights and experiences booked, with 251.1 million being booked in the first nine months of 2019. This year,… Read More
I’ve never been to Whitefish, Montana, but it is on my list (mostly to try out the snowboarding). I have also been following a home in Whitefish that was designed and built by Alex Strohl and Andrea Dabene called the Nooq. I like to periodically… Read More
I recently discovered and subscribed to Packy McCormick’s “Not Boring” newsletter. So far it’s quite good, and so here I am mentioning it to you all on the blog. In his latest newsletter, he makes the case for why Airbnb and Zillow — the two… Read More
Wired recently published a long read called, “I stumbled across a huge Airbnb scam that’s taking over London.” Apparently the people who do these sorts of things on the platform (things that are both illegal and questionable) call it “systemizing.” This is the process of… Read More
I have a copy of Monocle’s Guide to Hotels, Inns and Hideaways sitting on my desk and I love flipping through it. There’s something magical about a great hotel. Part of that magic is intrinsic — it’s just a good hotel. And part of it… Read More
This past weekend I was in a condo building here in Toronto with large signs in the elevator saying, “No Short-Term Rentals Including Airbnb Are Permitted. Trespassers Will be Prosecuted.” It was the first time I had seen anything like this, but it immediately signaled… Read More
The word on the street is that Sonder — the marketplace for vacation rentals and competitor to Airbnb — is close to finalizing a $200 million investment round that would value the company at $1 billion. I first wrote about Sonder back in 2016 after… Read More
Fred Wilson made an interesting remark in his recent post about the current “IPO bonanza” that is taking place in the tech space. He is, of course, talking about the recent IPO of Lyft, the recent S-1 filings from Pinterest and others, and the expected… Read More
