THE BASICS

LANGUAGE SECTION
Easy English
VANESSA CLARK führt ein Gespräch mit einer Waliserin, die ihre Einliegerwohnung über
Airbnb vermietet. Dazu gibt es passendes Hintergrundwissen auf Sprachniveau A2.

EASY PLUS

FASCINATING FACTS
...about Airbnb:

⋅ Airbnb started in 2007 in San Fran-

cisco. A big conference was coming to
the city and hotels were fully booked.
Friends Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia
offered their apartment as bed-and-
breakfast accommodation “to make a
few bucks”.

Ceri Davie
s, Airbnb
host
⋅ The original name of the website was
Airbed & Breakfast.
⋅ “B&B”, or “B n B”, means “bed and
breakfast”. The “Air” came from
A CONVERSATION WITH CERI DAVIES “airbed” – Chesky and Gebbia put one
Here, we present interesting lives from around the English- on the floor for their first guests.
speaking world. This time, we talk to Ceri Davies, an Airbnb
host in mid-Wales.
⋅ In the beginning, the website offered
only rooms and shared spaces, but
in 2009, it started to offer whole
Tell us about your Airbnb place. apartments and houses, too.
It’s an annexe to our home. We built it as a granny annexe,
but granny isn’t ready for it yet. It has a double bedroom,
⋅ There are over six million homes on
Airbnb today.
a kitchen and a bathroom, and its own front door. It has dis-
abled access.
⋅ The business is now worth over $110
billion.

Is being an Airbnb host easy?

⋅ Holiday homes push out local people,
so some tourist places, such as New
It’s more work than I thought! I have to check my messages York City, Paris, Berlin and Barcelona,
all the time, so I can respond quickly to questions and book- where most bookings take place,
ings. I do the cleaning myself. I change the sheets and tow- control activity on Airbnb.
els, and clean the whole place from top to bottom. I leave a
welcome pack with a few little things like milk, teabags and
a cake. It all helps to get good reviews.

Do you meet your guests?

Yes, I like to be here when they arrive. I think (or I hope!) peo- airbed disabled access host [hEUst]
ple treat your home better when they’ve met you in person. , Luftmatratze , behindertengerechter , Gastgeber(in)
Zugang
Illustration: Martin Haake

But if I can’t be here, there’s a key safe for self-check-in. annexe [(Äneks] push out
, Anbau dye [daI] , verdrängen
Have you had any problems with your guests? , färben
billion sheet
No, nothing too bad, thank goodness! Most of our guests are , Milliarde(n) granny annexe , Laken
lovely. The worst thing was a young lady who dyed her hair – [(Äneks] UK ifml.
buck ifml. , Einliegerwohnung
all of my nice white towels turned purple! , Dollar

THE BASICS SPOTLIGHT 2022 53