The End of my Airbnb Experiences

That was my last Photograph taken of an Airbnb Experience 

Coronavirus completely changed our whole lives for every one of us all around the World. 

When I first heard of the novel coronavirus was early January, after watching a Netflix documentary on the future pandemic, I was shocked that just a few days after, china announced a new type of influenza type respiratory coronavirus, I thought it was like a dream. 

During that time I saw a sharp declined in the number of Airbnb Experience guests, and strangely a low number of confirmed reservations for the month of March and April which are usually the busiest months in the entire year. 

Compared to other years I would usually have an approximate of 10 guests per day and few private shootings per day, i thought somehow the situation would normalize but at the same time, i thought maybe something bad was coming ahead. 

During the end of January, one of my friends in Taiwan was asking me to help him find Surgical n95 masks in Latin America since China was having a mayor shortage of Masks in that time, i had a few deals lined up but i already had previous private booking reservations that i couldn’t just cancel, so the deal slowly faded and i decided to not travel to Mexico and stay in Japan, that meant also that i couldn’t visit my family in the US either.

So in the beginning of February, I was frustrated by the lack of information related to the novel coronavirus, other countries seemed to be taking it more seriously but Japan was in some kind of hardcore denial, the information was very compartmentalized and the conspiracy theories and rumors were spreading like wildfire.

So I decided to build a coronavirus tracker App that could have tons of resources available for people to easily find information related to the coronavirus, especially for tourists coming to Japan for the Olympics, ( still thinking the Olympics were happening ) and tourists could easily find information like hospitals that could speak English, coronavirus ready hospitals, etc.

So I spent the next 3 weeks almost locked in the house working on my App and building the entire thing from website to interface to assisting with the API, it was insane, waking up in the morning at 8 am and go to bed at 4 am every night trying to finish this as soon as i could so i could have it available for people.

Promotional screenshot of my Covid-19 App Tracker for iOS.

So after working for a month straight like a maniac developing this App and trying to get it ready in time, Apple and Google both announced they will not be accepting Apps from nongovernmental bodies, so if you weren’t a hospital, a health organization or anything closer to that, you cannot publish an App with them.

This was a monumental blow to me! i spent working on this a month and a half and eventually, the App stores would not allow my App to be downloaded because i am not a government organization! This is BULL!!

My App sources were all coming from government bodies and institutions, what i did is just put them all together into one App.

Where can I find your App?

If you are interested to check my Coronavirus App Tracker Website click here. 

Anyways to make the story short, my App couldn’t be accepted in the App store so i lost a lot of motivation and creativity after that, by the way if you want to help me sign a petition to ask Google and Apple to let nongovernment organizations publish independent coronavirus apps please follow this link:

Sign the Petition to Allow Independent Developer Release Coronavirus Apps

So whats going on at this stage, what about Airbnb Experiences?

I think i need an extra blog post just to talk about my overall experience handling Airbnb Experiences, so let me give you a small introduction in case you didn’t know much about my history with Airbnb.

I Started doing Airbnb Experiences about 2 years and a half ago, in that time i was one of the few Photographers in the platform so i mostly wanted to just offer Night time photography tours and workshops with other photographers coming to the area, i did that eventually and got ranked pretty fast, within 2 months i had over 100 reviews and i was having a ball doing it.

During that time i was in a weird crossroads in my life, my creative agency felt like it was not going anywhere, i established the company just a year prior to that so it was still in the super early stages but i was going through some weird mental space and Airbnb Experiences allowed me to meet all kinds of new and interesting people and it definitely took me away from feeling in a weird space.

This picture was taken during my last Airbnb Experience before the Shut Down. 

In just a few months I became Japan’s top-rated Airbnb Experience Photographer and one of the top-rated experiences worldwide, my Airbnb Experience link and photos were used by Airbnb to promote Airbnb Experiences in Instagram and Facebook so there was tons of traffic coming to my Experience page and also to my website netting 200.000 unique visitors per week.

Eventually after 2 years and a half and hosting over 3000 individual people from all corners of the globe the peak of it came to an end, one day abruptly Airbnb Experiences was put in the hold, pausing all my upcoming reservations, i was shocked because Airbnb didn’t even tell me this was happening, they just decided to do it and it disrupted tons of my scheduled plans.

Eventually, Airbnb started canceling 90% of all my upcoming yearly reservations, losing thousands of dollars, a massive economic blow since Airbnb Experiences played such an integral part of my business combined with all my other side business like Director of Photography, Filmmaker, Designer and 3D Animator this pillar wasn’t there anymore and the routine i built for over two years was disrupted.

I am sure many of you reading this, have some form of a parallel story, where your business was hurt by this pandemic and you now have to re-adopt to a new start.

It’s now April 30th and Airbnb Experiences are paused and with the current situation globally, i don’t see the tourism industry coming back alive at least for another year.

Therefore due to the global pandemic and Airbnb Experiences paused, i have to come to a full circle and say my goodbye to the platform, I’ve had an incredible experience photographing peoples most memorable moments, allowing people to trust me with their delicate memories and to give back to the people an experience of a lifetime.

If you are reading this and you’ve taken my Airbnb Experience before you know exactly what i am talking about, it’s definitely played such an important role in my life and i assure yours as well.

This picture was taken during my last Airbnb Experience before the Shut Down. 

So what’s next for you?

I was asked by one of my business partners recently to build a spiritual video and multimedia community platform, ill be overtaking the project as creative director and chief technology officer as well as Film Director to shoot all the original content platform, everything happens for a reason, it’s like this was the culmination of all my creative arts put together into one.

As a world traveler, i spent over 10 years traveling to 97+ countries, working as a filmmaker and as a creative director, getting the chance to work on this is like the perfect opportunity for me to contribute to the conscious awakening community and get the chance to record Shamans and Ancient Spiritual masters to protect and record intangible spiritual and holistic art practices that soon will be lost in time as we move into the technological singularity.

Are you planning to come back to the platform after the pandemic?

I am not sure at the moment and don’t know where things will take me in the future, recently Airbnb offered me the chance to host an Airbnb Experience online, so i joined and created an experience teaching people how to edit their photos using lightroom, the experience was not accepted which i felt like Airbnb let me down after i did so much for the platform for all these years and i helped them get their platform popular in Japan which is one of the most active markets they have in the World.

It felt like they didn’t need me anymore and couldn’t even send me a proper explanation as of why or anything, they say it didn’t meet the basic specifications, so at this moment, the ball is on Airbnb, they promised top experience hosts a stimulus package of up to $5000 Dollars, till this day i haven’t seen any payment made yet other than them saying they would do it but until now there is no signs of them actually committing to the hard-working people that helped them build their entire platform.

What about pending customers and future bookings?

I have a commitment to all the people that rescheduled their plans for the future, you don’t have to worry since ill be able to host you once things get normalized, as for my past customers interested to hiring me again in the future, well you can always hire me using my website and if things get normalized and airbnb actually starts carrying for it’s business partners then i should be able to open up again at the end of the year or for next year’s Olympics, lets see all depends in many factors.

Final Words

For final words i just want to say thank you to all the people that was able to come up to my Your own Personal Tokyo Photographer Airbnb Experience, thanks to all the reviews and all the amazing encouragement and feedback I’ve received over the past years in social media platforms.

I hope things get normalized again so that we could all celebrate life again and see the world once more and experience cultures and see the world with different eyes.

Thank You guys and much love from Tokyo, Japan!

Sincerely,