Whether you’re going on a vacation or a business trip, staying with real people is almost always better than staying in a hotel. Airbnb is a website that helps you find real people to stay with.

With Airbnb,  you can find reasonably-priced accomodations that range from a spare bedroom to an entire apartment or cabin.  You can also effectively open your very own bed and breakfast in less than 30 minutes, by listing an extra room in your house (or even a couch.)

Airbnb includes social networking features like user profiles and friends, and connects with your Facebook account (if you have one). The emphasis of the site is as much on the personalities of the people that use it (both guests and hosts) as it is on the rooms themselves.  This allows you to find hosts (or guests) that you are likely to connect with when you meet in person.

Nervous about staying in the spare bedroom of someone you’ve never met? Airbnb allows guests to review their hosts,  so you can check and make sure that other people have had good experiences. Of course, hosts can also review guests, so if you leave a room looking like something out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you will probably have a hard time getting other hosts to rent to you in the future.

Once you’ve found a place, as long as the host chooses to accept your reservation, you can pay for the room with your credit card or Paypal. The site is easy to use, and it’s free to book a room.  Airbnb takes a small part of the room fee-the rest goes to the host.

Airbnb is a neat idea, and should be useful for anyone who travels frequently and likes meeting new people.

What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments!

Our Rating of Airbnb

Tags: Travel

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