SYNOPSIS

Name: Sarang soni

AO64 SY BBA LLB

Topic: A study on travel and finances.

Introduction

Airbnb, a San Francisco-based online market place which pioneered the concept of renting
homes and apartments for travellers, is doubling their home listings in India each year. At
present, around 35,000 homes in India are listed on its platform. Though alternative stays or
non-hotel accommodations in India currently occupies a small portion of the entire Indian
hospitality market, it is likely to touch $3 billion by 2020, according to a July 2017 report by
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google. In 1999, Casey Fenton scored a cheap ticket to
Iceland, but needed a place to stay. He sent an e-mail to more than 1,500 students in Reykjavik
asking for a place to crash--even on someone's couch. After spending a weekend immersed in
the culture of the area, Fenton walked away with disdain for the typical sanitized tourist
experience--and an idea for a new nonprofit. He invited former colleagues Daniel Hoffer and
Sebastien LeTuan from Fuxito Worldwide, a venture-backed international soccer website, and
friend Leonardo Silveira to form CouchSurfing. The San Francisco-based organization was
designed to provide a platform for people to connect all over the world, fostering more
affordable travel, not to mention more immersive cultural experiences, by encouraging users
to provide and benefit from free in-home lodging. The companies are now big sharks in the
travel industry and have opened gates to millions of travellers across the world but with this
huge business to handle also comes the added management of finances.

Research Questions
 How is the working of Airbnb’s business model and the finances involved in it? How the
company managed its finances despite looking over every aspect possible to comfort its target
audience?
 How design helps cross culture business?
 How does Couchsurfing act as a hospitality exchange medium?
 Research Problem
Everybody loves a bargain. So how about 15 percent off on your next New York City hotel
stay. Sound good? Well, it's easy: just use Airbnb. That 15 percent is a round figure, of course,
not an exact number. It basically represents the hotel tax rate (14.75 percent) in the city. When
you stay at an actual hotel, you're charged this tax. But if you stay at an Airbnb, you don't have
to pay it. That's one reason the "sharing economy" seems cheaper than a traditional hotel. But
those savings come with a price. For one thing, cities such as New York depend on hotel tax
revenue. It helps fund the police agencies that protect visitors. It helps pay to repair the roads
and subways those visitors travel on. And these days, we're not talking about a few missing tax
dollars here and there. Airbnb is no plucky start-up anymore, a company struggling to just get
by in the gig economy. It's worth more than $30 billion, about the same as Marriott
International and more than twice as valuable as Hilton Worldwide Holdings. Airbnb could
afford to pay its fair share; it just doesn't want to. These deals would supposedly allow the
company to pay taxes on the rooms rented over its platform. However, Airbnb turns out to be
less than reliable in paying. The CouchSurfing service is plagued by problems that most people
are perhaps not aware of. These problems range from defrauding and scamming users, illegal
behavior, gross violations of privacy, a complete lack of any real appeals or dispute resolution
process and censorship. Many of the members were so frustrated that the OpenCouchSurfing
was started as a result. A plea for an open and transparent organization without all of the
secrecy and deception that plagues the current incarnation of CouchSurfing. Also interesting
is a small list of people stating why they refuse to volunteer for CouchSurfing.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis of my study are:

H1. There is a brief difference between the concept of Airbnb and Couchsurfing.
H2. A special attention is necessary with regards to the finances involved in running of these
companies and involvement of globalization in its running.

Research Methodology

The present study is based on the collection of data from secondary sources. Secondary data is
obtained mainly from the digital platform, published articles and mainly my research also comes from
the reviews stated by the travellers on various platforms.
 Review of Literature
 A case study on Airbnb on how design helps cross culture business.
 The Airbnb Profit Blueprint: Learn how I made $5000+ a month with Airbnb.
 Couchsurfing cosmopolitanisms: Can Tourism make a better world?

Tentative Chapterization
 Origin of Airbnb and Couchsurfing in the travel and tourism industry.
 Working and finances of the comapies.
 Issues regarding tax and other concerns on how Airbnb managed its finances despite serving
on each and every possible traveller friendly comfort.
 Conclusion and siuggestion.