editor's note
I CAN'T BELIEVE
Mary Hughes, Editor-in-Chief
arly this year in January I got a call regarding a stay at our bed and breakfast (yes I too make beds and make one heck of a breakfast), the caller was
asking for a regular stay two nights a week for several weeks while in the area teaching at a local college.
He explained that he just wanted a bed to lay his head on, nothing fancy, the bare bones so to speak.
I explained we had just one deluxe suite apartment style B&B that was 600 square feet with its own entrance, private living room and kitchenette etc. The price is $225 a night. So ’bare bones’ and probably he was looking around $60/night really wasn’t something we offered. He asked if I knew of anywhere else where he could find what he was looking for and I said “No I am sorry”, as I knew the two other bed and breakfasts in town wouldn’t be offering anything close to what he wanted either. So I said the unthinkable, I said, “ Why don’t you look online on www.Airbnb.com?” He asked me “What is that?” So I explained that is a website for all a sorts of accommodation rentals ranging from someone’s extra room in their home to a full-blown apartment or house rentals. There were prices of all a sorts he could look at and that he would probably have better luck there.
He thanked me profoundly on the phone and wished me a good day. I hung up thinking, ‘Wow I can’t believe I did that with so much resistance to Airbnb.com that people list almost anything to rent out these days.’ But after a while I thought I still think that is the same as Craig’s List or Kijiji.ca or even Facebook for that matter. It’s all about buyer beware and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. But this girl wasn’t going to giveaway the biz for next-to-nothing, we deserved to be appreciated for all our efforts and paid for it too!
E
WHAT I DID