Airbed & breakfast, anyone?
CHEAP SLEEPS | New Web site an alternative to pricey, scarce hotel rooms
With thousands of card-carrying Democrats descending on Denver this week, good luck finding a hotel room in the Mile High City.
But for $30 a night, Denver librarian John H. is happy to let you crash on a single bed in the basement of his home, where the cleanliness level is self-described "frat house."
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
A spare room in Dan W.'s suburban pad will set you back $25. Dan will even donate that money to Barack Obama's campaign.
These are a couple of the 700-plus Denver area lodging options posted on the new Web site Airbedandbreakfast.com.
"Now, with the Internet and an airbed, anyone can become an innkeeper," said the site's co-founder, Brian Chesky.
AirBedAndBreakfast builds on what classified ad-style sites like Craigslist have been doing for years. But it's aimed specifically at travelers -- especially those looking to save some cash by sleeping on something as modest as a stranger's airbed. Most listings are for accommodations costing less than $100 a night.
Anyone can post their place -- along with a picture and short profile -- for free. Guests reserve and pay for their lodging on the site, which charges a 5 percent to 12 percent commission. Most listings include helpful nuggets about the potential hosts, like whether they're smokers or early risers. Both parties can e-chat in advance to make sure it's a good fit, and guests can write reviews about the places they've stayed.
Chesky, an industrial designer by training, got the idea for AirBedAndBreakfast last autumn after moving to pricey San Francisco. A big design conference was coming to town and hotel rooms were scarce. A flurry of postings from people looking for lodging leads started popping up on the conference's Web site.
Chesky and his roommate had some extra space in their living room. They had an airbed. And they could put together a decent enough breakfast.
"A light bulb went off in our heads," Chesky, 26, said.
They threw together a Web site offering to share their place for a minimal price. "We ended up having three people stay with us," he said, including "a 45-year-old father of five."
Things started growing from there. When the popular South by Southwest music festival came to Texas earlier this year, they snagged more than 30 listings from Austinites willing to rent out spare rooms or couch space. Chesky used the service himself to stay with a doctoral candidate.
Chesky and co-founders Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk are hoping to capitalize on mega-events like this week's Democratic National Convention, which has put bodies in the beds of just about all of the city's 42,000 hotel rooms, according to the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The trio recently revamped their site, launching a bigger and better version last month. It lists places to stay in 248 cities spread throughout 31 countries. One of these cities is Chicago, where nine people were posting their pads as of last week for $35 to $280 a night.
Edward Kiszenia has a small Northwest Side studio close to the Blue Line that he lets tourists use for $80 a night, or $100 for two people. He's had guests from New York, Mexico City, and most recently, London, through Craigslist. He figured he'd widen his reach by putting a listing on AirBedAndBreakfast as well.
"It's a great concept," said Kiszenia, who's selective about his potential guests.
"A lot of times people call and say there's five of us and we're going to a Cubs game," he said. "My space is really cute and nice, so I'm a little picky about who I let stay there."
Kiszenia likes playing concierge, helping people navigate the L or steering them to the best eateries.
It's this kind of personal, insider knowledge that appeals to people like Devi Yorty, 30, a University of Chicago graduate who used AirBedAndBreakfast to find a place to stay when she traveled to San Francisco earlier this month for the marathon.
Yorty, who's now an attorney in Colorado, didn't feel like shelling out big bucks for a hotel. And she worried about not getting a good night's sleep if she found a place through Couchsurfing.com, a popular site among younger travelers looking for a free couch to crash on.
"Instead, I got the best of both worlds," Yorty said.
She had a comfortable night's sleep on the "huge couch" of a computer programmer who told her exactly where to go to carbo-load before the race.
"It's a great way to meet people when you travel," she said. "It's cheaper. And you see a city in a completely different way."