‘One guy wanted to rent my room for a few hours to meet a friend…’ What I learnt from putting my home on Airbnb
By Megan Baynes, cost of living specialist
It’s 9pm on a Tuesday and a stranger from Shanghai is cooking in my kitchen. I can’t speak Chinese, and she can’t speak much English, so we both had to mime when she asked me where I kept the knives and the salt.
I hadn’t met this woman until 24 hours earlier, but she is staying in my home for another four days – and it’s all thanks to an advert on the London Underground.
“Turn your spare room into cash using Airbnb!” it promised. Well, I am lucky enough to have a spare room, and I never seem to have enough cash (thanks to a litany of rising bills and wanting the occasional holiday), so could this be the answer?
I forced my husband to spend a weekend clearing out our top floor room and soon I was photographing away, artfully framing different corners of the space to try and show it off (not helped by my cat, who refused to get out of the way).
After downloading the app and signing up, I was paired with an Airbnb Superhost who gave tips and offered support as I made my way to my first booking. He advised that instead of offering an introductory discount, as the app encouraged, the best way to drum up business was to look up the price of local listings and then undercut them. Once I had built up a few reviews (I was…
