Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…This was just market dislocation. But in the early days—when Airbnb’s were so much cheaper than hotels—part of it was market dislocation but I think part of it was this too. I could put up my house in San Francisco on the platform. I’ll make incremental money, my costs aren't that big. I’ll list it for $300 a night. Whereas, a hotel you’re like, I got to run this hotel. I think the ones that they notably don't have are cornered resource or switching costs. For consumers, it's very easy to switch as long as there's another economy and this is related to cornered resources. You would think their hosts would be the cornered resource, but for a host, it's actually very easy to become un-cornered and go list on multiple of these systems. I think that's going to be a thing that we see increasingly more and more over time. I think to some extent, the rating and review history is some lock-in there, not that much and less than it used to be. In the early days, when this was a new concept and people were like, I really need a lot of trust here to make this work. I think it was more powerful, but now, less than HomeAway, it’s fine.…

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