Harvard AirBnB Offers Students a New Way to Travel

Unique vacation spot #1: Jurassic Park. Unlike the movie, there are no dinosaurs in this Dominican Republic place, however, there is a chemical-free spring water pool and natural waterfalls next to this Harvard Alum owned private bungalow.

Jurassic Park is publicized on AirBnB, a company co-founded by Nathan Blecharczyk '05 that connects hosts in 186 different countries to travelers worldwide. While AirBnB features homes from a wide spectrum of people, Jurassic Park is special in that it belongs to the Harvard AirBnB group. The group allows Harvard Alums to host, specifically but not limited to, fellow alums and current Harvard students.

The Harvard group has 2617 members, and 536 rooms in 202 cities spread around 48 countries. The rooms range from entire homes to private rooms to shared rooms and more. Jurassic Park is $25 per night. The cheapest rooms in the Harvard group, at $10 per night, are rooms at Petirrojos, Lima, Agua Caliente, Tijuana, and Trivandrum, Kerala. The most expensive, at $750 per night, is a Waterfront House in Miami Beach, Florida.

People who use this method of travel can post reviews on AirBnb’s website so that people considering traveling can get better opinions. Peter A. Boyce II '13 found out about Airbnb through his girlfriend and has been a fan since. He considers it one of his "favorite startups."

Although he has not stayed with a Harvard alum yet, he has traveled through AirBnB several times. The first  time was during a vacation to Paris with his girlfriend where he rented from an NYU-Paris professor.

"AirBnB is a great way to travel affordably, stay at a cool and unique place, and meet and greet new people. The magic of AirBnB definitely lies in the trust and reputation their users embody," Boyce said. "They’ve created a platform that has unlocked and shared the underutilized value of homes and apartments across the globe, and I think that’s something powerful."