You’ve heard variations of the story I am sure.
Black person tries to book on air b’n’b, booking mysteriously gets cancelled. Fact is, this happens A LOT! And of course it’s pure racism in many cases. Look up the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack on Twitter to find countless terrible tales.
Entrepreneur Rohan Gilkes, originally from Barbados, was on the end of such a story. He repeatedly tried to book a cabin for a stay in Idaho. It kept getting cancelled. Then he asked a white friend to book, no problems!
So he decided to not moan about it, he just started building a competitor where the hosts are people of color and minority friendly.
Originally Noirebnb, recently renamed to Innclusive, aims to make inclusion and diversity an integral part of its business model.
Here is an excerpt from an interview with Rohan on Fusion.
How does Noirebnb differ from its competitors?
It seems really simple, but we actually start with our marketing. For the longest while when you looked on Airbnb, there weren’t many black people on their site as a part of their promotional material. We want all of our users to be reflected in our marketing and our imagery from the jump.
So how does your platform discourage users from discriminating against potential renters by canceling on them?
Let’s say you tried to book my apartment through Airbnb and I told you those dates are unavailable. As a user, you still have that option with Noirebnb, but once you say that certain dates are closed off, you can’t re-list during that time period.
Read the full interview here: http://fus.in/28LTBp5
NOTE: NoireBnB is now renamed “innclusive’, you can visit the site here: innclusive.com.
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