HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) - Walking into Kati and Will Holland’s home near Ritter Park is like visiting an old friend and stepping into a historic hotel at the same time. Built in 1917, the 5,000-square-foot house features cozy reading nooks, large gathering areas and a breezy patio. It has five bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and a keyless entry system. For Will and Kati, it was love at first sight - and a big step up from the apartment they’d been renting as newlyweds. For their friends, it was a potential business opportunity.
“As soon as we moved in, people were telling us we should open a bed-and-breakfast,” Will Holland said. But Will, director of resource development at United Way of the River Cities, and Kati, a nurse at Cabell Huntington Hospital, knew they didn’t have the time.
The couple had often traveled using Airbnb.com, a $25.5 billion home-sharing startup that connects people looking to rent their homes with people looking for accommodations, and it didn’t take long to come up with a plan to fill those empty bedrooms.
“Airbnb had been good to us as guests, and it dawned on us that we should try hosting,” Will Holland said. “At that point, there was only one other listing in Huntington.”
The Hollands listed their property on Airbnb in 2015 and have since hosted more than 100 guests, some on their way to other cities and others in town for weddings or job interviews. Long-term guests have included lawyers completing internships and doctors completing clinical rotations at the Marshall School of Medicine. When a room is occupied, the guest has the only key, and Will and Kati spend much of their time in the third-floor master suite.
“Everyone has their own space,” said Will Holland, although spending time getting to know their guests is almost always part of the experience.
“We had a guy from Japan who was biking across North America,” Will Holland said. “He called and said he was in Russell, Kentucky, and would be here in four or five hours. I said, ’Hey, you’re only 30 minutes away.’ He said, ’Oh, I’m not on a motorcycle. I’m on a bicycle.’ “
Showing off Huntington
Guests and hosts are reviewed on the site, so “everyone’s on their best behavior,” Will Holland said. “Other than some last-minute cancellations, no one has really caused any trouble. I think people who use Airbnb are pretty forward-thinking and easygoing in general.”
He said guests are welcome to the vegetable garden in the back yard, workout room and library. When guests want company, he’ll join them at a local restaurant or play trivia. It’s a lot of work - “It’s more cleaning toilets and washing sheets than you think it’s going to be,” he said - but worth it.
“The thing we’ve always loved about Airbnb-ing as guests is the same thing we love about being hosts,” Kati Holland said. “When you Airbnb, a local person is the one pointing you around and telling you what you should do and see. We really love showing off Huntington. It’s nice to get feedback on our favorite restaurants and find out that outsiders like them, too.”
The Hollands’ uncluttered decorating style makes it easy for guests to feel at home, rather than at someone else’s home. While some properties on home-sharing sites like Airbnb and VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner, where the emphasis is on entire-home rentals rather than shared spaces) have a hotel feel, others are a glimpse into the owner’s personality. And for many home-sharing participants, that’s part of the appeal.
Soraya Boukhemis, a singer-songwriter who works for her family’s rental business in Huntington, opens up her eclectic downtown apartment to guests using three home-sharing platforms: Airbnb, Roomorama and Housetrip.
She has rented to prospective Marshall students and medical students, as well as guests in town for a specific event. Like the Hollands, she has housed doctors during their clinical rotations at the medical school, many hailing from other countries, including Ireland, Pakistan, Egypt and Australia.
When her apartment is booked, Boukhemis packs up and stays with her parents, giving guests free reign of her one-bedroom apartment. She meets guests upon their arrival and answers occasional questions during their stay, but for the most part she gives them privacy. Although the three sites function similarly, she said, Airbnb has generated the most traffic for her since listing her apartment in 2014.
“The cool thing about Airbnb is that it’s easy to choose your price range and your level of privacy,” she said. “You can get a place to yourself, a private room or a shared room.”
Having used Airbnb as a guest since 2012, Boukhemis has tried all three options. She frequently travels to Nashville for her music career, staying wherever’s cheapest. In bigger cities like New York, she said, the home-sharing options are virtually endless.
“For me, price is the driving factor,” she said. “You can find a place for a great price that meets your needs and comes in way cheaper than a hotel. I’ve never had a bad experience.”
She said the beauty of home-sharing is that “anyone can join in.”
“You don’t have to have a special degree to open up your house and be gracious to someone,” she said.
Issues with home-sharing
However noble their intentions, home-sharing websites come with their share of problems from illegal listings and tax concerns to an array of other crimes. Homeowners have returned to evidence of theft, drug use and prostitution. Guests have been scammed by fraudulent hosts. Allegations of physical and sexual assault, though rare, do exist. More commonly, because homeowners can deny booking requests at their own discretion, it’s possible for a request to be denied based on age, race, nationality, gender or religion the very characteristics protected by civil rights laws. A 2015 Harvard Business School study found “widespread discrimination” by Airbnb hosts against potential guests with “distinctively African-American” names, and Airbnb is currently facing a lawsuit from 25-year-old Gregory Selden, a black man who claims he was denied accommodations by a host and then accepted by that same host when he made the request using a fake, white profile. On social media, the #Airbnbwhileblack hashtag details similar experiences.
Is it the beginning of the end for difficult-to-regulate home-sharing services? Not if Airbnb has anything to say about it. In a lawsuit against its hometown of San Francisco to block new rental regulations, Airbnb stated, “Instead of punishing Airbnb for publishing unlawful listings, the city could enforce its short-term rental law directly against hosts who violate it.” In other words, punishing Airbnb for unlawful hosts is like criminalizing eBay for deceitful sellers.
“Airbnb isn’t a hospitality company; it’s a tech company,” said Will Holland, pointing to other startups like Uber, Lyft and Taskrabbit, all peer-to-peer businesses in what’s known as the “sharing economy.” Still, he said, while home-sharing websites may have the technology figured out, they have a long way to go to prevent crime and foster better relationships between cities and their entrepreneurial homeowners.
Members of Huntington’s growing home-sharing community agree: The revenue is only part of the experience. The greatest benefit may be as simple as realizing what’s in your own back yard.
“Everyone should try looking at Huntington through the eyes of a tourist,” Boukhemis said. “It reveals some interesting finds. We have some really great stuff here.”
___
Information from: The Herald-Dispatch, https://www.herald-dispatch.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.