San Francisco earlier introduced a legislation targeted at short term rentals. The law finalised two weeks back requires Airbnb to verify that the hosts from San Francisco listing on Airbnb have registered with the city and the company will face penalty of USD 1000 per day on failing to comply. According to the regulators, it was crucial to combat the housing crisis in the city. However, the new law, claims the opponents, conflicts with federal legislation as it is holding the website accountable for the posts created by users.

The campaign claimed that the registration process has got multiple flaws and sought to change the same. Any San Francisco resident is required to provide multiple documents, register for a short term rental business licence, file quarterly reports detailing out length of stays and file inventory of any household items used in order to be taxed. Through the campaign, Airbnb demanded for a simplified online application process, grace period for new hosts to get registered and flexibility for hosts who are renting out for less than 14 nights a year among other things.

The law is scheduled to go into effect on August 1, 2016 but the compliance has been low so far. Taking a step ahead from the campaign, Airbnb has filed suit to block the law from going into effect. In a blog post titled “An update for our community in San Francisco”, Airbnb has highlighted how it has helped people pay the high costs of living by enabling them to share their space and helped the city by providing accommodation during major events.

“Instead of fixing the process, the Board of Supervisors recently passed a hastily-crafted proposal requiring Airbnb to remove all unregistered hosts. This legislation ignores the reality that the system is not working and this new approach will harm thousands of everyday San Francisco residents who depend on Airbnb. It also violates federal law.” the post says announcing the suit.

With the cumbersome registration process, hosts are opting to skip the process and the law puts Airbnb on the line to ensure the hosts register else the company faces fine. That is why Airbnb argues that instead of punishing the platform for the listings, law enforcement should deal with the hosts directly. According to them, removing the listings would severely disrupt their business and damage their reputation. The key objective of regulators here is to weed out hosts that are only renting out the apartments on platforms like Airbnb and taking the property off housing market however the approach is being heavily criticised in the tech community.

San Francisco isn’t the only region where Airbnb is facing challenges. The P2P rental platform faced a setback only a while back when New York state legislature passed a bill to make it illegal for apartment owners to advertise apartments for rentals having a span less than 30 days with heavy fines for offenders. The bill was strongly opposed by the tech community calling it anti-tech and ignorant.

The prime challenge with P2P rental services like Uber and Airbnb arise because despite being online businesses, they are dealing with physical entities. The intersection of the two often puts them in a tough spot with the regulators as they are often dealt with like conventional providers and not an exchange platform. Uber is still finding a middle ground  with governments across multiple geographies, Airbnb has a similar story. This conflict between regulators and P2P platforms is likely to continue as they reach new geographies and affect the local businesses in ways.

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Peer-to-peer platforms allow travellers to break out of the envelope and experience the local culture of their destination. They add the personal element to the experience of travel and as more people gain confidence in such services, new P2P platforms are coming up with innovative ideas to cater to travellers. Sam the Local is one startup that is driving the P2P trend in Hong Kong. We spoke with Maggie Lau, Co-Founder of Sam the Local. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

Tell us a little about yourself and Sam the Local.

We are two Californians who are passionate about all that Hong Kong has to offer. We have been here for four years, and we’re still discovering new things every day!

Maggie Lau and Anita Chan, Founders of Sam the Local

At the beginning of 2015, we launched Sam the Local, a peer-to-peer platform that connects people to Locals for customized, interest-driven activities and experiences in Hong Kong. Each one of our Outings are private, and there are already over 50 Locals on the platform that customers can book. After the booking confirmation with the customer’s chosen Local, the Local will create a customized itinerary with the customer’s specific preferences and interests in mind. That’s why you won’t see any what we call “pre-packaged” and “cookie cutter” experiences on our platform. After finalizing these customized itineraries, the Local will take the customer on it and share their stories and experiences with them along the way for a unique and fully-immersive experience.

So how did it start?

Anita, my co-founder, and I separately moved to Hong Kong at the end of 2011 because of our love for the city’s energy and dynamism. After moving there, we explored different parts of Hong Kong and realized the depth this city has to offer. We wanted to share it with everyone.

Additionally, we had the opportunity to travel around Asia after moving to Hong Kong, and we were always lucky enough to have a local friend show us around in every city we visited. We loved traveling this way because we didn’t have to plan anything, and our local friend would always know the best things to bring us to. Then we thought, “what if you didn’t have a local friend?”

From there, Sam the Local was born.

What segment of travellers are using Sam the Local?

Initially our assumption was that millennial travellers would be our target market, but after running for a little bit we’ve actually learned that it’s people who are between the ages of 30-55 that make up the majority of our bookings. Additionally, we’ve discovered that over half of our bookings came from people living in Hong Kong. For our visiting customers, they’ve mostly been from North America and Europe. For our customers who reside in Hong Kong, they’re mostly from the expatriate community who originate from Europe and Australia.

In addition to serving consumers, we’ve also had quite a few corporate clients that range from MNCs to airlines to 4 and 5-star hotels.

What sort of traction are you getting currently?

On the supply side, we already have over 50 Locals that customers can book on the platform, and our pipeline has over 300 applicants. Because we vet and verify all of our Locals with a two-step screening process to ensure quality, we will be working through this pipeline in the next couple of months.

On the demand side, we ended 2015 with a bang. Our month-on-month revenue growth from November to December was over 320%. The average month-on-month revenue growth for the last three months in 2015 was just under 150% per month.

We’re excited to continue this momentum into 2016.

How is Sam the Local different from other P2P platforms?

We are people-focused – We believe that it’s not just about the destination, but the people that you go with and their stories that really make your experiences unique and memorable. This is why you’ll notice that our platform emphasizes the Locals’ profiles instead of the experiences they can take you on. This is also why there are no cookie cutter, pre-packaged experiences on our platform. Every one of our customers are unique and their experiences should be one-of-a-kind.

All of the Locals on our platform go through a two-step vetting and verification process so that we can ensure the quality of the experience that our customers yet. We strongly believe in quality over quantity.

Another thing we focus on is building a community for our Locals to share their insight and knowledge with one another. After all, one of the biggest cited reasons of why our Locals want to join our platform is to meet other people. We want to foster this and encourage everyone to share their stories.

Lastly, we emphasize on having a large selection of various Locals for our customers to book in all of the cities that we operate in instead of expanding to many cities at once and only having a few Locals to choose from in each city. Again, quality over quantity.

What are your future plans?

In the near future, we are going to focus on growing our B2B side and close our seed round. Our longer term goals are to expand to other cities in Asia and then to the rest of the world.

For more information or to book a unique experience, you can visit www.SamtheLocal.com or check out their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The post Sam the Local allows travellers to experience Hong Kong with a local friend appeared first on TravHQ.

From a mattress in an apartment to a $20 billion company, Airbnb has grown at a crazy pace and is termed as one of the biggest disruptors in travel industry. It is world’s largest accommodation company and is still experiencing strong growth all across the globe. On October 20, during the WIT Conference, Julian Persaud, Regional Director, APAC, Airbnb shared his views on the role of Asia in growth of Airbnb. Here are some pointers we picked from ‘Coffee with Julian Persaud’.

Julian sharing Airbnb’s plans for Asian market

Key to success in China

Commenting on the growth the company in China, he said that one of the many reasons Airbnb picked up in China is because the modern Chinese travellers have a different state of mind. The trend has shifted from group travellers to independent travellers. Another contributor is the welcoming nature of hosts as most of them are older and don’t travel much anymore but appreciate young people coming to them and sharing their stories.

Data science and advertising

Persaud comes with years of experience of working with Google but when asked about the preferable advertising option, he stated that there is no bias towards Google. The marketing strategy includes a mix of different platforms and they favour whatever works best for them. Data science plays a very important role in the whole process to understand the impact of each channel. He also emphasised on the importance of innovative offline activities like they did in Korea by associating with Korean popstar G-dragon. Such activities drive word of mouth marketing and help a brand gain traction.

Learning from hotels

It was very obvious that the point will come up and Airbnb will be compared to the hotels. According to Persaud, Airbnb isn’t a substitute for hotels. Airbnb is more about experiences than just being a provider for accommodation. People prefer hotels for short stays and Airbnb for relatively longer stays but the line between the two is blurred.

Talking about Airbnb for Business, he said that 10% of the users are business travellers and most of them are people who have to stay for weeks. He said that they have a lot to learn from the hotels, especially the large hotel chains, on maintaining quality and being a better host.

Building around Airbnb

During the conversation, he talked about many startups that have been built around Airbnb and similar businesses. There are startups that will help control the appliances remotely to reduce electricity wastage or clear the wardrobe for guests. Persaud expressed that it is great to see such innovations and while Airbnb isn’t investing in these startups, things might change in future.

Experimenting for Indian market

Talking about the plans for Indian market, he said that Airbnb has a strong focus on India. Airbnb surely sees the local players like Stayzilla and TG Stays as strong competition but Julian said that competition is good as it prepares the market and they are still experimenting in India.

You can find all our other stories from TravelRave here.

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