Objectively, PS grossed over 100 million last year, profited more than 20 million, which means if they keep 28% of gross booking revenue, of that share, they keep around 70% as profit, and spend around 8 million annually on overhead.
Peerspace - you have room to spend more to make the host experience better. And in ways that will increase your revenue.
Vetting guests
tired of pictures not matching guests, or even a human being
USE AI SELFIE VERIFICATION LIKE ALL THE OTHER TECH COMPANIES
Deposits
Deposits should be handled through Peerspace as an escrow - allow hosts to create them, but allow peerspace to verify them so bad hosts donāt take advantage. Charge 5%.
Claims should be verified by valid evidence - video and/or guest corroboration
Should apply to legitimate damage AND theft
Liability
Stolen items should be covered in some way
Cleaning
multi-day cleaning needs to be automated
excess cleaning charges should be possible especially if presented upfront and at a reasonable rate with verifiable evidence (security footage). Making us hire someone to mop the floors so we can charge for it is absurd and results in unsatisfactory host-guest experiences
Drive-Bookings
Copy the āDrive Bookingsā feature on ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā (ā really? I canāt even mention your competitor G-ster on this forum?) - at our spaces, we forego paying for a 3rd party app for internal bookings and use their very convenient āDrive Bookingsā option - they have an option that allows us to use their platform as a 3rd party booking app for existing customers/self-landed customers for 2% of the booking fee - that rate is so low it would take us at least a dozen bookings a month before our previous 3rd party booking app became fiscally competitive. The option also includes all the standard coverage, insurance, customer service, etc. like a normal on-platform booking. Encourages us to not take bookings off the app for the first booking to give the platform their piece of the action, then brings us back for subsequent bookings so the platform still gets a piece of action they wouldnāt normally get, and we get the same great protection, coverage and service. Win-Win.
For roughly 30% of the total billed on a booking, you should be way ahead of the curve for obvious updates like this. Your competitors are coming for you. Get your stuff together.
Hi Chris- as a host, I agree with you on several items above especially about the Verification of guests, It is my biggest concern! can you share where you were able to obtain gross revenue and profit for PS?
This is insane. Iām honestly shocked how accurate this is. Huge thanks to Christopher for bringing this up. I fully stand behind every single point.
I also want to share a concrete example. T-Venue allows hosts to create a custom landing form.Itās a standalone inquiry form that you can send directly to clients via link. When someone fills it out, you receive a complete booking inquiry straight to your email with all the details you need. If the booking is not processed directly through TagVenue, they donāt take a percentage. Zero.
I would genuinely love to see something like this from Peerspace. I would absolutely use it and drive more of my direct traffic into the platform instead of relying on third-party tools as most of hosts does.
Improvements that was done previously - bidding to promote the listing in certain category at Peerspace just bounced my listing from 1st page to 36th Iām still catching up after drop down, wasnāt cool and now pretty much nothing new.
All of these suggestions are great ā especially the cleaning fee rework.
Peerspace positions itself as helping hosts market their spaces, but in practice it functions as a demand aggregator ā a lead-gen marketplace that inserts itself into the transaction.
They control the traffic, facilitate the booking ā for a 20ā30% rake ā but theyāre not a true marketing partner, and theyāre not invested in building our businesses or our brands.
After 7ā8 years on the platform, the pattern is pretty clear: product decisions are primarily driven by their revenue, not host experience.
Something as simple as archiving old message threads ā a basic usability fix ā has been requested for years and still hasnāt been addressed.
I havenāt launched my listing yet, but very close. Itās a historic house and will be listed for productions for video shoots, and for cooking demonstrations. I also have a background in UX and Iām shocked by how many simple issues could be fixed. A little user research studies would reveal that some basics need to be put in place to help get a listing launched. 1) have a solid way to see the listing before it goes live! I got to the end of the wizard and my listing was live. 2)just make the back end admin match the boxes the user sees. Just like ABB, what you fill in in a box can appear in a different place for the end user or split up depending on how soon before the booking. Iād love to hear from other hosts how to navigate the cleaning fees. This is my primary home, so if they are just filming, not using the beds or kitchen, it doesnāt take much to do a quick wipe down. Thanks so much Chris for calling out these issues. I hope the design team addresses these issues
Yes! I used to be UX Director at a series of big ad agency in NYC and the lack of certain features and functionalities is often staggering ā especially when you know how little effort some of them might take to implement.
Iām guessing thereās something in their āresearchā that says cleaning fees are a hiccup for guests pulling the trigger on a booking. So, they implement it in a way that works to the advantage of guest and minimizes PSās need to oversee. Again, underlining my thought that UX decisions are determined through the lens of guests over hosts.
