Why Do I Prefer SteemBnB vs. AirBnb

The new house sharing in Steemit

Few days ago a new idea shared by @chicosonico became trending topic within the traveler steemians community: SteemBnB was born!

You can read the original post here.

As he describes:

SteemBnb is “the Airbnb for Steemians who travel the world, and Steemians who have a home to share.”

I find it amazing that we are all part of these great ideas that are changing the world so fast!

I’ve been using Airbnb several times during my trips. And I find it extremely useful and convenient most of the times, compared to the experience you get by staying at a hotel.

The possibility to live for few days as the locals do, and having the chance to get involved within the community is something I believe every traveler loves. 

From the other side, the property owners earn some extra coins by sharing their space at home. Something that has helped many people paying their monthly rent and survive during the economical global crisis.

However, the huge development of Airbnb in most of the big cities around the globe, have brought also some negative consequences for the locals.

Living in a very touristic city as Barcelona, keep me having mixed feelings about it. 

There is a reality behind the usage of Airbnb platform that we cannot deny. 

What at the beginning started as a new form of collaborative economy, ends up in many cases in speculation activities.

There is a growing number of investors that are buying flats and houses to then rent them as flats exclusively for tourists (short term stays) with the objective of getting a return on investment. And Airbnb makes it very easy for these speculators to play and convert this activity into an ilegal business. 

Anyone living in a big city knows what this mean: gentrification. 

Locals are forced to leave their neighborhoods due to the increase of rental prices, and the difficulty to co-live with certain disturbing behaviors.

Local retail businesses are replaced by tourism orientated, that together with the fact that the locals leave their neighborhood, are destroying the own identity of the place, which is in the first place, the attractive for the visitors to visit. That’s the contradiction.

This has another side effect, and it’s the fact that the local town halls, in the intention of controlling this situation, are generally acting in two different directions: 

• Whenever possible, are trying to set a max square meter price for long term rentals, and providing some tax benefits to those owners that follow the rules. But some legal aspects here are making it difficult for them to actually accomplish this objective.
• Punish with expensive fines those owners using platforms like Airbnb as the channel for their ilegal rental businesses.

So how do I think SteemBnB can be different?

First of all, I want to make clear that the tourism problems I listed above are intrinsic to the tourism policies each city promotes and have been promoting for years, and not only to the usage of Airbnb. 

I live in a country that has relied too much, in the tourism as their main source of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) since the 60s. And we are now paying the consequences. 

When I see all those big hotel chains built everywhere across the mediterranean coast, fisherman villages converted into party towns, or complete urban areas built in the Balearic Islands that are like ghosts towns during winter, I feel depressed. 

Airbnb may have speed up the process by increasing the offer of places to stay, nothing else. Should we need to blame someone, blame the governments.

On the other side, the irruption of the Low Cost airlines and in the recent years, Airbnb and similar collaborative economy startups, are just making it easier to anyone, no matter their financial situation, to find a cheap way to visit a foreign country. That should be a good thing! Isn’t it?

So what is missing? To me, it’s defined in one word: RESPECT. 

1. Blockchain allows to avoid the middle man. 

The community rules will not depend on the particular interests of a corporation that handles and charges any commission. 

SteemBnB is really a peer-to-peer agreement!

2. SteemBnB helps growing our community.

We all want to grow within Steemit, and networking is the most effective way of doing it! Activities like local Meetups and the SteemFest are just two examples of how the community tries to break the virtual barrier to get to know each other.

With SteemBnB, there is an opportunity to meet other steemians and potentially come up with new projects and ideas that will bring value to Steemit.

3. No Credit Card needed to operate, just Steems!

Since you don't need a credit card to operate, we are opening the door to many people around the globe to have access to the home sharing experience!! Imagine how much we can contribute to develop the economy of these countries and what a travel experience that would be!

4. Due to its decentralized nature, the community sets the rules!

And this is very important as somehow addresses directly the issues I pointed above with regards gentrification.

One of the things that I was more surprised about when joining Steemit, was that the community itself ensures the proper functioning of the platform, through general rules that we must all respect.

From the verification process to the non plagiarism, spam or abuse, these rules are followed by the community, and in case one deviate from them, anyone can easily flag and report with consequences.

This means that the community relies on these rules to ensure the good functioning.

When thinking again on the fact that ilegal tourism flats are posted within Airbnb, and no one can do anything to remove them from there except Airbnb, here I see a big advantage with SteemBnB. 

Airbnb decides not to remove any of these profiles since they are also making business out of this irregular activities. 

While SteemBnB users, should be able to flag any suspicious profile.

I would suggest @chicosonico to establish some general rules as well here to ensure SteemBnB works smoothly, and I volunteer to help with this if needed!

I leave you as well a TedTalk from Don Tapscott about how Blockchain is changing money and business.