5Q: Aaron Zifkin on where Airbnb is going next

Before Aaron Zifkin became Airbnb’s first country manager for Canada he remembers using the service to find a sweet spot to stay in Bali.

Anyone slightly familiar with surf culture, knows the idyllic Indonesian island as a surfing mecca where glassy waves crunch against candy-coloured reefs. But for those who’ve been, it’s touristy as hell with westernized comforts crammed amongst what would otherwise be passingly pristine temples.

Zifkin however, wanted to surf outside of the riff-raff, where there didn’t seem to be any hotels. So he booked a spot using Airbnb near the surf break.

“We had the most mesmerizing experience,” recalls Zifkin. “We pulled up and had this gorgeous place with a pool right in the front foyer and I think we were paying $80 to $90 a night for a spot on the beach where I could literally carry my surfboard down.”

There’s something about the way he tells his story that makes you want to look into Bali accommodations right away.

Zifkin isn’t being surreptitious, he genuinely enjoyed the experience but it’s also clear he knows the effect of dangling a travel story like a carrot.

It’s the same contagious effect that allowed the online short-term accommodation booking service to spread to 800,000 properties in 190 countries globally.

That’s 99 per cent of the world. The closest second would be Intercontinental Hotel Group or Starwood, which have a footprint in 52 per cent of the world.

Last year alone, 10 million guests rented through the platform translating into more than $250 million in revenue.

But Airbnb is big business and Zifkin knows it.

We took a moment to chat about good ol’ Canadian hospitality, the unlikely chance of renting to a psycho and growing beyond short-term accommodations.

Congrats on the new role, what does it entail?

It’s the most overwhelming and amazing experience I’ve had in my life – it’s just unreal. The job is pretty broad. First and foremost it’s about engaging with our community here in Canada and igniting what has organically been one of our most successful markets around the world.

On that note, how big is Airbnb’s footprint in Canada?

We have over 19,000 listings across the country and we've had over one million trips booked by Canadians on Airbnb around the world. It's in our DNA to be hospitable. We're an adventurous country and we love travel and love to host so I think Canada just really aligns with the core values of Airbnb and the sharing economy as a whole.

Any area in Canada you’re particularly stressed about or see as a tough market to crack?

We’re pretty evenly distributed across the country with big urban centers like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver having more.

What about places like Quebec where you need a permit for renting out a place for less than 31 days or other spots where hotels pay tourism taxes?

Airbnb operates in an emerging space and we're working very closely with local regulators as well as regulators around the world to create sensible tax laws and fair laws around the hotel tax.

The tourism industry in particular seems more than a bit annoyed that Airbnb hosts get to skirt these taxes while they have to pay. Doesn’t that get to you?

We are also really keen to pay these taxes but the reality is we operate in 190 countries and 35,000 cities around the world and taxes always vary not only by country but municipalities. So there’s a lot of conversations that have to happen which we are engaged in full right now across the country. It’s certainly not something that we’re circumventing but the problem with a lot of these laws is that they predate the Internet.

How do the pricier markets affect first time users of the service?

It really depends on the city, the location, the time of year and the kind of space that you’re looking for. 78 per cent of our listings are outside of the traditional hotel district.

Do you see similar surge pricing in the rental biz around events or emergencies like the price-jacking endemic that hit Uber in Toronto during last years storm?

People generally like the idea of helping out the Airbnb community and the sharing economy as a whole and so they tend to be pretty fair around these types of events. Over 82 percent of the listings you see on our website are people’s principal homes. These are ordinary people that really like to host people from around the world and want to be accommodating.

What about when a host gets a bad seed like in Palm Spring early this year when the squatter refused to leave the Airbnb he was staying in?

For starters, I think we need to put that incident in perspective. Last night for example we had 420,000 people stay in each other’s homes in 120 different countries and nothing transpired. We've also had 20 million people take a trip on Airbnb since we started so when you do hear these types of stories like the squatters it really is like 0.0001 percent of the trips that happen.

How do you protect renters and hosts from being swindled or tricked into staying in a place that isn’t quite what they wanted?

Our review system is really the secret sauce of what our platform is all about. A host reviews a guest and guest reviews a host. One of those measures is accuracy so when someone lists a place, we ensure that the images actually reflect the appearance. We have an army of five thousand photographers around the world that we send to our listings at no charge to our host to take professional photographs. Not a lot of people know that.

Recently, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky hinted at going beyond just renting accommodations to building out an end-to-end experience. Any idea what that will look like?

We see the business being more involved in the trip experience. We're testing things out like food services in the home and the ability for our hosts to play more of a role with their guests like taking them on different tours of the city or pointing them to different restaurants. There’s also interest groups. We see a lot of people now looking to stay with hosts who have similar interests so maybe the host is a musician with extra instruments for you to play or something like the New York Marathon where you’ve got marathon runners staying with other runners. We’re testing out a few things but it will evolve over time.