Often, when visiting a city for a conference, popular event, or during that area’s peak travel season, it is difficult to find a vacant hotel room. Even if one is fortunate enough to find hotel accommodations the price may be outrageous. Airbnb is a profitable, fast-growing, online marketplace giving everyday people the ability to monetize their most valuable asset: the extra space in their home or apartment.

AirBnB lets you search for accommodations in your city of choice. People with a spare room put up listings complete with photographs, amenities, and ratings from other AirBnB users. You can currently find a room in 77 countries and 1102 cities. Mix in a little flexibility on your part and you’ll be hard pressed to find metropolitan areas short a room or two.

After signing up and creating a member profile, one can search for accommodations or post a listing. A traveler can search by country, city, room type, or price. To lower your risk, choose a place that features an abundance of information, such as a full profile of the host, a thorough description of the property and, most important, a sizable number of guest reviews. Send out queries before booking to be sure the host has availability; the online calendar is helpful but not always up to date. The host has up to 32 hours to respond, though more than half reply within four hours, according to Airbnb.

The creator of the website, Nathan Blecharczyk, described Airbnb.com as “The Ebay for accommodations” because there is such a variety of listings and at diverse price points.

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Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 5:10 pm | by Kur-nia-one |