Huffington Post // By Dane Steele Green
You may think that Misterbandb, a short-term rental site for gays, while an encouraging flap of the rainbow flag, may not be necessary with such hip services like Airbnb cornering the market, but but read on.
“I was traveling with my partner to Barcelona and at that time we really enjoyed booking a shared apartment with locals,” recalls Misterbandb founder Matthieu Jost. “So we booked an apartment and upon arrival it was very clear the owner was not comfortable with two men sleeping in the same bed in the room next to her. She even asked if we were going to sleep together.”
They left the next day.
“It was a very bad experience,” says Frenchman Jost. “The whole thing made us very sad.”
A Millennial hallmark of the new age, Airbnb and similar home-stay emporiums revolutionized travel. They continue to do so, and the reason is clear. Just look at the economics: Renting a private room is 49.5% cheaper than booking a hotel room; renting a whole apartment is 21.2% cheaper. That opens up the world to a huge segment of the population that previously had not the budget to travel, to say nothing of the inveterate travelers who, for all their love of the road, will not turn down a good deal when they see one however well-monied they may be.
But even Millennial idealism must give way to worldly reality. As “in” and modern as Airbnb is, it does not mean the service is any more or any less friendly to gay travelers. As policy, Airbnb does not tolerate discrimination, but with over one million listings to date, sheer numbers make it is nearly impossible to winnow the ‘phobes from the friends until after the true colors come out.
As Jost’s experience clearly proclaims, it is not just the conservative wilds that we can run into trouble. If homophobia can happen in Spain, it can happen anywhere. And if it happened to Jost, it can happen to any of us. Still. Come what may, the same rules apply to Airbnb as they do to all aspects of LGBT travel: Things get mighty thorny for gays and lesbians who want to be gays and lesbians openly depending on where they go. Even behind the closed doors of wherever it is that they stay.
“Our goal is for our community to travel safely without having to disclose our sexual orientation and to make sure that it isn’t a problem for the host to welcome a gay couple,” says Jost. “We have a lot of welcoming hosts that are willing to share also good tips and advice about the best gay bar, best clubs, best places to go shopping. So this is also a way, when you travel, to ‘travel gay.’”
More importantly, Misterbandb takes out the guesswork that we as LGBT travelers still must wade through when it comes to homestays. It also takes into account gay sensibilities. While gays-with-kids travel is admirably on the rise, on average and at most, gay travel usually comes in adult-aged pairs. Pairs that really happen to be into bars, clubs, dungeons, and other general merrymaking attractions that straight couples do not necessarily place at the top of the to-do list. Misterbandb properties are often smack-dab in the middle of gayborhoods where gays want to be: Hell’s Kitchen in New York, the Marais in Paris, Shinjuku Ni-chome in Tokyo…
“That’s the primary thing,” Jost continues, “to connect the global gay community together, because for us, when we are traveling, it is always harder to meet with locals, gay ones, and this is a great way to do it, do it safely.”
Most users are gay men, aged in that footloose 24 – 60 age bracket, and while they are targeted demographic, Misterbandb is by no means restricted to them. Jost figures that 10% of users are lesbians, and the service is growing in leaps and bounds with the PFLAG set since the service debuted three years ago. Today, gay-owned and operated Misterbandb has 80,000 listings in 175 countries (out of 195), with hosts gay and straight, male and female, and with properties spanning the flatlands of the Great Plains to the heights of Nepal (Beams Jost, “We are definitely global!”) The average cost is around $70. Anyone familiar with Airbnb will instantly recognize the Misterbandb format.
“We have a straight woman in Paris and she gets a five-star review every time!” Jost says. “We are really open to everyone, that is really important to me because of my own experience and what happened to me a few years ago. I don’t want that repeated with others.”
Steele Luxury Travel
www.SteeleTravel.com