I wanted to share this real experience of the Airbnb Service where the property was perfectly appropriate and left in the condition I found it — until the antiquated model of ‘physical keys left under the doormat’ created a very uncomfortable situation indeed.

This is one of these situations where an electronic lock and irrefutability of access via blockchain would have saved the person renting me their flat quite a lot of trouble.

I’m not sure if this lady had to call a locksmith or not, but if she did, odds are she wasn’t covered by the insurance product that Airbnb makes available to their users.

Currently most — if not all — sharing services use something called ‘umbrella insurance’. In short, it’s the sharing platform that’s insured, not the people doing the sharing (hard to believe, but here we are).

This presents several problems:

1) Renters are out of luck if their sharing platform of choice has exceeded its claim limits for that year and a guest wrecks their house.

2) Conflicts arise if both the platform and the person renting have taken a policy. Which one should prevail?

3) Risk isn’t represented well: it’s the renter’s property that’s truly at risk, not the platform.