The behemoth online company has taken a form similar to the hotel industry it initially positioned itself against.
Kyle Chayka has a theory: writing for the Verge in 2016, he laments the homogenisation of Airbnb spaces across the globe, each property a facsimile of another despite no one overtly dictating any visual standards to follow.
Chayka has interviewed the German co-founder of Third Wave, a strategy consultancy based in Berlin. Igor Schwartzmann, the co-founder, often turns to another app, Foursquare, for recommendations during his travels, but he has been noticing something odd over the past few years: "Every coffee place looks the same."
Chayka quotes Schwartzmann: “Digital platforms like Foursquare are producing ‘a harmonisation of tastes’ across the world, Schwarzmann says. ‘It creates you going to the same place all over again.’”
The same thing that is happening with Foursquare is happening with Airbnb too, Chayka says. He offers the neologism “AirSpace” to define “the realm of coffee shops, bars, startup offices and co-live / work spaces that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go: a profusion of symbols of comfort and quality, at least to a certain connoisseurial mindset.”
AirSpace contains, based on Chayka’s observations, “Minimalist furniture. Reclaimed wood. Industrial lighting. Cortados. Fast internet.”
Chayka says AirSpace properties allow travellers the illusion of being in the same location as their point of origin, no matter where you are in the world. “Changing places can be as painless as reloading a website. You might not even realise you’re not where you started,” he writes.
Chayka also quotes legendary architect Rem Koolhas whose 1995 book S, M, L, XL contains the “prophetic” essay “The Generic City”: "Is the contemporary city like the contemporary airport—‘all the same’?" he asks. "What if this seemingly accidental—and usually regretted—homogenization were an intentional process, a conscious movement away from difference toward similarity?"
Airbnb seems to be aware of and responding to the criticism, it seems, since it has been about six years since Chayka penned his piece and times have changed.
Currently, Airbnb offerings comprise OMG!, a group of residences that seem to be out of this world (signified by a little UFO sign at the top of the menu), as well as more traditional offerings such as beach houses, cabins, bed and breakfast places and iconic cities. No more is the tagline “belong anywhere” visible on the Airbnb splash page.
Chayka writes that he is, in fact, fond of the AirSpace aesthetic, which he says he finds “tasteful, clean, modern”. Yet he is also disturbed because “It’s hard to identify with something so empty at its core.”
Chayka says our options are limited when we are faced with the rise of AirSpace. He writes: “The first is finding ‘the advantages of blankness,’ as Koolhaas writes, becoming connoisseurs of ‘the colour variations in the fluorescent lighting of an office building just before sunset, the subtleties of the slightly different whites of an illuminated sign at night.’”
He also suggests that people seek out the truly local rather than the pseudo-authentic homogenised Airbnb experience: “a simple personal choice to become more invested in the local than the mobile — to opt for the flawed community bed & breakfast rather than the temporary, immaculate apartment. Seeking out difference is important, particularly when technology makes it so easy to avoid doing so.”
Chayka ends his essay ominously, warning people against accepting a deceptively universal yet reassuring aesthetic offered by Airbnb’s sterile spaces: “Once you take the place of the people who live there, you can head out to their favourite coffee shops, or workspaces, which will be instantly recognizable because they look just like the apartment that you’re living in.
“You will probably enjoy it. You might think, ‘This is nice, I am comfortable.’ And then you can move on to the next one, only a click away.”
Social media is young.
Social media raises questions.
Social media is not satisfied with an answer.
Social media looks at the big picture.
Social media is interested in every detail.
social media is curious.
Social media is free.
Social media is irreplaceable.
But never irrelevant.
Social media is you.
(With input from news agency language)
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