VamoStays and Shareways: Rides & Abodes.
 On-Demand Ride Hailing. 📌
Beyond standard auto rentals, hail the current overheated, curb-to-curb competition between ride-sharing giants spreading worldwide, and the growing Turo peer-to-peer car rental service.
On the surface, easy to say that Lyft is comparatively the good guy in the pink ‘stache. 
Clearly, the Avis of ride hailing is gaining a hefty user lift lately, upwards of 25% in bookings, by positioning itself as the quiet, gentler underdog. Lyft’s valuation has risen to $7.5B, pouring resources and research into the future of urban transportation, not least mobile deployment technologies and driverless cars. Such growth has come as a result, and at the expense of hailing space leader, Uber. The rideshare behemoth has dominated and expanded over established taxi, livery and limousine services with lightning disruption.
But Uber’s own growing pains have included driver cheating/exploitation/ tipping/pay shortchanging (compensation)/sexual harassment of passengers and employees alike –rival Lyft being little better on this latter count, as female customers’ lawsuits currently attest. Factor in skirting, dodging of local/market regulations, serious traffic accidents , surreptitious rider tracking and Google’s lawsuit alleging theft of trade secrets on robot vehicles. Now comes the California legislation seeking to reclassify independent contractors (e.g., ride service drivers) as employees drawing full benefits–which would potentially squeeze the life out of Uber/Lyft’s operating life-blood and entire exploitative business plans. In response, Uber pledges to take the measure to the courts and ballot box. (MTC…)
These ongoing issues and transgressions have sparked mass employee resignations and dismissals. The operational upheaval has even forced Uber board members to react in shareholder pressure by voting founder, Travis Kalanick out of his CEO seat, indeed out of the Uberplex entirely—now heading into an intercene ‘civil war’.
Meanwhile, as Uber seeks to calm its waters and restore its image, cities such as hometown San Francisco order rider data from both services, and Austin battles to assist vulnerable local rivals.
Vamigré will continue to take the measure of both ride-industry leaders, through service and price comparisons, market by market. We will also track/cover lesser/smaller services like Sidecar, Flywheel and Relay Rides on an objective comparison basis—plus taxicabs with onboard WiFi, to the advent of on-demand air taxis…
VamoShares/Swaps: Vamociles.
Why hotel and/or motel when we can notel our way into homey private short-term shares or peer-to-peer swaps?
However, it is precisely this aspect of vacation rental services such as Air BnB, VRBO and HomeAway that has city government and regulators pulling in their welcome mats. Indeed the California cities of Los Angeles, Pacific Grove and South Lake Tahoe are presently clamping down on vacation rentals, mainly through dramatically reducing short-term occupancy by neighborhoods/districts and number of eligible usage days per year. SLT further stipulates 2 persons per bedroom, 12 maximum per unit on guests, but apparently is holding fire on the new limits until after the holidays, as residents now complain that their friends and relatives cannot find enough places to stay for the short term. So now there is a court stay until January 24, so stay tuned…
The primary issue is registering local hosts for purposes of taxation and preserving legal, greatly needed though dwindling housing stock. This tug of war is just beginning, as tourist/vacationer gluts coupled with increasing incidents of home vandalism, robbery and physical violence against guests—even sexual assaults—require far more scrutiny and review than is currently offered forth for each and every Vamabode.
Comparisons are also more in order vis-a-vis these shares, and the moves established hotel/motel chains, boutiques and B&B inns are putatively making in response to hosting industry disruptions—from ‘homier’, more uniquely personalized rooms to ‘local flavor’ experiences.
But we will oversee about all that as we stay our courses, now won’t we…
