This was published 7 years ago
Ditch the house and rent your way around world
By Lee Tulloch
Do we need to own a house when we can stay in properties all over the world?Credit: iStock
Are you a collaborative consumer? If you've swapped your home or stayed in an Airbnb you most certainly are.
Rachel Botsman, author of What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the World, is the global authority on this subject – how the power of sharing and collaboration, enabled by digital technologies, has huge potential to change the way we live, work and consume. In fact, it already is, as anyone who has booked an Uber will know.
If you get a chance to hear Rachel speak or watch her presentation on TED.com, I highly recommend it. The articulate, London-born Australian resident, who teaches at Oxford and designed the world's first MBA course on the collaborative economy, spoke recently at the International Luxury Travel Market in Shanghai and I was lucky enough to be there. She's enthralling.
Rachel Botsman is a global authority on the power of sharing and collaboration.
In fact, I haven't yet stayed in an Airbnb, booked an Uber or swapped my home, although I'm up for it. I can see why these options are appealing – $US25 billion ($33 billion) in the case of Airbnb's market value. The vast Hilton group of hotels is worth only marginally more at $US27 billion ($36 billion). My friends use these services regularly and love them.
We're in the middle of a social revolution that has been gradual in many ways but also so radical it's sometimes difficult to get our heads around it. I've had some reluctance due to trust, especially with UberX.
But it's precisely this, a new approach to trust, that is changing the way we do business. Do you trust a driver who comes with no credentials? Do you trust the stranger who comes into your home? Do you trust that something you buy on an e-commerce site will actually arrive?
The genius of peer-to-peer trust is that both the person receiving and the person giving both feel a sense of responsibility. How do we sort out those who don't share our values? By a rating system. Reputation is currency and Uber drivers, eBay sellers and Airbnb guests alike work hard to gain and maintain the highest ratings. Those who don't are soon edged out of the economy.
Once you grasp this, you see the worth of an economic system that unlocks the value of underused assets, such as houses and cars. For instance, if you go on holiday, your house remains empty. But if you take advantage of its "idling capacity" and swap houses with a stranger through a sharing site such as Love Home Swap, you save the cost of accommodation on your travels, thus making your home work for you.
Similarly, if you have a car that's underused, you can share it through Car Next Door, or become an Uber driver.
Botsman and her family swap their Paddington house for an Oxford house for several months of the year. I have friends who swap their Paris apartment for a Sydney apartment for six months a year.
But wait, there's more. Taking this concept further is a global community called Roam (roam.co) where, for a weekly "rent" of $US500 ($670), you can share beautiful properties around the world. If you don't need a fixed address, this is a place for true luxe nomads.
We're starting to question what it means to own something. Do we need to own a house when we can stay in properties all over the world, or even own a CD when we can listen to it on Spotify?
There's a new way of thinking that values access over ownership. Rent the Runway allows you to share rather than own fabulous designer clothes. Eleven James allows you to borrow luxury watches for an annual membership fee. You can Borrow My Doggy if you, like me, travel too frequently for the responsibility of a full-time pet.
The collaborative economy gives consumers access to residences such as Francis Ford Coppola's home, and flexibility when you choose to be asset-light. It also creates a market for things that never had a market of their own, such as tree houses and igloos (very popular on Airbnb.)
Uber is a transport company that doesn't own any cars; Airbnb is an accommodation service without any real estate; Alibaba is a store without inventory. Think how different this is to the old status quo.
Botsman sees a strong upside in all this. "Online trust can make us more accountable in the real world," she says.
Lee Tulloch was a guest of ILTM
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