Hello hello,
As the Listening tour draws to a close, our final stop is Toronto. I’ve never been to Canada before and so this is a great way to end an amazing 12 days.
We arrived in Toronto airport at about 8pm on April 10th and the first thing I noticed is it’s COLD. 🙂
We then crammed ourselves into a taxis with our mountain of luggage (mainly Erin & Tim’s) and were welcomed i into the city with an impressive night scene of city lights.
Arriving at our different Airbnb's , I always get a little excited/nervous about walking up to the front door of my listing, mainly because I want to make sure I can follow the instructions and get in, and I don’t make a fool of myself in front of my host! I manage to get in and the hall way was nice and warm. Soon after I get welcomed by my lovely host, Eugenia. We chat for a while and I hear more about why she loves hosting and how she has hosted guests from all over the world. You really can see the joy she gets from hosting.
April 11th
After a great night sleep and a refreshing shower, I then made my way to the Airbnb Toronto office to meet with the team there. The Toronto office is probably the smallest I have visited on my trip, but the welcome was just as warm and friendly. Here is an image from the entrance (I particularly liked the Airbnb bicycle).
I also got to meet one of the most important members of the team...Potato. Sadly, Potato didn’t have time for a Community Spotlight (back to back meetings), maybe next time! 🙂
Later in the afternoon we head to the Toronto event, to meet with about 30 hosts.
We had a great Q&A session with Laura and hosts. The questions asked were on a range of topics including; categorization of listings, guest education and guest profile information. All popular topics here in the CC, so it’s great that we could have an open discussion about these areas together. Similarly to Rome and London, we then split up into three groups to focus on three key talking points; Product Feedback, Community and Hosts as partners. As we have moved through the different locations on the tour, it has been great to see the responses we have had in these focus sessions and just great to hear more on what hosts feel is important and what they would like to see more of.
As many of you may know, I had the amazing opportunity to meet fellow community members, @Alexandra316and @Lawrene0 . It was such a joy to meet them both and I was pleased they could ask important questions to Laura that they had on their mind, including a great one on gathering feedback from the community. We managed to capture the moment below, but along with meeting Gordon, Paul and Robin, it certainly was one of the highlights of the tour. Thank you so much Alexandra and Lawrene, it was incredible to meet you both.
April 12th
My final day on the tour and my last day in Canada. I checked out of my lovely private room and headed to the Airbnb office. With Laura, Erin, Tim and Louise all on their way home, I got to have one last catch up with Lawrene, before my evening flight. This time we met over a nice cup of tea, which gave us an opportunity to have a good chat about everything from the Community Center to kayaking. 🙂 It was just lovely. Plus, she gave me some handy travel advice on how to get to the airport. Lawrene, I took your advice and got the UP train.
I make it to the airport and I sit there surrounded by other travellers. At this point, the tiredness was starting to hit me, but as I start to think about where everyone around me is traveling to and from, I start to think back at the past 12 days and quite what an amazing journey this has been.
We have a few more posts to share from the tour, so this isn’t the end, please continue to keep an eye out for them. Thank you to everyone in Canada for welcoming us.
Thanks,
Lizzie
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Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.
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