Apartment rental service Airbnb has confirmed salespeople made unsolicited approaches to property owners on classified listings service Craigslist.
An unknown number of salespeople contracted to the company, but said to be working remotely, used Craigslist to attract new customers to Airbnb by pretending to be ordinary punters talking up the benefits of the service.
The tactic came to light in a blog post by Dave Gooden explaining how he created a number of anonymous accounts on Craigslist and was subsequently approached by a number individuals raving about Airbnb and urging him to list his property with the site.
At no point did the individuals identify themselves as employees or contractors of Airbnb. Gooden’s suspicions were raised when he received identical approaches each time.
Airbnb, one of the most talked about travel startups for years, has now admitted that contractors used the tactic to find new property owners, although it has today come out strongly against the process after claiming it has only recently come to its attention.
An official says:
“This is not a tactic we condone or endorse, and it is our policy to forbid such actions.”
Its own investigation has confirmed that no automated process or data harvesting was used but it has no indication as to how widespread the tactic became.
“We did have remote sales people that we contracted to acquire listings through person-to-person sales, but their efforts were largely ineffective.”
Acknowledging the existence of the controversial (“black hat”, says Gooden) marketing tactic comes as the spotlight has beamed even brighter on Airbnb in recent weeks.
The company is rumoured (officials consistent with “no comments” all week) to be negotiating a mammoth $100 million+ funding round, a figure which some say would value the business at an eye-watering $1 billion.
Airbnb does not publish the number of properties featured on the service but has confirmed today that it currently has around 110,000 listed – around half of those on rival rental service HomeAway.
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About Kevin May
Dave’s writeup is interesting, but would hardly paint it in the black hat light he is — and he does run a competing business. Yes the floosies should have announced themselves as spruiking for Airbnb, but I’d put this at about the same level as competitors bidding on one another’s keywords – ie preferable if it didn’t happen but as it does, yawn.
Reminds me a lot of how a certain flight meta search engine ended up with a ‘most downloaded’ iphone app.
I’m not necessarily buying the “rogue” explanation. Notice that Airbnb says it had contracted salespeople engaged “to acquire listings through person-to-person sales…”
I mean, what were they contracted to do? Ring people’s doorbells?
Ya… that’s complete bs. They absolutely knew about — and encouraged — this behavior. Craigslist should launch a clone and then sue them under CAN SPAM.
Do you blame them? Gotta use whats at your disposal!
I don’t believe the roque sales team story for a second. Remote sales people do not take it upon themselves (all at the same time) to create a process to send hundreds of thousands (or more) emails. This is bulls*t to make the story go away.
But don’t hold your breath if you expect anyone to care. No one cares because they’re making tons of money.
Is that what it takes to succeed? As a vacation rental owner, I hated their services. Very pushy and monitored my correspondance with potential renters to make sure I wasn’t using any services but theirs.
One billion for that piece of crap? LMAO
@Stuart It’s fraud, deception for gain, and is not even close to using competitor’s keywords. It should be illegal.
Unfortunately it’s a common theme amongst many high growth startups, using fraudulent but technically legal strategies (e.g. fake listings, astroturf and deceptive marketing) to acquire mindshare quickly at the distributed expense of deceived customers and other more legitimate businesses.
@Chris How exactly is it fraudulent? I mean I used to get the JHV knocking at my door promising all sorts of stuff, I didn’t ask who they were propping for (Just sent em packing) but same principle nah? If the punter doesn’t ask who you’re speaking for …
And just to clarify my last point I’m not suggesting AirBnb is the Second Coming…
Solid journalism. Nicely done.
I’m with Dennis. I’m not buying the explanation.
Who cares, Airbnb is an awesome service and why not tell others about it. I do. Craigslist is doing pretty well and so I’m sure they didn’t feel a thing.
Who cares? They used available data to approach growing a potential business. If they didn’t “harvest ” and build a database, they should have. Not identifying is a little astroturfish, but c’mon. Others would say it was a slick approach.
And AirBNB is *so* much better than CL.
Nothing to see here, except a mountain being made from a molehill.