Finding love through Airbnb

There’s plenty of love for Airbnb, with the number of listings in Australia alone doubling to 70,000 in the past year.

But what happens when the love extends further than that – perhaps to your fellow guest, host, or even the neighbour next to the Airbnb you’re staying at?

We meet three couples that have found long-term romance in a most unexpected, and global, way.

Love match

Australian Bree Chisholm was a rookie to the world of Airbnb when a fellow guest – a professional tennis player from Germany – lobbed in to her London accommodation and asked her out to dinner.

“It was my first time using Airbnb,” says Chisholm. “Franky usually stays in hotels but for a change he decided to stay in an Airbnb also.”

It was early June 2013. Chisholm was “incredibly jetlagged”, having arrived from Australia two days earlier to further her hairdressing career. Her fellow guest, Frank Moser, was in London to compete at The Queen’s Club.

Chisholm had been looking forward to an early night, but her arm was twisted. “Within minutes at dinner sparks were flying,” she says.

Moser was only in London for a short time, but returned soon after to play at Wimbledon.

The pair has since travelled the globe – everywhere from Mexico, to Italy, Belgium, Hawaii and the US. For now, they are living between Australia and Germany.

“I never in a million years would have thought I would meet the man of my dreams this way, but anything is possible, you just never know what’s around the corner,” says Chisholm.

Their biggest adventure is perhaps yet to come, with the happy couple expecting twins.

Berlin connection

When teacher Megan Blumenschein (now Mayer-Rothbarth) decided to jet off to Berlin for five weeks in the summer of 2010, she was a little wary of going solo.

“I didn’t know anyone there so I was a bit nervous, but excited,” says the American, who had booked to stay at an Airbnb.

But she needn’t have worried. On her first morning, she was visiting the local cafe when she stumbled across a kindred soul called Tocco, who asked if he could sit opposite her.

“There was something about him. I thought he seemed charming and cute,” she says.

“I asked him about a stamp for my postcard, he mumbled something, and then he buried his face in his phone. I thought, ‘OK, we don’t have to talk, that’s fine’. But then he looked up and gave me the answer. He’d been checking for the answer on his phone.”

The pair kept chatting and discovered her Airbnb was across the courtyard from his apartment.

Tocco offered to lend his new friend his bike during her stay. Grateful, she invited him for a thank you drink, and they talked all night.

Over the next few weeks, they toured the city together. “I met his friends, we went to the Baltic Sea together, and we fell in love,” she says.

With a serious romance already in the offing, Tocco started making plans to move to Washington DC, which Mayer-Rothbarth admits was a little “nerve-racking”.

A year later, the love-struck duo married at New York’s City Hall, and now have a 13-month-old daughter, Eve.

Mayer-Rothbarth says she and Tocco’s romance was “the very definition of hard to imagine. But it has been the best thing that has ever happened to either one of us (besides our gorgeous girl)”.

An Airbnb wedding

Ben and Noa are the first couple to marry at the Airbnb headquarters in San Francisco. Photo: Ryan Kim/Airbnb

Before Ben G. fell in love with Airbnb host Noa L., he fell for her Tel Aviv apartment.

Ben, from San Francisco, was working in the city for a month, but multiple attempts to book Noa’s apartment fell flat – even when Ben offered some sweet treats from his chocolate company. Noa was visiting Brazil and had forgotten to block the dates on her booking calendar.

However when she returned, Ben says she responded, and he persuaded her to meet at a local coffee shop.

They immediately clicked. “It was like we knew each other for a long time and didn’t want to stop talking,” he says.

In July, the couple made history, holding a civil ceremony at Airbnb’s San Francisco office. They are going to hold another celebration with their friends and family in Israel next summer.

The couple also plans to eventually organise their honeymoon through the site, after receiving a $5000 gift voucher from Airbnb.

Of their unusual meeting, Ben says “some of the best things in life happen when you least expect them – if you’re ready and open to serendipity”.

“Noa and I were simply both in the right place and time in our lives to meet the love of our life.”