It works well when you have lots of capital to expand and fight lawsuits.
It works well when you have lots of capital to expand and fight lawsuits.
Identifying industries where people begrudgingly accept the status quo because they need the service but hate everything about how it's provided is your opportunity.
- Uber is an end-run around existing taxi monopolies (imo a good thing), plus I believe taking advantage of people’s inability to think longer term about depreciation on their vehicle when calculating earnings.
- crypto is an end-run around securities regulations. It’s not a payment system it’s an investment scam that would be illegal if used with other financial instruments
- a vast swath of big tech is profitable on the back of not providing customer service or recourse of any kind and just automating business without regard for edge cases (not necessarily regulation but formerly a requirement for a business to participate in society)
Was this the case though?
Airbnb and hotels.com and the likes have been pushing the hotels towards a race to the bottom but actual hotels are not bad in my experience. Small quasi-hotels with ordinary flats that run like a estate get rich quick scheme are though.
Other than mandatory fees not displayed in the advertised daily rate, I have never heard of people hating hotels.
Airbnb listings also have mandatory fees not displayed in their advertised daily rate.
My understanding is that Airbnb took off because it was cheaper than hotels (however in general, that may not be the case anymore).
I think *people hate costs more than they hate services* (which is how airlines like Spirit and Ryanair have managed to do business).
"A principle for taking advantage of thresholds has to include a test to ensure the game is worth playing. Here's one that does: if you come across something that's mediocre yet still popular, it could be a good idea to replace it. For example, if a company makes a product that people dislike yet still buy, then presumably they'd buy a better alternative if you made one."
Hotels/Booking.com are more of a fuck you to travel agents and/or opaque or fragmented hotel pricing, since they don't provide an alternative to the hotel itself.
If an airbnb and a hotel choose to race to the bottom, perhaps they deserve each other and the rest of us deserve a way to avoid them? (Or use them if it came to that...)
I think Airbnb and hotels.com do not push people to the bottom - they offer a minimal bar or set of features to look for quality / price ratio. Are they perfect? No. But they make discovery much easier.