Airbnb's New Restaurants Feature

Airbnb is trying to become the one-stop app by allowing you to book restaurants now. The popular booking site has grown to become one of the most popular booking sites for vacation spots. The company does not own any of the properties listed but acts as a broker receiving a percentage of the booking from both the guest and the host.

Airbnb has teamed up with the restaurant reservation app Resy to bring the new "restaurants" feature. You can now book restaurants last minute or in advanced and search for them by a specific cuisine, price range, and location. Currently, this feature is only allowed in a select few major cities across the U.S.

The company is looking to go along with their booking and experiences features by adding restaurant reservations. This should help for the company to gain ground on other booking sites such as Priceline, which owns the popular restaurant booking app OpenTable. Airbnb is currently valued to be around $31 billion but is continuing to grow by adding features. As well as they may be doing, it will be hard to overtake and become the majority market shareholder in travel booking when compared to the megacompany Priceline Group. Priceline is currently valued at around $87 billion.

The good news for Airbnb is that they are a young company with a lot of upside. CNBC ranked them the number one company on their top 50 disruptor companies of 2017 and for good reason. While the restaurants feature is brand new, the company is also expected to expand into flight booking in the near future.

It is amazing to see how fast the company has grown since being founded in 2008. Their quick growth came with some corner cutting and risk though. The site has been in trouble ranging from racial discrimination by the booking host, tax avoidance, and crimes committed by both guest and host.

As far as my personal experience goes with Airnbnb, it was subpar, to say the least. I had never used the company up until this past July. I booked with a host in Miami two months in advanced and had communication with the host. We showed up at the condo and she wouldn't answer my calls or emails. Long story short, we ended up getting a full refund plus 10% of what the booking price of the condo was to book another Airbnb. We did not want to wait around for another host to confirm our booking, so we ended up getting a hotel.

I have heard nothing but good things from other people who have used the service and the customer service was pretty good, but my personal experience has left a sour taste in my mouth about the company.  I booked my condo for the Georgia Florida game using VRBO, but I have never used them before either. Hopefully I don't have the same issues as I did with Airbnb.

Hulu and Spotify Bundle

The popular music streaming service Spotify has teamed up with Hulu to offer discounts to US college students. Spotify is looking to build on their dominant market share in music streaming while Hulu looks to gain ground to compete against Netflix. Spotify's premium membership is currently priced at $4.99 per month for college students while Hulu is $7.99 for their limited commercial plan. With the bundle, students can get both services for only $4.99.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out for both of the companies. While Spotify is king of music streaming at the moment, Apple music has been gaining ground over the years. The mega-company has the resources and funding to take over the market. Hulu is in a similar situation is that they are a much smaller company than Netflix. Both Apple and Netflix are publicly traded companies that are worth much more than Spotify and Hulu. Netflix is estimated to be worth $70 billion while Apple is worth a staggering $635 billion. Hulu is estimated to be worth around $25 billion while Spotify is worth a mere $3 billion.

I see Spotify as the true beneficiary of this deal. Spotify currently has an impressive 43% market share while Apple music has the second most at 20.9%. The price is the same at $4.99 for college students and adding Hulu as part of the price only adds icing to the cake. The only leverage Apple has over Spotify are the select few musicians that have taken their music off of Spotify to protest their free subscription.

Hulu will be banking on new users to pay the discounted price and then stay as subscribers after they graduate, paying the full price. Netflix currently holds 66% of the market share vs Hulu's 16.5%. I don't see Netflix being affected too much by this move. Netflix will continue to dominate Hulu as long as Hulu is only offering the limited commercial package as part of the Spotify bundle. Netflix offers more content for the same price without commercials. Unless there are specific shows that are exclusively on Hulu, Netflix will remain king.

Samsung Galaxy Trade-In Deal

Samsung released their premier smartphone, the Galaxy S8 and S8+, this past April to challenge the powerhouse iPhone. The numbers have been disappointing with sales estimated to be 9.8 million for the S8 against the S7 that sold 12 million in the first 60 days. This is most likely due to increased competition from Chinese companies but may also be due to the exploding battery PR nightmare Samsung faced last year from their Galaxy S7 Notebook model. Prices have been similar to the iPhone resulting in a large part of the population staying loyal their respected brand.

The highly anticipated new iPhone models are most likely to be revealed on Tuesday by Apple at their new headquarters in Cupertino, California. There is rumored to be three models: the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and the iPhone X. The prices have been rumored to be around $800, $950, and over $1,000 respectfully.

This steep price tag may be enough for people to make the change to Android. Samsung is currently running a trade-in campaign that offers deals for both the S8, S8+, and the unreleased Note 8, which will be available this Friday. The deal requires a trade-in of a smartphone that is not older than the iPhone SE. The trade-in of the smart phone will take off $200-$300 of the price. Samsung is also offering a free Gear VR for the S8 or S8+, and either a Gear 360 camera or a 128GB memory card with a Fast Wireless Charger. The S8, S8+, and Note 8 are currently priced at $750, $850, and $950 respectively.

Apple has still not put out a VR headset to compete with the rest of the market. Sales of the technology this year are set to be the highest it has seen in its history. While Apple's iPhone is still considered by many to be the best smartphone on the market, they are still lacking when it comes to VR headsets and exterior memory cards.

It will be interesting to see how Apple's iPhone new models' sales will be affected by the higher asking price along with Samsung's promotional trade-in deal. People have questioned the direction Apple has taken after the death of their former co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. There have been complaints that the company has not sought innovation and useful technology since the passing of Jobs. This along with changing the charging port after the iPhone 4S and removing the headphone jack for the iPhone 7 have questioned Apple's motives.

I am especially interested in the complete details of the new iPhone model and how they compare to the Galaxy models because I am currently looking to upgrade my phone. I currently have an iPhone 6S and have had iPhones since the iPhone 4. The reason I am looking to upgrade is due to the lack of memory I have with a 16GB phone. I would prefer to stay with Apple, but the high asking price along with the free accessories offered by Samsung that are not offered by Apple may be enough to make me switch.