One Christmas season a few years ago, my grown daughter, with an expensive round-trip airline ticket to Italy in hand, unexpectedly found her plan for lodgings falling through.
Turning to her dad for help, he reassured her, "Give me 30 minutes and I'll find you something."
He signed on to his computer and logged on to Airbnb.
"Airbnb? What's that?" I asked.
At the time, the "sharing economy" -- an umbrella term used to describe using online booking services to do anything ranging from catching a ride with an independent Uber "taxi" driver to renting a vacation condominium from its owner -- was as foreign as the trip my daughter was about to take.
Now Airbnb offers lodgings in more than 34,000 cities in 191 countries, according to its website, airbnb.com. To date more than 60 million bookings have been made at more than 2 million listings of well-reviewed properties.
Founded in 2008 in San Francisco by Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb lists places to stay as unique as the people who own them -- from a grown child's former bedroom and a lighthouse on the East Coast to a renovated barn out West.
Overseas, lodgers can book a castle (more than 1,400 of them have been listed) for a week or a villa for a month.
Airbnb's offerings in Arkansas range from one room for one guest for $25 a night to entire houses for eight at several hundred dollars a night.
A recent check of the website showed Northwest Arkansas as a listings hotbed, with the Fayetteville and Rogers areas offering 300-plus locations costing an average of $158 a night, followed by Siloam Springs with 291 rentals ($152 average night's stay).
The next most popular location in Arkansas appears to be Hot Springs, with 159 listings at an average night's stay of $170 (a loft on Bathhouse Row costs $115 a night), followed by Bella Vista, with 146 rentals that average $156. Eureka Springs has 136 listings offered with an average rent of $170.
Meanwhile, 114 hosts in Little Rock (ranging from a condo in the historic Lafayette Hotel and a cozy mother-in-law's quarters behind a Hillcrest bungalow to a West Little Rock patio home) average $82 per night.
TESTING THE WATERS
Stephanie Harris, 45, and her husband, Jason Files, 48, both lawyers, have been renting out a "Small studio in the heart of SoMA" in their downtown Little Rock house via Airbnb since late April.
"We've been using it ourselves as travelers for years," Harris says of Airbnb. The couple, who live on the main floor of their home in the South Main Street (SoMa) area, have three other apartments they lease to law students or students in the Clinton School of Public Service.
"This apartment was a little smaller than the others and had been empty for a while and we decided to just give it a try and see how it went," she says. "So we furnished it, made it look pretty, and put it on the site."
"Our experience has been great so far," she says. Since late April the couple have booked the apartment 11 times to travelers of all ages with one six-week rental. The apartment was almost completely booked in July. Their renters have included a Fayetteville law student in town to
apply for a clerk position, vacationers traveling cross-country, a father and son from California and a lady from Memphis taking a weekend trip.
Setting their price was a learning experience. "Initially we listed it for $85 a night," she says, "but now it's $50 a night. Once you start adding things like a $30 cleaning fee and Airbnb fees, it can add up pretty quickly and we wanted to keep it low enough to be a bargain. Otherwise, why not just stay at a hotel?"
Airbnb charges the property owners and guests about $2 for each booking.
So far, "everyone's been real nice," she says. "I imagine eventually we'll have someone complain about something, and we'll just have to deal with it, but we haven't yet."
THE FINE PRINT
On its site, Airbnb includes this notice -- "Additional fees may apply and taxes may be added." Those could be the cleaning fees some hosts add, but they also could be local sales taxes collected by Airbnb during booking.
In 2014, Airbnb began collecting and remitting hotel and other tourism-related taxes in San Francisco and Portland, Ore., and the service currently collects similar taxes in more than 200 jurisdictions around the world, Airbnb spokesman Crystal Davis said in a news release. Since beginning to collect the taxes, Airbnb has collected more than $110 million.
The service collects taxes in 10 states, but not in Arkansas.
There are those who hope that will change. "We're trying to go down that path," says Gretchen Hall, president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, which collects a 4 percent hospitality tax from guests staying in hotels.
"Nationally, the conversation is that this is the same as leasing a hotel room at the Doubletree or Marriott and that it should fall under those same regulations taxwise, because they are running a business out of their homes," Hall says. The bureau's regulations state, she says, that those renting out space for more than 30 days -- an extended stay -- don't fall under the city's 4 percent Advertising and Promotion hospitality or lodging tax but any stay shorter than 30 days does.
As for zoning regulations in Little Rock, city attorney Tom Carpenter says there are currently no regulations in place regarding Airbnb-style in-home lodging rentals.
ON THE BEATEN PATH?
Thanks to companies such as Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt Transport Services and tourist draws like the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Fayetteville/Rogers/Springdale area is popular with the sharing community.
In Rogers, Ginny and Terry Meek see high demand for their listings.
Listed as "Quiet Convenient Country Setting," each of two guest rooms goes for $55 a night.
Both in their mid-60s, they were introduced to Airbnb while visiting their son in Lake Placid, N.Y. "We stayed with this lovely host in her extra bedroom, and it was nothing fancy, but it was very convenient and very reasonable," Ginny Meek says.
As a former foster family, they are used to having extra people in their home. "We just enjoy people, and I told my husband this might be kind of fun; maybe we won't have to deal with behavior problems like we did with the foster kids," she says, laughing.
A lot of the Meeks' guests are associated with Wal-Mart, including new employees who haven't yet secured housing or vendors. Their home is also close to the Crystal Bridges museum.
"We had one retired professor and his wife who were here helping his parents in Bella Vista transition to assisted living, a woman from France whose daughter is with UA's international program, a man from India, a vendor from China, and then we had two gals from India, graduates of the University of Texas, who were coming to work at Wal-Mart.
"They arrived at our home -- Uber brought them -- with their suitcases, and they stayed with us for about three weeks. We had a wonderful time learning more about their culture."
Meek suggests those wishing to list their property on Airbnb become well acquainted with the website.
Its security checks can be frustrating, but they serve a purpose, she says.
"Airbnb offers wonderful tips to help hosts become better and after a certain number of positive reviews, you become a 'Superhost'," she says. The Meeks recently achieved that designation.
For those who wish to achieve Superhost status, she has suggestions. "It's really good to always write the reviews," she says, adding that hosts and guests can also do private reviews or messages between each other as well.
"And we always make a point to greet our guests," she says. Her semiretired husband, who likes to restore classic cars, is usually around.
Meek serves her guests a continental breakfast, usually homemade strawberry or zucchini bread with coffee and juice. On the weekends, her husband likes to cook pancakes, and guests are invited to join in.
"Some decline, and with others, a half-hour breakfast turns into visiting with them for several hours," says Meek, who also leaves granola bars and bottled water in the guests' rooms. The rooms don't have refrigerators or microwaves, but guests can use the couple's refrigerator.
LANDLORD NO MORE
Donna Skulman Loyd used to rent her circa 1882 property in Little Rock's Quapaw Quarter in the traditional way -- until Airbnb and other online options arrived.
For two years she has listed the 1,475-square-foot Queen Anne carriage house on Airbnb, HomeAway and VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) for $125 a night, $750 a week or $1,800 ($60 a night) for a month. She adds a $35 cleaning fee.
The location, just blocks off Interstate 630 and minutes from the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital, makes her property popular. It can accommodate four and offers two bedrooms, two bathrooms and two beds. She doesn't serve breakfast, but the house has a fully functional kitchen with pots, pans, a microwave, full stove, refrigerator, washer and dryer.
She used to rent the house unfurnished, with the renter paying utilities, for $775 a month; and she rented it furnished for $1,500 a month.
Through the new arrangement, her carriage house is occupied only half the time but she and her husband are earning twice as much.
"Even the cost of paying the utilities is factored in, so it's been a win-win situation," she says. Loyd says she pays both state and federal income taxes on her rental receipts.
"Airbnb is wonderful because they vet the people staying," Loyd says.
"And the same thing goes with us; they can see us, and look at our reviews," Loyd says.
She began renting her property with Airbnb in July 2014; a few months later, she also signed up with HomeAway, which also owns VRBO.
"If Airbnb became better known, I'd drop HomeAway in a heartbeat," Loyd says.
But she has had only one bad experience so far.
"I had somebody who stayed here for a couple of weeks and when she packed up all her stuff, she also took my comforter," Loyd says. "Other than that, people have been very nice. Some will even take out the trash and strip the bed, so I can't complain. They have been a lot better than the full-time renters I've had."
HomeStyle on 08/13/2016