Dear all,
After 6 years spent together, I am deeply sorry to announce the end of Bnbsitter’s adventure.
Even if we have been surrounded by the passion of my adventure mate, Biagio Tumino (linkedin.com/in/biagiotumino), by the high skills of our team, by the trust of thousands of users and the devotion of hundreds of sitters everywhere in France, Italy and Belgium, we have not been able to survive to the new laws that from January 2019 subjugate the vacation rental market in France.
During those six wonderful years, we have built a completely new technological platform from scratch (yes, we pioneered this market with our online service!), we have offered our users a simple and user-friendly website, we have sharpened our know-how, we have imagined smart and highly-performing processes and taken care of a brand which capitalizes on trust and sympathy.
All this has been possible thanks to the collaboration of different people: a high-skilled team devoted to operation success, professional partners and responsible and skilled investors. To all these people goes today my biggest gratitude. It is thanks to them that Bnbsitter has been this wonderful adventure that you all know today.
Year after year, we have seen wonderful growth, for sure, but we have not been strong enough to soften the attacks against the international vacation rental platforms. Bnbsitter has no choice today than shut its service down.
It is just not Bnbsitter that is closing. It’s also a bit of the “collaborative economy made in France” that’s shutting down, killed by this blind war against the “sharing economy made in US”. But the one (the French, more careful to human and environmental factors) is not the other (the American, mostly focused on pure business) and the mix created by the two has paradoxically punished a 100% French startup and has had almost no effect on the international big companies.
Because, by looking for a quick exposure to the public scene, it has been easy for certain political characters to swing a sword against the international platforms. But by doing this they have just penalized a service that was imagined, designed and funded completely in France.
We are proud to have pioneered this market et we do not regret anything we have done because it has been done with intelligence and extreme care for humans.
But we are, at the same time, extremely sorry to leave you here now. And after hundreds of thousands of goodbyes, we are really uncomfortable and sad to say farewell.
That’s why we prefer to say our warmest, last… See-you-soon.
Piero Cipriano (CEO) and the Bnbsitter Team
