Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Airbnb Streamlines Booking Process for Last-Minute Travel

The average reservation on Airbnb is made a month in advance, and completing a booking can take up to eight days.

So Airbnb has created an alternative booking service for last-minute travel that it calls Match, where users teach the system their preferences and send out the same booking inquiry to multiple hosts, and Airbnb manages the replies. The company says this process should be about three times faster than making a normal reservation.

Match is designed for last-minute travel, and Airbnb tells me it will recommend the tool to users who are looking to book in five days or less, and those who have had a booking request declined, ignored or cancelled. But as a traveler, I think it sounds like a better system in general. Match can be accessed directly at www.airbnb.com/match.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”