In general, we like to involve the city and city leaders in our announcement of coming to market, and it has been working really well. I know you have Community Managers all over the globe. Whats going on there . Airbnb goes to network effects. We are all over in we are already in 19 cities all over the world. We just provide the tools on line, and local residents throughout the world decide they want to be part of the movement and part of airbnb and list their homes on the site, and local travelers decide they want to go somewhere and look for those. The amazing thing is it is really driven by the global community. We just like to help that along by contributing to Community Events and the ups and educational experiences to help host become better hosts, and quite often, actually, we have events where the travelers who are in town can attend. One such event is happening this thursday. Inh t San Francisco have nominated their favorite destinations, experiences, local businesses, and no
In the country is here in San Francisco, the Bay Area Community exchange. Could start using that to mobilize volunteers, so i encourage you to check it out. Another thing to think about is public banking. It is not necessarily a different currency, but it would be a different way of handling money. For instance, san franciscans could do it. A good but the money instead of in wells fargo or whatever, a private commercial bank, into a bank that is owned by us, and that the interest goes into city treasury, and we extend credit to ourselves. Theres really innovative things that are happening, and that our public banking laws being lodged in a number of i think it is, like, 13 states right now. Very innovative things happening. In the back. There are a lot of assets you are sharing that are really great at the Grassroots Level and bottomup, but there are also things that are done the need to be shared such as Public Transit that cannot be done bottomup and have to be done top down. I wonde
Collaborative consumption parking pass or parking network. I know you have some thoughts for this on get around. Theres something to consider in that area as you have this network of people out running around doing these deliveries and working with Small Businesses. How can we make it easier for the Small Businesses to thrive while using a network like task rabbit . I would like to follow up and stress that we are eager not just to deal with the problems of ancient regulations but also help the city Work Together on opportunities. There are enormous opportunities that airbnb presents to the city. Tourism is one of the most important Economic Activities in San Francisco. Theres great concern by neighborhood groups that Economic Activity is not going to reach the further out neighborhoods in the city during the americas cup. We would love to work with the city family to encourage americas cup visitors and locals to go out and experience all that the city has to offer in the various neigh
better to have a grass roots than organized by the company. that touched on a really interesting thing. i was wondering how do cities what role do they play in your rollout plans, and how important is community management to the process? let me start with you, jessica. for us, we have chosen to launch city by city. we feel that is really important because it lets us take the time needed to build up a great community of people sharing cars. that lets us find great cars, educate the owners, educate the renters, and ensure there is the right balance and variety of cars. if you look on the site in san francisco, you will literally see cars all over the place. it is all over the bay area. you are seeing cars sharing happening in places it never had before. we worked with the city to see if there were any ways we could get out the word. we hope to work with existing programs or be added as an additional transportation solution. in general, we like to involve the city and ci
use technology in our cases, an online platform that actually lowers the barrier the barrier of entry so people across the social spectrum can engage. you do not need to have a second home in a fancy condo buildings in this city. you can have an extra count that you want to rent out, and you can find access to travelers from all over the world who also do not have the resources to spend money on a $200 hotel bill who want to say on your couch, and that is really democratizing travel, not just access to travel, but also access to the tourism economy that flourishes in the city. i just want to address the technology point really quickly. we try and emphasize the human aspect of this, whether it is on the website or whether it is through the iphone app. other people use a device that we built, that lets you share a car more conveniently by letting the richer unlock the car with their smartphone. even with that, we really try to connect the people who are sharing because