New to the forum? Introduce yourself here!

[Marjo0]

**We now have a new introduction discussion, to view click here. We look forward to hearing from you. This topic is closed to new replies. Thank you **

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the Airbnb Community Center. This thread is for introducing yourself to your fellow Airbnb forum members, as well as welcoming and saying hi to newcomers in return, in order to make everyone feel like they belong.

I'm Marjo, and I lead the Community Center staff team who will manage this online forum on a daily basis. You will see me posting here sometimes, along with our other English community staff member @Lizzie, who has just joined as well and will be introducing herself in this thread too - Lizzie will be managing the English community full-time once we launch the forum.

Here's a few additional facts about me:

1. My favourite city is San Francisco. I spent hours and hours of time there on Google street view for years, until I actually got to visit the city in person recently. Such a friendly and colourful place!
2. I have 2 cats which probably makes me a bit of a (crazy) cat lady.
3. I'm originally from Helsinki, Finland.

How about you, any fun facts you want to share? 🙂

I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you so feel free to reply to this thread and say hello!

[Tomo0]

Hi everyone, 

My name is Tomo and like Miyuki, 

I'm a host in Japan. 

Hope to see you guys in AO and maybe at my yoga and meditaiton class. 🙂

[Deborah0]

Hi Bronwyn, hi Miyuki and Tomo!  

Wow, I love it that we can now post video in our posts! Miyuki, yours is wonderful, the video of Japan.  And how great that we can actually click to make that video a full screen one!  This is a fantastic new feature, I think folks will really love it. 

Now, if I could just figure out how to post images ....I see that for posting video one gives a URL link, but when I click on the camera icon I get taken to a box that says "source" yet it does not tell me if I am supposed to put a URL in that box.  I did put a URL in the box here, let's see if this works:

No, that doesn't seem to work as it only gives a little photo icon but the picture doesn't show up  

Since that doesn't work, I see a way to get an HTML code for images, by uploading them on www.tinypic.com, so let me see if I can add the image that way, here, by clicking on the "HTML" version of message layout and adding the HTML code: 

 Okay, well that seemed to work because I see the photo above!  

Yet, I hope that this isn't the only way to add photos as I think many folks will get confused by HTML and many will not know how to use an image uploading site like tinypic.  

[Marjo0]

Hi everyone, great to see so many of you already posting here! Welcome!

@Deborah0 You have many good observations, thank you for pointing these out! Very helpful. The image uploading should get easier today, as there is a fix going to be put in place soon. If you check in a few min, it might already be done. Let me know if you find it easier now.

@Miyuki0 Beautiful video you posted! It's also good to see the full screen function working so nicely. 🙂

[Nick---Cleveland-House-H0]

Greetings, 

My name is Nick from Cleveland, Ohio.  Hosting has been very rewarding.  I hope to meet many people from this community page.

Nick

[Tammy7]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to Airbnb, I'm trying to find ways to use my home as a bed and breakfast, or couch crashers passing through, that only need a place to rest their tired eyes, or freshen up for another 8 to 10 hour drive. I'm setting my home up with the basics, similar to hotel room. My home will come with extra space and queen or twin beds in rooms. Couches that fold out into beds for large groups. Unless they need more beds I can always bring in updated cots.that store in closets. I will still be in the home with significant other. Any ideas on how to get this rolling to assist travelers or families that do not want to stay at hotel?

[Lucille-and-Alan0]

Ok, I should have introduced myself earlier, I'll do that now (better late than never). I'm Lucille. I host in Toronto, Canada along with my husband, Alan. We've been hosting since 2013. We are really enjoying the opportunity that Airbnb gives us to meet people from all over the world. Nice to see such a diverse group of hosts testing out this new platform.

[Florian0]

Hi fellow hosts and guests around the globe,

I am Florian from Frankfurt, Germany. I started hosting because we had a spare room in our appartment and did not know what to do with it. I host together with my colombian wife and our son. We love it. We have had guests from more than 50 countries during the last 5 years. It is like being on vacation without leaving the house. 😉

We have also travelled quite a bit using airbnb and have experiences everything from magic to disappointment. 

We started the local group in Frankfurt and organized a few meetups and also started the superhost group.

Based on the idea of sharing and micro entrepreneurism we have founded a company ourselves that we call the airbnb for deliveries: blitzbringer

I am absolutely conviced that we need to bring back online shopping into the cities. If you have followed news about deliveries a bit you might have heard of "uber rush" or "on my way" from Amazon. These are similar ideas, but we believe that by putting the power into the providers hand (just like airbnb hosts), we can make a change for the better and move away from dumping wages and insane amounts of packaging waste.

So apart from family, hosting, travelling and blitzbringer, there is not much time for other things, but I am happy that way.

Cheers and looking forward to seeing some of you somewhere on this planet.

[Till-and-Jutta0]

Hi all, this is Till & Jutta. We host since 2010, as we have a spare private room in our apartment since our kids are out. Most of the time we really enjoy it, like @Florian0 already described, "the world is coming to us". And we started to travel a lot via Airbnb now - very interesting to change the point of view, to improve your own place for future guests.

We are organizing the German-speaking groups for D-A-CH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), Hosts4Hosts (mainly for Austria), and for our city Stuttgart; as well we are following many other German and English groups. We hope to find a new place here at the community platform, to transfer our very vivid peer group to a new place after closing the existing groups. Not sure how to do this, as we are talking about non-local subjects like general tax and law issues, books, Airbnb system use and bugs, refugee crisis, and we give mutual strength and encouragement at the daily hosting challenge (just to mention the last subjects) - all in German language of course. So we are excited how this could work here too. Some of our group members are very concerned about the new changes (and scared to loose their peer group), so I would like to encourage them to follow the switch, as the D-A-CH group is showing the most postings and comments for the Europe's German-speaking community part. Any help and comments welcome.

[Deborah0]

Hi @Till-and-Jutta0, nice to see you here!   I just wanted to post here, so that everyone knows, the issue that Till and Jutta bring up here, we are discussing also on this thread in "The Living Room", so you can come join us if you like:

https://community.airbnb.com/t5/The-Living-Room/New-Hosts-Forum-veterans-and-others-discussion-about...

[Sen0]

He there Marjo,

Great to be part of the new platform. My name is Sen and I am based in Cairns Australia which is the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. I have been an Airbnb host for the past 3 years and recently took on the role of Group Organizer for the Cairns Group. Of course I love hosting!

I love the whole Airbnb Community and last year I attended the Inaugural Airbnb Open in San Francisco and met some awesome hosts as well as the founders and other cool Airbnb personnel. 

Go Airbnb!

[Gary0]

Howdy, Gary from Adelaide, Australia saying hi to all.

It certainly has been a busy year and an absolutely amazing one for travel.

This year I had an amazing east to west coast road trip visiting FL, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ, CA in 4 weeks. It all came about by surprising a mate for his birthday. He was so grateful, he offered to drive me to from Florida to LAX to catch a flight home. So many amazing memories and experiences.

I also visited Japan for the first time in September, and am planning a return already.

Art, design, photography, music, travel, pizza, family, friends, hosting and laughing are a few of my favourite things. I also enjoy assisting new and experienced hosts in my community. 

Summer and festival time in Adelaide is approaching. Truly an amazing time of year.

Best wishes, safe travels & happy hosting to all,

Gary

[Mieke0]

To all Airbnb lovers, hosts and guests,

In Amsterdam you are all very welcome. I have started the group Hospitality in Amsterdam and that grew so fast that Mirjam and Manual had to step in to help out. With Mirjam we manage the messages and she helps out with the regulations of Amsterdam. We have started some workshops for the Virgins-newbies; to help out on the site and how to handdle the listing. Manual is setting up (with the help of Mirjam) the walkins. He has found a perfect spot (opposite the Anne Frank House). You are all welcome there when you are in Amsterdam and you want to meet us. We can tell you a lot about Amsterdam you will not find in the tourguides......

We embrace the new way of communicating as we think we can reach out to the rest of the (Airbnb)world (allthough for a lot of people here this world only begins and ends in Amsterdam). About 10.000 hosts to help you out.

Since the nineties I have lived in Amsterdam. My life started out on the other site of the world, once called the Dutch Indies, then Singapore and thereafter to Holland. Lived in Israel, France and stayed a lot of times in the UK. Could never choose....... Finally Amsterdam as my 2 sons prefered staying in Amsterdam. One of them left for Rio for a couple of years and the other loves travelling around the world with his girlfriend whenever his job allowes him. He loves the far east and I would not be surprised if he will stay over in Singapore for some years. This means travelling for me.......and I love too do so!

Hope to meet you either in another part of the world or in my part called Amsterdam! Take care and cu

Mieke

[Nikki36]

Hi my name is Nikki and I am a host from Singapore. Very nice to chat with you here and hope to see you in Singapore someday! 🙂

[Rebecca44]

Hi Nikki, I'm Rebecca from Bristol in the south of England. I would love to know what Singapore is like. Wouldn't it be great to have elastic travel time!

[Mieke0]

Hi Marjo and all other Airbnbhosts.............

Tried before to introduce Amsterdam but it seems to have vanished in the cold air.

Anyway happy to meet you guys from all over and like to meet you either in Paris or on your stay in Amsterdam.

We have walkins where you are welcome as well and we can tell you all about Amsterdam and it dark secrets.

Mirjam, Manual and me (Mieke) manage the group Hospitality in Amsterdam. We are experienced hosts and help out as much as possible. Mirjam and I manage  mostly the group and the messages, Manual (with the help of Mirjam) organises the walkins in a very nice spot (opposite the Anne Frankhouse). Mirjam and I also organise the workshops for the Virgins/newbies as all the detailed way of taking care of the listing is sometimes confusing.

You are all more then welcome to come and stay in Amsterdam.

Mieke