Maybe I'm in the minority but I've generally had very good -- or at least, "good as I expected" -- experiences at AirBnbs, even recently. Sometimes I've stayed with rich friends who book nice places, and the experience is, as expected, very nice. Many other times I have stayed at bottom-of-the-barrel places, which were, as expected, bottom of the barrel flophouses. But tolerably so, and true to the advertisement (funny how they all have that exact same fake black leather futon though).
People say hotels are as cheap, but they never have the same amenities, and the location in town is often worse. An AirBnb with a kitchen is essentially $20-30 cheaper per day than a hotel without one. Add to that laundry, more privacy, and other perks and it's not really a fair comparison. It does seem like there are more hotel resellers and leasing companies using it as a stopgap between tenants, which I understand, but hate.
I get why they want to be an "everything app" (rich people have more money to spend on "experiences"), but other commenters are spot-on regarding the dangers of taking their eye off the ball. Seems like a better use of company attention would be to really boost and reward the genuine hosts that put their heart into it, and at least put in a modest amount of friction to slow down the corporate resellers with barebones apartments in half-remodeled buildings.
I think the people who say hotels are better than AirBnb aren't traveling with kids.
Having an actual kitchen when you travel with kids is great. Having actual separate bedrooms so we don't have to go to sleep at 8pm when the kids go to sleep is great. Being able to do laundry without tracking down a laundromat or pay exorbitant hotel prices is great. Having a living room or similar area with at least a few square metres of floor space where kids can sprawl is great.
Perhaps the difference is that you’ve been fortunate enough to never need Airbnb support to help you on something serious.
When things go well, it’s amazing. When things go poorly, you realize how anti-guest the policies and support team behave.
That’s when it changed for me. I realized how pro-host, anti-guest they are. Hotels generally seem to care when something goes wrong. Airbnb support behaves like you have inconvenienced them by raising the issue.
Yeah, Chesky is crazy if he thinks people are going to trust AirBnb enough to use it as a passport. You pay them money but their support is what you'd expect from Google's free services, i.e. nonexistent.
For me AirBnb has the dubious distinction of being the only online service I'm banned from, and I have no idea why. I barely used it and the few times I did the hosts were happy. One day I tried to log in and the app wouldn't work properly. I filed a support ticket and they told me they weren't going to tell me anything and there was no appeals process either. And that was that. My guess is I got IP clustered with another person whose account was legit banned, but really, who knows. What's the point of the ID verification process if they act like a free webmail operation anyway?
With booking.com and hotels, you're paying about the same but avoid the BS that comes with Airbnb. It's a much more reliable and predictable experience. The idea of people requiring Airbnb for anything more important than a vacation rental is horrifying.
The hotel I’m staying at right now is dirty as fuck.
The valve for the shower does not operate properly, the water pressure is extremely low and it barely gets above 90F. Other rooms in the same hotel have a different valve and the showers work fine.
“We will send a maintenance person right away” it’s been a week.
There is old food under and behind my bed.
They empty trash in the hall once a week, it fills up in two days.
They advertise laundry but the driers are all out of order. Apparently the only reason is the change collection bucket is full, the owner doesn’t trust anyone but himself to empty it, but he’s two states away.
I can hear everything through all the walls around me. I can hear people fart.
Sorry to hear that. Sister had an aneurysm a couple years ago. They coiled it, lasted two weeks, then gone. Best wishes for your father and your family.
Known chains I've stayed in there have generally been fine--but be prepared for fairly high prices and generally small rooms. Also, any sort of a view is very hit and miss given how close many tall buildings are to each other. I have had some very nice rooms but it's partly luck of the draw and partly someone else paying the tab.
Oh wow. Do I have a story about one of their competitors.
I booked a cabin via VRBO for a few nights as a celebration. It was somewhat remote, but the architecture was neat, and it was a decent deal for my budget. There was some weird cotton-like stuff and...snapping?...in one of the walls that was a bit off-putting, but nothing seemed serious.
Then, night came.
I awoke in my bedroom to something moving. Bleary eyed, I turned on the bedside light and saw something flitting almost silently in the darkness. It seemed like a large insect perhaps to my blurred vision. But whether it was the size or the weird sounds, it eventually clicked: it was a bat trapped in the high-ceiling bedroom.
So, after swiftly getting out of the room, doing some hasty research, and calling animal control, I learned two things. First, bat encounters in the area have a standing policy to IMMEDIATELY see the nearest emergency room to receive a rabies vaccination. It turns out bat bites can be super-tiny and difficult to detect, and they are carriers.
Second, I struggled to convince the limited support channels at VRBO that there was a freaking bat in their property. There was no real emergency line for support I could locate at the time, and I really hope that the information I left would somehow be used to prevent someone else using said property from, ya know, potentially contracting rabies.
To this day, I find myself more wary of property encounters. I don't think I ever got a refund for that debacle, but admittedly I may have been a bit more focused on my mortality.
There are plenty of hotels where you can get multiple rooms and a washing machine. When traveling with kids, one big advantage of hotels is predictability.
The last thing I want to do when I'm pulling in after a long flight an hour past the kids' bedtime is to deal with potentially dealbreaking problems with the place. In a hotel, they generally have maintenance on staff and extra rooms to switch into in case of problems. Generally with Airbnb, the staff is 30 minutes away and is annoyed that you've called them. Most of the time, everything is fine, but there can be snafus with locks, plumbing, cleanliness, etc, and kids make these more complicated. This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
A trick is to know which brands you need. Marriott's Residence Inn is a big reliable one (for multiple "rooms" and kitchen/laundry) that exists almost everywhere in the US. It's a part of the whole Marriott system and often in tourism lulls in various cities has deals that keep it comparatively well priced with other Marriotts in that city and will let you use Marriott points to further defray costs.
Hilton and IHG both have similar brands, but their exact names escape me at the moments. The search keywords are "extended stay" and "apartment hotels".
Depends where you are. Maybe in expensive cities where space is at a premium. But suite hotels (with various levels of kitchenette/kitchen) in the US are not, in my experience, notably more expensive--though often have simpler facilities--than more conventional hotels. (Bedroom may not be actually a different room from living room area but is often at least somewhat separated. So may not help with kids. Stay in this type of hotel in the US a lot.)
The parent led off with the value of having a full kitchen, which you have dropped—obviously because there are extremely few hotels in the U.S. that include this.
Your description of how well hotels are run does not match my experience. I’m sure it’s true of very nice hotels. It’s also true of very nice AirBnB’s! And VRBOs, which are not as well known but similar idea.
There are a whole lot of hotels that include a kitchen in the U.S. Many extended stay/suite hotels have a stove, microwave, utensils/dishes, refrigerator, and some a dishwasher. It's more rare to have an oven, although I have seen it.
There are long-term stay hotels that generally cater to business clientele, plus most of the chains have a laundry room somewhere on premise for guest use.
I haven’t seen one on each floor, either, but that’s still not as convenient as one in the room that’s yours so you can run it while you’re out to dinner or overnight while you sleep. It’s shared so you have to plan around it.
I have stayed at many hotels of varying degrees of quality all over the U.S., and I have never, not once, seen the laundry being used. It’s always been available.
On my trips outside the US, the hotel laundry rooms are usually busy. Enough that many of the hotels show individual machine status from a top-level page in the TV menu.
Do you mind elaboration on at least what region of the world you are talking about? I think this whole main thread is suffering from the globalism v diversity collision; we are a global group of people trying to compare regionally, nationally, local, or even personal experiences that differ so widely that it regresses into noise.
My experience is that e.g. it used to be a lot easier in the USA to find hotels that even just had a kitchenette or even a pay to wash “laundromat” (which is what I assume you are referring to), but maybe that is also just my personal experience. But my sense is that those offerings have been in stark decline especially over the last decades, and especially outside of the inland western half of the country that in some places is still a kind of real America that has not yet succumbed to con job level corporate practices.
It seems fairly accurate to include AB&B in those who have succumbed to “enshitification” for whatever of the several reasons that may be. In the case of AB&B it feels like MBA Wall Street types pressed to slide or chip away at ever more standards to drive “growth” and/or “cost cutting”, the only two real tricks the number monkeys have in their bag.
> My experience is that e.g. it used to be a lot easier in the USA to find hotels that even just had a kitchenette or even a pay to wash “laundromat” (which is what I assume you are referring to), but maybe that is also just my personal experience. But my sense is that those offerings have been in stark decline especially over the last decades, and especially outside of the inland western half of the country that in some places is still a kind of real America that has not yet succumbed to con job level corporate practices.
American here. The opposite is true -- there used to be few of these, and they were "upscale". Now there are tons of different low-end chains that specialize in it. Homewood Suites, Marriott/Hilton/Sheraton Suites, Embassy Suites, DoubleTree, Hyatt Place, Springhill Suites, and maybe half a dozen others.
These are usually, but not exclusively, located in areas that are a bit more rural -- I don't know if you'll find one in Manhattan, for example, and you'll see definitely them by pretty much every major freeway interchange. But I've stayed in one on Maui, in San Diego, and near the airport in SF, so you see them in "tourist" places as well.
No, I just was typing fast and grouped everything together I could think of. Embassy Suites is one of the OG "suite" chains that I'd characterize as "formerly high end, maybe mid-level right now", but YMMV.
I wouldn't characterize any of those as genuinely low-end which I'd reserve for things like Travelodge and below. Probably various shades of the midrange scale with some on the upper and some on the lower side. I'm in a Marriott SpringHill Suits at the moment which is boring but clean and comfortable enough.
Yeah, it varies. I think fundamentally you're paying for square footage, so bigger rooms will always be "mid-market", to some extent. The ones in tourist spots are fancier than the ones by Exit 5A of a freeway interchange in rural Nebraska.
The suite hotel I used in Maui, for example was pretty fancy: pool, restaurant, bar, gym, balcony rooms, etc. But the price point was certainly below equivalent hotels in the same area.
In North America, across hundreds of hotel stays, I have seen exactly zero ensuite washing machines. For extended stays, being able to kick off your laundry and leave for the day is absolutely priceless. Having to set timers and babysit coin-operated laundry on a different floor just isn't worth it, to the point where I'd rather just pay $$$ for hotel laundry service over using their communal laundry room.
A lot of "extended stay" hotels have this. One brand I've used and have had pretty good luck with is Sonder. They're not quite full service -- they have a spartan reception and want you to use their app for everything, but they do have multiple rooms, an adequate kitchen, and washing machines in the rooms.
> There are plenty of hotels where you can get multiple rooms and a washing machine
Ok... Can you show me some like that in the EU?
> This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
I staid at a hotel in Lisbon [1]that had a kitchen and washing machine. (And a kids club that would watch the kids)
There ended up being an issue with the dryer not drying. So the hotel staff took a laundry basket of clothes and delivered them washed and folded the next morning. That level of service would not have happened in an Airbnb.
Yes, trivially. There are filters for it on booking.com. Here's a link for rooms in Paris suitable for 2 adults and 2 kids with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen/kitchenette and a washing machine.
Most 4 start hotels and resorts have either connecting rooms or family rooms in Europe (the latter especially true for resorts). They are far less common on lower categories though.
I suppose to book connecting room you might have to call sometimes rather than going through online platforms though.
Hotel with kitchenette and washing are not that hard to find either. They certainly more common on location were people tend to spend longer stay rather than in touristic cities were people spend on average just a few nights (ie. mountain and seaside places were people sometimes spend weeks or even months), usually they call them aparthotels or suites depending or something like that.
For the same price, airbnb usually provides more than hotels (but with higher variation in quality).
Hotels tend to be pretty consistently good when it is over a certain price point, and at any higher price point, all you get is better views/location (and may be some amenities such as gym or pool) - aka, quality caps out and just becomes expensive.
Airbnb prices are quite correlated to quality. High priced airbnb (for example, a holiday lodge) can be _very_ good for the price. But airbnb is a sort of buyers beware type deal.
Hotels also provide tons of variation in quality. Just look up hotels in, say, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City where the options are much more than just the typical Western chains. Or compare the many non-chain "motels" in North America.
I think what you mean is "chains" tend to be pretty consistent. Which, yeah, that's always been the main value prop of a chain. You go to McDonald's in Tunisia and you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get.
Kids enforce a filter on what sort of fun you look for. Without kids, the bottom tenth percentile hotel experiences is often a few hours of bad sleep before escaping in the morning. With them, it's hours of tantrums, desperate searches for acceptable food or sleeping arrangements, and worrying for days afterwards about the effects of smoke, mold, dust etc on their health.
Going to a local place doesn't necessarily mean going in shitty places, even with family. I traveled in many countries, especially Europe and Asia, with my 2 daughters and while they do throw the usual tantrum for their ages, we always find something local they like to eat, and they don't really mind one room or another to sleep, as long as they are in the same room with at least one of us.
Yeah for sure, normally it's fine and more fun. But the potential 10th-percentile scenario can be much worse. I don't for a second judge parents that decide based on that.
I don't judge parents either, my initial comment was more global, plenty of tourists with no kids in international fast-food chains for example.
For hotels also the "chains sample" is usually skewed. There are basically no low/mid-range chains outside their core country or region. You just find high-end hotels (Hilton, Radisson, Sheraton, Four Seasons etc) all over the world.
>and worrying for days afterwards about the effects of smoke, mold, dust etc on their health.
I mean, that one is on you. It is possible to go on vacation even camping with kids without having anxiety attack over everything.
Also, while some kids are difficult and kids are slow and certainly limit you, hours of tantrumps every holiday and impossibility to eat are not normal.
Sure. I've camped at a festival with a 1 yr old. Even stayed in a campervan at a festival when they were 6 weeks old. I'm just explaining why parents might prefer the safety of well-known chain hotels vs whatever "fun" darkwater was referring to.
I’m not sure I follow the implication here, but: my point was that “camping” is generated seen as a fairly healthy vacationing option, so it seems weird to use it as the lower-bound on a spectrum that contains moldy Airbnbs and hotels.
Well, there's a reason people build homes and apartments to live in, and a reason that societies with homes and apartments are healthier than societies that sleep in tents and shacks. Dirt is... dirty.
And yes, the point being advanced in the thread is that compared to camping - which is generally healthy and not something to freak out about! - homes are going to be cleaner, occasional mold issues aside. So it's silly to freak out over the infinitesimally-slight chances of little Timmy and Sally getting dust-mold-smoke cancer-AIDS from a less-than-perfectly-sterile room.
People build houses to protect ourselves and our stuff from the elements (and other climate control reasons), for privacy, for security, that sort of stuff. They are necessary for high-density living (plumbing helps to keep poop away).
Generally though, I would expect camping to be healthier than a hotel room. Hotel rooms and airbnbs are places that many humans go through, and humans are generally the main carriers of human pathogens. The only germs on your camping gear are your own ones.
For food and drinks, I agree, but when I’m ready to go to bed, I don’t want an adventure, I want a comfortable and quiet room that I’m already accustomed to.
I have three kids. We prefer to stay in hotels with suites where the kids can sleep in a separate room. I prefer the fact that they have on-site staff. All hotels that we've stayed in for the past few years include a breakfast buffet.
The kids generally prefer hotels because they have pools.
We've found plenty of professionally run "resorts" where the space is like a small apartment, with a full kitchen and multiple bedrooms. These tend to be right in ski areas where we could walk to the lift if we were staying during the ski season. We did stay in one that was AirBNB-like because it was privately owned but the ski area handled the reservation and any issues that came up while we were there.
As I pretty avid skier its my experience that at most ski towns airbnbs cost about 50% more than hotels but have about 3x the square ft for the cost. Yea I can pay 4 grand a night for 4 hotel rooms or whatever setup youve got, or I could pay a half of that for a 3 bedroom airbnb with an outdoor hot tub. Easy decision for me
I can't put a finger on it, but I have never used AirBnB, so I probably do not know what I am missing. I have kids now, and when we move around within the EU, I have always found the hotel experience predictable and reliable (and like many say here, perhaps more expensive, though I don't know by how much). Our daily life at home/base camp is filled with chores - laundry, cooking, cleaning etc. So going and staying at a hotel with good amenities and services is a welcome change. Nice breakfast every day, in-room service, laundry on-demand etc. Of course there is a price tag, though our family has found it quite affordable with a regular EU software paycheck. Also, my experience does not extend for stays beyond a week. Anything longer would demand an apartment, for sure.
I, like you, prefer the hotel offering. Messing around with hosts and their rules is not on my list of things I want to care about, the fact that there are hidden fees and stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Hotels, I know the rules. Don't destroy or steal, make life easier for the maid: done.
With AirBNB, there's the cleaning fee, there's the self-replacement of items situation, there's the unknown state going in; and there's some faff about checking in.
However, the laundry fee's are definitely killer in hotels. I prefer to travel light and paying €8 for a pair of socks (or.. depending on the hotel manager PER SOCK) to get them washed is just painful. It's not just a high price tag at that point, it's borderline criminal markup.
I have also noticed that amenities such as Irons are less common in hotel rooms these days, which is annoying as I've started wearing shirts in my old age- worse still is the toilet situation. Modern hotels must think we're all voyeurs or something. The majority of hotels I've stayed at in the last 3 years I would not want to be with a child, frosted glass bathrooms, rarely a lock, sometimes it's just slatted wooden cabinet doors... idk, something wild is going on with hotel bathrooms man.
IME, you can quite often get an iron and ironing board brought to your room (or to pick up somewhere) by asking for one at the reception. It's kinda standard in any hotel that gets business travelers, which is most of them.
Strange. As a father of two I prefer hotels over AirBnB. Laundry could be an issue, yes, but not having a kitchen is actually a feature for me. Someone else taking care of feeding the little ones is exactly what hotels are for
Sounds like you are looking for the hotel apartments. I stayed in plenty of those and they are good deal, you get kitchen, plenty of space. Think it was 100GBP/night and with the company discount it went down to 75GBP/month
Normally, I never use a kitchen when traveling. When with GF, she does often like eggs in the morning though. So if there isn't a hotel/inn breaffast that can sometimes be useful.
I agree with respect to circumstances where you want houses or at least multi-room apartments though. Hotels aren't mostly a good fit for that although suite hotels sometimes have a couple of bedrooms.
I have 2 kids and I kinda agree but I now stay with hotels with kitchens. I have not stayed at Airbnb since they ruined me and my family’s stay during my wedding. The flat we had didn’t have a working toilet and they refused to find us a new place. They just offered a refund (only if the host confirmed toilet can’t be fixed)
Hotels aren't designed to be cooped up in. Hotels are designed for 2 things: Housing many people at the same place, and giving you a comfortable place to sleep, shower and have a breakfast in. And they're great at those.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If the kids are not toddlers any more, booking a place where you share the apartment/house with the host (or maybe other travelers) can also be a great experience.
I mean, it's an adventure, and those can also go poorly, but our experiences have been just excellent. And at those bottom-of-the-barrel prices mentioned earlier.
Just as much as many parents think having had kids is one of the proudest decisions (or happiest accidents) they have made, I think not having them is one of my best decisions, travelling is one of my many reasons for that, and I find the assumption from some parents that we should bend around their choice is a little presumptuous.
Furthermore, ignoring various other definitions of better, hotels are sometimes better value (or, at least, just less expensive) then AirBnBs these days, unless you are lucky, and inexpensive/value-for-money seems to be a very important factor for parents that I know.
Having said that I still use AirBnB sometimes, it just certainly isn't my only/preferred option as it was for a time.
It isn't about tolerance for the kids. I have no objection to them being around¹, I don't begrudge my taxes going into education and relevant parts of the NHS for them.
My issue is the assumption, amongst many of those with kids, that everything should be optimised for people with kids, and anything that isn't is wrong. Because why would you want to optimise anything for other conditions in some cases?
>Why not show the same courtesy?
There is courtesy, and there is being expected to accept suboptimal things for myself so that everything can be optimal for other peoples' choices.
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[1] except perhaps the particularly uncontrolled ones, and I acknowledge that is sometimes unavoidable
How exactly is everything optimised with families in mind? Ask any parent and I'm sure they will tell you how unoptimised their life is.
Why does a single person with their own expendable income worry so much about being catered for specifically? Your only responsibility is to yourself. Do you look around and bemoan family specific services? It's such an odd thing to care about unless you had a grudge.
Kids aren't a 'lifestyle choice' like deciding to travel. Do I need to go into the reasons why kids are important or who will be paying to keep you alive when your older?
In your response, yes. Either that or you are significantly misreading my posts.
> How exactly is everything optimised with families in mind?
It isn't. I didn't say that at all. Some things are, possibly not enough, but many parents think everything should be and everything that isn't implies some deliberate slight.
> Ask any parent and I'm sure they will tell you how unoptimised their life is.
Ah, the old “you are not a parent, you don't know how hard it is”. I know many parents, and even without that personal context the issues with parenthood are well documented throughout our culture. If anyone is ignorant of reality here it is parents who are surprised to find it isn't easy…¹
> Why does a single person with their own expendable income worry so much about being catered for specifically?
I don't, and that isn't what I said.
> Your only responsibility is to yourself.
Incorrect. I have parents, other family, friends, pets, my work (though that could be filed under responsibility to myself I suppose - I'm not a public servant by any description), other organisations (both commercial and charitable) that I interact with, certain responsibilities we all have to society in general, etc.
> Do you look around and bemoan family specific services?
I very much do not, I don't even bemoan funding them, and I explicitly said as much (to quote: “I don't begrudge my taxes going into education and relevant parts of the NHS…”). Try reading what you reply to before replying to it!
> It's such an odd thing to care about unless you had a grudge.
Not a grudge as such. Just an irritation that if I'm sometimes seen as selfish if I appreciate something that is optimised for my lifestyle. I've been called selfish for just not wanting to have kids.
> Kids aren't a 'lifestyle choice'
They very much are. It is a choice that affects your lifestyle in a great many ways whichever side you choose (or, in some cases, have chosen for you).
> Do I need to go into the reasons why kids are important
No need, I've been told these things, despite already knowing them, many many many times already!
> who will be paying to keep you alive when your older?
That is a complicated discussion that I really don't have time for ATM, but further to “why kids are important” I am well aware of the problems an average ageing population can cause.
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[1] Obviously excluding those whose kids have specific issues, be they physical, mental, or both. Those matters are not predictable unlike the general challenges almost all parents face.
Most parents want everything to cater to their family... you say. This irritates you.
However, you find it irritating when people call you selfish when things are catered for you.
Who are these people calling you selfish by the way? Who has said your selfish for not having kids for example.
This frustration with parents seem to come from a sense of guilt? Not that I agree you should feel that way. But all this talk of feeling selfish and being called selfish. I have never felt that way about any friends or family I know without kids. Never even crossed my mind.
If you're truly happy with your lifestyle choice, these things shouldn't bother you at all.
> Most parents want everything to cater to their family... you say.
You are twisting my words again. I'm strongly suspecting this is deliberate, to make my position sound more hard-line, rather than a misunderstanding on your part. I said many, which is far from most, and to those with kids not to their specific family¹.
> This irritates you.
Not directly. If you pay attention to the start of this thread² you'll see that the source of irritation was the implied “you aren't a parent so you don't understand”. Here it was said lightly, but often there is more than a hint of suggesting that those without kids, particularly those who very much don't want them, are somehow both inferior in terms of knowledge, intellect, morality, or some mix of the three.
> Who are these people calling you selfish by the way?
Currently, directly to me? No one. I've successfully convinced the world around me that my line ending here is not a bad thing!
Though it was explicitly stated in my direction in my younger years when talking about future life plans. Who was saying it? Quite a mix of people, though there was certainly a bias towards those to whom religion was an important part of how they gauge the actions/intent of others. In some cases I think people take my explicitly not wanting that way of life is me saying that the other choice is generally wrong and that they, by inference, are wrong³, which is not the case. My original home town has a prevalence of certain opinions about the world, and there was from some people a suggestion that other cultures having more children than was a concern so breeding is some sort of duty, but that is part of a different kettle of mouldy fish.
As an example more outside of myself: I have a couple of friends who would like to have themselves rendered incapable without the hassle of pills and other treatments which, for them and quite a few others, can have significant side effects, but that isn't something they are allowed to choose in this country even at their own expense. The word selfish has definitely been levelled at them (also “misguided” and similar, along with “you'll change your mind and regret it” as if they are a 14-year-old wanting a face tattoo not a 30-something trying to make their life less problemful for a week each month).
> This frustration with parents…
Again, your wording seems to be trying to frame me as saying things that I am not, here that all parents have unreasonable expectations. That is rather disingenuous of you.
> seem to come from a sense of guilt?
Nope. I don't see what I would feel guilty about here.
> If you're truly happy with your lifestyle choice, these things shouldn't bother you at all.
I am, but I have to admit to not being high-minded enough not to be bothered by the implied inferiority (“you aren't a parent, you wouldn't understand”, etc.) or that everything should cater for the other choice.
Also, I am not the only one who matters here. That the pressure to conform to traditional family models exists, means that some end up in a place that they really wouldn't have chosen for themselves and that they are not happy about.
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[1] The latter would imply I think that their view point is from an entirely self-centred perspective
[2] Assuming you are not an LLM with a limited context window so don't have access to that!
[3] This certainly applies to a couple of people who have since popped out enough, or been the cause of others having them, to make up for my lack of desire to have any. How much it applies more generally is less provable.
It is really location specific. For some locations, the hotel experience is better/cheaper and hotels (serviced apartments) can have kitchens/privacy.
The problem is not much of the hotel/apartment but rather the platform. AirBnb manipulates search results, prices and UX to squeeze harder. It now wants to up sell "experiences" that it puts in your face every-time you open the app. It is just exhausting as the rest of everything on the internet that is taking the same path.
I don't even really understand the concept of comparing AirBnB prices to hotel prices? Unless you're literally just looking for the cheapest place to safely spend the night with zero considerations beyond that they just aren't the same product. Staying in an apartment or house and staying in a hotel are vastly different experiences.
Want hotel quality and safety with apartment perks? Just go to an apartment hotel! It costs more than a hotel/AirBnB but you're also not at the whims of random hit-or-miss listings and shady shit. And they clean your room if you want them to!
They're not nearly as common as Airbnb apartments in most countries. I also trust Airbnb listings and reviews more than what I find on most booking sites.
I don't trust AirBnb reviews much at all. When I've found the same place on AirBnb and Booking, the difference was always clear: AirBnb has only glowing reviews with nothing wrong at all, while Booking reviews were much more realistic with also some critical but fair observations included.
The AirBnB review system feels fairly useless. I've had some pretty poor experiences with AirBnB, but I am loath to give severe ratings or write anything too awful. I would like to give fair warnings to subsequent guests but it never feels like it would help. Instead I do try to give direct feedback to hosts if they are available.
Maybe some way to secretly write problems, and get next guests to agree/disagree with each concern?
Repeatable patterns of problems (rather than one-off bad luck) are what I'm most interested in avoiding.
I find booking.com has been more reliable, and less risks of unexpected costs. AirBnB is usually way less professional.
When writing reviews in-app, there's a certain pressure to not fuck someone over.
For instance, hypothetically, there might be a listing that mentions plenty of clean towels, a swimming pool, and a walk to a convenience store. I get there and there were two towels, the swimming pool was one of those above-ground models, and the convenience store was a 20 minute walk.
Leaving a negative review on AirBnB might fuck the guy over in search results or certain incentives, so I wouldn't really delve into the definition of "plenty" and how a "swimming pool" should mean "a pool that's large enough to swim in" and not "a big puddle that's perfectly suited for splashing around in, but less so for actual swimming". I might mention them in a private note to the renter or something, but it's not egregious enough to sabotage the otherwise-perfectly-fine service I was provided.
There's no such direct gamification with a third-party review site, so I might bring these things up there.
It's similar to leaving a thumbs up for an Amazon driver who walks on the lawn because he didn't notice the paved walkway. Was it "perfect delivery"? No. But is it something I'd want the guy to have negative employment ramifications over? Also no.
The problem I've seen with those is that all those places have turned to using Airbnb to manage guests and bookings. The whole little industry that spawned is beyond bizarre to me. Like everyone wanting to hyper optimize and the uniqueness disappeared.
From a utility perspective not really. You need a safe comfortable place to sleep, a clean bathroom, maybe a TV, some space for your stuff and that’s basically it.
The experience is OUT THERE, not where you are staying.
So yea I’m looking for the cheapest place that meets the bar. Sometimes it’s Airbnb but usually it’s a hotel.
I used to like Airbnb. It's not better or cheaper than hotels, but when travelling with kids it makes a big difference.
Until I had a bad experience, that turned horrible. I saw a side of the company that made me think "never again".
I rented a place from a "superhost" that looked very nice on paper. It was in fact very bad. Everything in the description was misleading, photos were doctored to look nice, "windows" opened to a wall on the next building two feet away, there was mold everywhere, the shower flowed into the bedroom, etc.
At this point it wasn't the end of the world; I stayed two nights and went home. Then I wrote a bad review. It was simply descriptive and contained no harsh language of any kind.
The review was immediately taken down; I asked why, and received a barrage of emails from Airbnb (some automated, some maybe not) saying that they were very sorry, they understood this wasn't the outcome I expected, but they couldn't publish it.
Turns out, Airbnb will go to extreme lengths to protect their hosts, because they are much more valuable to the company than one random customer.
But if the reviews are fake or filtered, then I can't trust the platform.
I went back to booking.com; they now have properties in addition to hotels, and are much more professional.
I don't agree that Booking.com handles customer complaints better than Airbnb. I had booked a flat through Booking.com. The host wanted a deposit of my credit card information via an untrustworthy customised Italian website for a deposit before handing over the pin to collect the key. I do not speak Italian. Giving my credit card information to a strange website whose language I don't speak was not part of the agreement. The host then refused to give me access to the flat. My complaint to Booking.com was answered with standard texts pointing out that the deposit was obligatory in the small print and therefore part of the contract. However, the small print, which I admittedly had not read before booking, stated that the deposit was to be paid in cash. It didn't say anything about credit cards. I tried over five rounds of back and forth to get a complaint and a refund via Booking, as I didn't actually receive the flat and therefore didn't get any service. Booking then simply stopped replying. When I then wanted to take legal action and claim the amount, it turned out that I would have had to sue somewhere in Holland. So all the money was gone and I had double the cost for that night because I had to book a room elsewhere. So I've had the worst experience with booking.com customer support.
I booked one with swimming pool, advertising enough room for 6 person.
View was amazing, as advertised. The bed in the living room was inflatable and deflated over night. Only three forks in kitchen drawer.
Convoluted scheme to enter the building and room cause they want to hide the fact it's an Airbnb as it's not really allowed in that building.
Swimming pool was on maintenance since 2 months.
Airbnb couldn't care less, basically I was being annoying to them. They didn't publish my honest review.
Sure having a kitchen and a comfy place to rest is nice, since that experience I'm very reluctant to take again that risk, especially with kids.
Same experience here. It was shocking how bad Airbnb’s customer service was. When 95% of the stays are good it doesn’t matter but that one bad stay soured me on the company entirely
Almost every Airbnb I've stayed over the past few years has been subpar compared to how it is advertised. The most recent one in Malaysia had cockroaches in the kitchen. Airbnb is now the last resort after I've exhausted staying in hotels.
At this point, I stay away from serviced apartments altogether. At least with a hotel you can go to reception and demand they fix your issue.
The only exception is actual vacation homes that people rent out when they're not there. If it's not clearly a vacation home, I know that it's going to suck in at least one way.
This is the same asymmetry why I wont buy a tesla until tesla allows any mechanic to fix problems with it.
ie, you are beholden to the manufacturer or seller, and are at their mercy. This becomes more important as the car ages.
In this case also, it appears that the customer has no recourse (bad reviews are taken down.)
In Germany it's apparently illegal to leave a bad review of a business. Even if their experience was bad. Even if you can prove in a court of law that they lied on their listing.
Leaving a negative review is not outright illegal, but it can lead to legal consequences if deemed defamatory or false. If a review contains unsubstantiated claims or personal attacks, the business can pursue legal action for defamation.
The nuances of these laws can vary, so context matters significantly in legal interpretations.
I've been a digital nomad for the last 9 years. Airbnb is a huge reason why my experience has been so great. How else can I show up in a city in a new country , spend 5 minutes the day before I arrive, and end up with a nice furnished apartment in a great location for a week's stay?
Oh, how lovely it is so convenient for you, e.g. the "silent majority" while the residents of those cities foot the direct and indirect bill from reduced availability of the real-estate and the ever-increasing costs.
Anywhere you could build a hotel you could also build more housing, so they pose the same issue. There is necessarily some tension between using space for permanent housing and using it for tourism / short term stays. Tourism often keeps a city's economy healthy, and having short term stays is important for those visiting even for non-tourism reasons (e.g. in town to visit family, for work, etc).
The housing issue is more complex than just Airbnb / short-term housing as well: is there enough housing investment? what is the effect of international or corporate investment? are local regulations supporting or sabotaging the effort to build more housing? is there a large speculation market?
Ignoring some nuances, I see what you're saying-- At least in the long run.
The issue is however in the short run, air BNB encourages taking existing rentals out of the market to turn into short term rentals. The effect is driving long term rental prices toward the short term price level supported by income level of the visitors. (untenable for most residents).
The conversation of new units refers to a decades long process dependent on credit cycles and investment interest.
It is like arguing that the exodus from the rust belt in the late 80s and 90s was good for the cities because it made the cost of housing go down.
This is true if we focus entirely on housing cost and basically ignore all the down sides. Of course, ignoring the perspective of those who owned real estate too at that time.
Real estate always has quite a bit of preference falsification associated with it too. Everyone is always publicly outraged at the cost increase of real estate while those who own the increasing real estate are internally quite happy with the situation. I suspect that is the main variable why we can never solve this problem.
But...why should some direct investment towards "housing" if they can direct them towards the day-rentals ? Its definitely in their economical self-interest. So as long as we allow these platforms (be it AirBnB, Amazon or FB) to amplify a single parameter at the detriment of everything else in the society as a whole, I am afraid all the philosophical discussions about "complex" aspects will not help.
This is a supply/demand problem. Your solution is to restrict the supply of short term rentals. Restrictions rarely work, the hypothetical situation you mention would benefit from allowing more building of long term rentals.
No, I did not suggest the solution you are implying my comment meant. What I am saying is that these PLATFORMS are not the right way to handle the supply of short-term rentals, as they incentivise the home-owners to take them off the market for long-term rentals. I would be perfectly fine with short-term rentals which were not the converted living units. We have to think differently here. But if the push comes to shove, actually restrictions would work here in favour of the long-term rentals, because being, as you said yourself, a supply-demand problem, it would raise the supply of long-term rentals and reduce the prices. Just as it was happening before AirBnB. Its just that we have to be moral enough to recognise that the basic human right of a local in a tourist location to live affordably is set higher than the luxury problem of the so-called digital natives, namely, booking a short-term rental in a city center (so they can produce yet another piece of "content"). Not to mention that a platform which does not generate profit should not even be allowed to exist.
Most of the case it is because more building is simply not possible.
And anyway as long as there is no restrictions on the day-rental, investor will choose the option in their economical self-interest. Restriction must apply to force long term rentals.
I think what's at play here is the unusually palpable crowding out effects of tourism compared to any other industry. That is, when local stores get replaced by tourism shops, Landmarks etc. become more important than everyday amenities and the town becomes a sort of museum of itself.
Of course tourism can pipe in money and help a place invest in high quality services and amentaties compared to catering to industry.
However tourism often has a tremendous income distribution problem (see Hawaii or Colorado living conditions of service workers). This remains a fundamentally political problem to guarantee income distribution through living wage guarantees etc.
> Anywhere you could build a hotel you could also build more housing
Not really in practice. Ex: there's lots of hotels around airports and highways. Would anyone want to buy a house there? Definitely not. The markets and thus economics are totally different.
> having short term stays is important for those visiting even for non-tourism reasons (e.g. in town to visit family, for work, etc)
I don't know about "important", but "useful" yeah. The thing is like, how ubiquitous is this? I'd naively guess for every 1 person who finds this useful, 1000s more are negatively impacted by Airbnb.
There is endless housing immediately by airports and highways. Like literally any major American airport or highway has tons of housing right next to it. Even in more rural areas people deliberately building a house right by the airport to make routine traveling easier
You're blaming the wrong people for the issue. Obviously there is demand for tourism in a way that hotels do not fulfill and the people who bought and rent out/host these residences are the ones enabling it by adding supply.
As someone who spends time being digital nomad myself, it isn't my fault when I stay in an AirBNB that is available somewhere since I'm just consuming the available supply that is permitted by the local government and I'm all for residents having priority. Often time its a local resident who owns and rents out the place in the first place, blame them for not renting to locals if you want. Its the local regulations and governments responsibility to regulate this.
I started out loving AirBNB. Then I had quite a few bad experiences and flipped back to hotels as the price equalised. In the last year or two I’ve gone back to AirBNB as the hosts seem to have professionalised and hotel prices have headed north.
Hotels.com also cancelled a brilliant loyalty programme of buy 9 nights get the 10th free which was another motivation to look elsewhere.
I am currently on vacation in the Mediterranean and find a hybrid model to be the best of both worlds. We strictly use booking.com (we need to find a hotel at 6pm and check in at 7. Same thing the next day.Airbnb would never work.) Booking.com lists apartments too. I would imagine there's a huge overlap with airbnb properties. This way you're using the better company (they helped me out a bunch of times. And the listers are more inclined to behave on booking.com.) but staying in the same apartments with all the positives you listed. It's all self check in now too. I have yet to see any owner or manager.
This has always been my experience as well. And like I mentioned above, the people listing places on booking.com are much more likely to try to deal with you properly. I think on AirBNB the renters can even look at your prior reviews to judge how likely you are to give a positive review before they accept the reservation. And they can cancel at any time even after you've paid.
I think the core value prop of Airbnb is (or should be) to provide a different experience than a hotel. It may have been "cheaper than a hotel" at one point and idk what the numbers are on how people are using it but in my experience it excels for larger groups or for people just looking for a more house-like experience than a hotel. Being able to stay in a nice house with a bunch of friends in any city is an amazing thing they made a lot more accessible.
Doesn't really make a lot of sense to me to just shop on price and then compare the experience to booking a hotel room, it's totally different.
Anecdotally I've never heard anyone say "VRBO." Maybe they are using it but just saying "yeah we stayed in an Airbnb" kind of like if you use Lyft but call it Uber cause that's the more common noun.
So I feel like they did successfully establish themselves as the noun for that kind of thing, which to me speaks to the power of the idea and the marketplace they created because the name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
But overall I think the hotel room market is just much larger than the "boutique group stay" market so they have to maintain position as a direct hotel competitor (but I think it is an issue vis-a-vis people complaining here about things like having to coordinate with an individual even though they willingly chose that route).
I agree with all that. One or two people mostly looking for a decent place to stay in the right location without hassle probably describes most travelers under most circumstances. I know it does me and I've travelled over 100 days a year at times. And that's probably not atypical of a lot of business travelers.
Even these days I'm not mostly looking to deeply research my overnight stays much of the time and often default to my hotel chain of choice or a hotel/Aparthotel that I have previous experience with.
Chesky is having a Jobs moment, when Apple went from making Computers to smartphones and much much more. It didn’t happen in a day though. More importantly, by that time, Jobs had already built Next from the ground up, and supported and funded the growth of Pixar into an animation powerhouse. He had all the additional experience shaping his perception on what people want and how people will react to something.
I think Airbnb will have a branding issue. By transitioning from rentals to offering a wide range of services, they might dilute their brand before people have the chance to fully embrace and experience the new offerings.
Perhaps they should reinvent themselves as a platform that manages travel and stays, emphasizing that their “airbnb certified experience” includes access to specific facilities and guarantees. This way, users can choose from other service providers in their marketplace with their own standards. That way, expanding to more services over time would seem like an organic expansion.
Essentially, Airbnb could transition from managing services to a marketplace model that also hosts managed services and other providers. However, by maintaining a focus on “stays” or “travels” and slowly adding more ancillary services would prevent dilution before their metamorphosis is complete.
There will be a rebranding in the next ten years. Airbnb will get a slightly more blocky or rounded version of the same logo and ads everywhere announcing how "Airbnb is now Air".
I can't tell who owns air.com, but the website it hosts is a tiny landing page from someone who would obviously sell.
The rebranding will be met by a slew of astonished articles asking "they spent how much?" and almost as many apparently-thoughtful midwit counterpoints saying no, it looks obvious in hindsight, but it took real marketing genius to conceive of this in advance.
My issue with Airbnb stays is privacy. I don’t trust that the vendors (they’re really not ‘hosts’ nowadays) have not placed cameras and microphones throughout the rooms. I do trust that most (not all!) hotel owners don’t.
is this even a widespread problem? kind of reminds me of the tiktoks of "hotel safety tips"[1]. Makes me think these levels of paranoia are unique to the US
> Airbnb prohibits indoor security cameras and recording devices, including audio, in most listings globally.
It should not be difficult to find a security camera. (Microphone is a different matter.) If you find one, you can report to AirBnB, and I am sure the renter will be immediately delisted. And, it is probably just plan illegal in many jurisdictions.
Security cameras (like Google Nest) are not the concern people have: hidden cameras are. It is possible to rig an entire property without any chance of guests finding the cameras. The scale at which it happens is a question (and varies based on country) but the illegality isn't the issue. The dissemination of videos and photos secretly recorded of guests and their children is the issue. There are people in prison for doing this but the damage is done, videos and photos of their guests are online forever.
and my point is that there is no reason to think this is enough of a problem that any well-adjusted person should factor it into the "should I use Airbnb?" calculation. If someone thinks that is an issue then I would assume they never use public bathrooms.
This is not a useful response. The intent of my comment was to say: If you are renting an AirBnB and you find "hidden" cameras, then you can first complain to AirBnB. If the local jurisdiction prohits cameras, then you can call the police to report it.
That's not real. People don't live like that. That's just engagement slop for tiktok.
Also, I would argue that it may not be common, but it's much more likely with airbnb versus a hotel chain. Two reasons; more access to the space without witnesses, and the owner is more likely to know if their preferred gender is going to occupy that particular space.
Meaning, hotel staff can be walked in on by other hotel staff, and there is no guarantee that the attractive person you want to see nude is going to get room 203. Whereas you can see who is renting your Airbnb, and you have access to it by yourself all the time.
Yeah, I've had pretty great experiences with Airbnbs. I'm usually traveling with kids, hotel rooms are small, it's really nice to have a kitchen with kids, and a lot of airbnbs have amenities that the kids like.
Hotels try to milk parents with kids and either force you to take basically another booking, or have few 2-bedroom (or 1 bedroom and living room = parental bedroom) ones, often for almost double the price. Most were designed in another era, and it shows - booked rooms are basically just caves for sleeping.
We only use such if there are no other options in given area or if we want food prepared (this quickly becomes another chore with small kids).
I've never seen a well rated airbnb place with many reviews being bad. They may not be stellar in some aspect, ie small maintenance may be lacking but otherwise having a full kitchen with wash machine is pretty amazing for any type of trip, and one has a wide variety of locations and prices. Also it allows you to experience the place a bit more, compared to hyper sterile and uniform hotel experiences.
Lets not forget airbnbs would never become a thing if they werent cheaper than hotels (or at least provided much better experience at similar price).
They've gotten much much better in the last 5 years. After all the small time would-be "empire builders" who overcharged for shoddy units and abused residential real estate laws got cleaned out of the system, it seems like what's left is a decent middle ground of professional operators running full time rental units, with a few of the original style unique experiences left here and there. The standards have gone way up, and it's generally better than a hotel at the same price point again, which it was absolutely not for most of 2015-2020ish.
Depending on the location you get a bunch of people basically who own a vacation home they get priority to use and rent out the rest of the time. Which is honestly rather nice for both the guests and the hosts.
That was my preferred experience too - well maintained and lived in just enough to make sense. Some places do cheap out on "perks" that seem there only to boost themselves in rankings/filters, but otherwise been a pleasant experience.
We did this in the 80s and 90s so this is not something unique to airbnb, airbnb just did it "on an app". When I say "did this" I mean rented a duplex or house for a couple weeks for a vacation.
VRBO did whole-house vacation rentals in the U.S. well before AirBnB. Still around and works well. I’d say we book about half the time through VRBO and half the time through AirBnB.
AirBnB’s differentiator on launch was “rent just one room” in an owner-occupied dwelling. Remember when it was “the sharing economy”? There are still listings like that, but I think most of the money is in whole-dwelling rentals now.
I genuinely love that 'rent just a room' (or even just a bed!) function of Airbnb, and continue to use it till this day. Have met many interesting people (or as I heard another comment on here say "weird in a non-dangerous way" lol), and it's always felt like a safe and quality experience to me (so long as I always do the due diligence and use common sense to stay with hosts that have tons of positive reviews, etc). IIRC Airbnb had a push a few 'releases' ago to revive this core part of their founding purpose, but now it seems they've moved on to 'services'.
Rented 25 Airbnb’s . half were bad. by bad I mean they were not as advertised. Claimed to have parking for my car. didn’t. claimed to have wifi. didn’t. claimed to be at a particular location on a quiet street, were actually several blocks away on a busy street. been to ones who’s hvac was so loud as to be unusable, etc…
The whole cleaning routine for these places is getting pretty ridiculous though. I have to pay a cleaning fee, get the sheets from the bed and put it in the laundry, and whatever arbitrary stuff is in the checkout list. It never felt turnkey as a hotel.
I think I’m the wrong audience though, as I’m happy as a clam with something like a Best Western or a Motel 6.
Prices are pretty close to hotels, but laundry and Kitchen always tilt the scale in favour of AirBnb.
When travelling for a week, I don't want to each out every day. I appreciate having a couple of things in the fridge for lazy moment, or being able to cook breakfast if I want to stay in late.
And I can wash a bunch of clothes instead of paying €8 to wash a single shirt.
I was a digital nomad for 4 years. The ability to do your own laundry is why I prefer an Airbnb over hotel, especially when you’re only living out of carryon luggage with a few days of clothing. Relying on hotel laundry is hard to time and is not cheap.
How widespread those are depends very much on the country. There are some in which most people haven't seen a laundromat in their life outside of American movies.
I didn't say that they are unique to America. And yes, many countries do have them in abundance. Many others do not, or they are rare enough that you might not have one nearby.
I'm from Russia originally and the first time I have ever seen one outside of a movie was when I moved to Canada. Russia does have them, but, generally speaking, only in large cities.
markets are, by and large, too competitive for the "everything" app to ever exist. Air BnB works because they have figured out managing search and and a network of "hotels". This may not translate to other services in a way that other platforms could not do better. 'Why doesn't Uber do hotels?' - type of thing.
Airbnb made the same mistake Google did: They screwed up their core service. I used to be a steady ABB customer but now hotels are almost always cheaper, offer better service, and are more predictable.
Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.
I had this experience too. Booked on AirBnb with someone who was about the same price as the hotels. Turns out the hosts were just employees of some letting company. They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_, which I declined. Contacting AirBnb support they said this was fully allowed and I should have read the description harder. I did get a full refund but was told it was only because it was "my first time" and I've never had other issues.
I'm glad I turned around and booked with a hotel. It was very personable, good value, and better than what I would've gotten for the same price on AirBnb for that city.
> They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_
Yup my average airbnb experience in eg Spain is: dealing with an agent, asked to submit all my personal data to some random third party, all other communication done via WhatsApp, and often my number is given to third parties without my consent who spam me with things like offers of experiences/day trips etc
Just note that in a lot of countries, like Spain, the rental or hotel establishments are required by law to collect a lot of your information. It feels totally intrusive, but it's the law unfortunately.
Sure, but I expect AirBnB to handle this. (At least clearly communicate the requirement, cite the relevant statutes, link them, explain them, and help both parties be compliant while respecting users' privacy and hosts' time.)
Also, in places where there are such requirements, someone not following them and requesting the information could be a significant red flag. What other ordinances are they ignoring that could affect your safety or just your enjoyment?
I had some random folks in hostel reception taking full photo with their private smartphone of my id document "for the police", despite I clearly said I do not consent to have a copy of my document taken. Spanish hosts are absolutely shady and sloppy privacy wise.
EDIT. Spaniards don't take it personally. There is a war at the EU borders and there are waves of scams and various predatory behaviours, plus usual organised scams from Balkans, China, and India. Visitors will not be happy about their documents being scanned.
Where it’s the law for the lodging provides to have a copy of ID, you either consent to have them make a copy of your ID or you don’t get a place to stay. You don’t get to not consent and also get a place to stay.
They were probably telling the truth. It’s pretty common to have to register hotel/hostel stays with the authorities, and it’s increasingly uncommon to own a flatbed scanner - so what did you expect them to do, pull out a DSLR?
I'd expect them to get the right equipment for them to operate their business instead of having people use their private cell phones to save my photo id to their personal iCloud account and God knows where else.
It's like you're arguing banks should be absolved of using tls because it's just so tricky.
If your business requires you to handle PII I expect you to have the right equipment and processes to handle it.
I stayed with a friend in a Balkan country a couple years back and she had to take my passport and that of a couple of relatives down to the police station.
There are too many shady middlemen in the vacation rentals space. I refuse to rent any place that has a separate lease, but they're no longer unheard of.
To some degree, I understand the businessification of rentals - it's uncomfortable for both parties if you're trying to get a grandma to meet you to exchange keys after a late flight. But also, that person-to-person charm is a big part of why people chose Airbnbs in the first place. If it's just an IKEA flip of an old apartment, why bother?
I've actually noticed that my taste in interior design has been impacted. The "pastel and sculpted veneer" aesthetic that took over Airbnb, "modern" coffee shops, and supposedly adult furniture brands like West Elm disgusts me now. I suspect it would have appealed to me if it hadn't been badly copied with shitty materials so many times. Now, I associate it with hollow experiences, poor craftsmanship, and attempts to get me to pay more for a "quality" I won't receive.
Here in Italy the law say that it’s mandatory to meet in person to give you the keys and to do identification, so the grandma should meet you anyway
Of course there are people that still ignore this, but the government has started to crackdown on this a bit, for example some months ago they started removing key boxes on the walls in the street
Not OP but something similar to me has happened in Berlin, but in my understanding this is more due to local regulation which effectively makes "true" Airbnb's illegal and the places that remain on the platform are basically apartment letting businesses
I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
I think airbnb is still the better option in many situations - such as when you are willing to pay a premium to be in nature or you going on vacation with 6+ people.
I don't really see how better tech would ever prevent this outcome. Perhaps this disappointing in terms of continual growth, but I think it was inevitable and still provides a good path for the company to be uniquely useful.
The only way to compete against the economy of scale was the original thesis of AirBnB. People were renting out their primary homes to bring in an extra stream of income. It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
> It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
It was never meant to be. It definitely has been though. Lots of people making much more money renting out AirBnBs rather than using their property for long term leasing. Which has obviously compounded the housing issues most cities are currently experiencing.
Cities ossified to unimaginably bad levels, which clamped down demand for large-scale construction, which significantly contributed to the productivity of said industry stagnating since "forever".
Compared to these structural problems short term tourist rentals are a complete red herring.
Say I own a house and I just rent it out a few weeks a year. Even if it's not a source of income I am still going to price it to the highest amount that people are willing to pay.
And better. It was all around a better experience, analogous to Uber vs taxi. But while Uber is still more convenient than taxi, I haven't even considered using AirBnB in years.
agreeing (strongly) that uber is better than taxi, and yet again on price it is because uber skirts the law-- drivers typically do not have commercial insurance etc and also uber subsidized rides for a long time with VC money.
>When you earn with a transportation network company (TNC), referred to here as ridesharing, most states require extra—and costly—insurance.
>Uber maintains this commercial insurance on your behalf. What’s covered depends on factors such as who was at fault; whether you were offline, online, en route, or on-trip; and your personal insurance policy. Learn more about the commercial insurance coverage Uber maintains on your behalf below.
But I still think it was inevitable that cities caught up, either by restricting AirBNB units or giving in and allowing more hotel construction. There was no path for Airbnb to grow for 30 years without it ending up with basic econmics.
Here in Europe there are a lot of local websites for this kind of group accomodations in nature etc. and often the hosts there are much much more approachable and friendly, plus it's often cheaper than Airbnb.
One big example is Gites de France [1] with 55k listings, which is a 70 year old guide. Most of these aren't anywhere else. It doesn't make sense to look elsewhere when travelling in France. Other countries often have something similar, maybe in a smaller scale. For example there are holiday homes websites in the Netherlands, with close to 1000 listings [2].
> I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
Reminder that airbnb was supposed to be about renting your place when you were out of town, not buying 5 buildings to become an hotel chain yourself...
At least hotels don't ask you to clean the dishes, switch of the fridge and do the laundry before you leave
Shouldn’t it expected that a hotel would be able to provide a better service considering they are doing it in bulk and specialise in it. Vs a bunch of individual untrained hosts.
Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
I think it's mostly the fact that AirBnB stopped being outside the law. Once municipalities started regulating them, hosts started paying taxes etc.. they lost the price edge.
In corporate lingo, I think their “core business” is any vacation rental? Partnering with hotels could perhaps have been a viable path for them to grow that and still fit with their business acumen. But I use other platforms for that service now.
There's no need to be super different. AirBnB has a huge userbase, cashflow, reputation, etc... they ought to provide a good search and booking service to users. (And there's all the potential for adding more and more upsell points and value-added services. From flights, insurance, car rental, local activities, museum and national park tickets to ... whatever they are now fucking around with, like fitness and food.)
No, AirBnB just became much more expensive. And it's disguised as processing fees, cleaning fees, etc.
So if I ever take the risk of getting an Airbnb instead of a hotel, then I know the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.
It's like uber: the bait and switch to a service that becomes less good and more expensive is costing them because the competition survived the first wave.
Also, the regulations caught up with them.
Basically, they wanted to win by scummy means, like a lot of American startup that calls doing illegal or immoral stuff "growth hacks".
Still worked well, they are a leader, but not enough to kill the game, and now they have to fight.
> ...the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.
This probably won't work for you. It specifically violates Airbnb's TOS to attempt this, and Airbnb scans all messages between you and the host to ensure that you are not attempting this.
As for arranging it with a F2F conversation with the host, it's been years since I've rented an Airbnb and met a host F2F. That doesn't happen much any more.
The next ones I'll do it and I know it will work because I've been doing it regularly for years. I always get the personal phone number of the host, AirBnB can't do jack about it.
In fact, it's not legal for AirBnB to prevent it in my country.
Between loyalty programs, clearer pricing, and just not having to stress about cleaning rules or weird checkout times, they’ve quietly caught up while Airbnb got distracted
This made me realize that their original strategy was to extract the promise from the fat long tail of their respective supply ("unique experience" for abnb, "relevant search results" for goog). But then the Septembers are apt to become eternal if you can't keep it at a level manageable by humans, like a dang-or-2
From TFA
>I want to be a luchador!” he tells me, then immediately regrets it.
(dang is probably quite great at minimizing regrets a la Jeff, the insta ones most of all)
>Leave it to the subconscious to highlight what matters.
> Chesky figured that Airbnb’s experience in attractively displaying homes, vetting hosts, and responding to crises could make it more trustworthy than competitors and therefore the go-to option for virtually anything.
Online reviews are totally broken. I recently spent a week at an Airbnb in the Gold Coast, Australia. The property was rated 5* but was tired and worn. The photos must have been 5 years old before a soul set foot in the place.
I rated it 3*. Shortly after, I got a phone call from the owner. He had my number because I'd had to call him because one of the two toilets in a five-bedroom 14-guest 'villa' was blocked. As in, overflowing with fecal matter blocked.
He essentially tried to bribe me to raise my review. I refused. The house is currently listed as 4.9* with those same photos. A preposterous exaggeration of its quality.
I too had similar experience. I booked a 4.9 rated property with 30 reviews. But experience was really poor and I rated 1 stars post checkout. The propery owner reachout to me asking for explanation but I wasn’t in any mood to discuss.
Hours later they filed fake complaint to Airbnb that I rated poorly as I wanted late checkout and asked money to remove review. Airbnb removed my review post that.
I had a flight to catch so I couldn’t checkout late anyway. I shared even flight details with Airbnb but they didn’t reinstate review and added a strike to my account.
I expect host did this previously as well to improve their rating.
Had a similar experience where a Sydney AirBnB listed their property as air-conditioned. Had a misting fan. That doesn't quite cut it as "air conditioning" in 45C weather. Had the same outcome as you. Ended up doing a chargeback on my card and got banned from the platform.
Yes, I had a similar experience. Reviews on Airbnb can't be trusted because most hosts are experts at having bad reviews removed. But if reviews can't be trusted then the whole thing is worthless.
I've become a lot more jaded about online reviews over the years.
I had an Amazon review removed because apparently mentioning that a competing product is more effective goes against their TOS.
I had a WordPress plugin review removed because apparently a critical vulnerability that got our site hacked isn't a valid reason to give it one star.
I had a local BBQ chain offer to give me a free bottle of sauce if I let them watch me give them a 5-star rating on Google.
I've seen tons of video game and app websites apply "anti review-bombing" measures to factor out thousands of low ratings for being supposedly off-topic, often for major games that they're financially affiliated with through sales or advertising.
And that's just for third-party websites. If a company's website has customer ratings/reviews for their own products, then the conflict of interest is too great to even pretend that they might be legitimate.
Oh absolutely. This makes leaving bad reviews even more important.
- leave unemotional matter-of-fact reviews so they can't complain for slander
- leave them days later so they can't link them to you
- leave them for businesses that provide incentives for 5-star reviews
- leave them when multiple reviews already complain about unethical actions taken by the owner
A 4-star HIG hotel in Bangkok once proposed I leave a good review to fix one of their mistakes. I firmly said I wouldn't and then mentioned the request in my 2-star review. The mistake was assigning "free breakfast" to the wrong room in a 2-room booking. Had to fight 3 days to get it fixed.
The problems you mention are real; but on average it seems Google Maps review are fair; in my experience they tend to reflect the reality better.
I think it would be interesting to be able to see an Airbnb place directly on Google maps (via a direct link), to compare reviews there; I'm working on a simple Tampermonkey script to do just that, will post it when ready.
Ye reviews doesn't work when the reviewed know who reviews and what they say.
It is technically possible to add a delay or whatever such that the land lord doesn't know who gave the review.
And there are social problems too. It is like you never give anyone anything but 5/5 if some app make you rate someone, unless maybe the worker try to murder you. A 4 is a 1.
But I think landlords are in a way better position vs AirBnB than gig workers are versus their employers.
At least he was apologetic about the shitty toilet.
The last time I ever directly gave Airbnb money the host accused my female work colleague of blocking the toilet with menstrual products and charged us 400CAD for a plumber to "fix" it. My colleague was incensed -- she angrily stated that the chronology was wrong, demonstrated that no aforesaid items were in her possession, but the host didn't believe it. We ended up with my card being billed before claiming successfully on travel insurance. I can't believe that happened in Toronto -- Canada is one of the nicest places on the planet -- but (US) Airbnb support took the hosts side instantly and wouldn't budge. We had a shitty toilet for a week!
The last time I stayed in one was in a urine soaked crash pad with cardboard covering the broken windows in Montréal. We spent five hours there around the unsafe electrical unit before they did actually sort something else out. The host didn't reply to emails and it later turned out had been arrested, explaining both his silence and the less than salubrious people we'd previously been sharing with.
I deleted my account and refuse to go in airbnbs now. Booking.com is far from brilliant but at least it's scatologically free so far...
You're lucky. I had a real bad experience and the host managed to get Airbnb delete my review, I think the reason was something like host interactions were not relevant to the review? It was completely ridiculous.
This reminds me of the time Amazon deleted my review about being sent expired products because the review wasn't about the product. It made me very dubious of the veracity of other reviews.
What I’ve learned (the hard way) is that you just get what you pay for. If an Airbnb is $100 and all the hotels in the area are $200, no matter what the photos look like and how good the reviews are, it will be terrible. Most people review at the end of their trip, when the disappointment of getting a crappy place is starting to fade, and tend to rate cheap places better than they really deserve.
This is a general problem. These things worked before those platforms became successful enough to warrant a cottage industry around them. Nowadays there are "reputation management" companies specializing in getting bad reviews deleted by any means and shady businesses will actively bribe or shame customers into giving them perfect scores. For a while everyone knew that 5 star and 1 star ratings are often fake and that you should check the ratings in between to get the real ones but nowadays those often don't exist or are just as fake (often left by shadier "reputation management" companies to score them an easy win if the business hires them).
What services like Airbnb would need would be direct partners actually testing the listings in person. But that costs money and requires hiring staff, which is antithetical to the business model of "gig economy" apps which exist in order to avoid the overhead of running a real company in that industry by instead offloading all the work to "gig workers" as independent contractors.
bribes or people just commenting "great" on avg or below avg offerings
If someone rents a place with scheduled roof repairs, not informing AirBnB or customer, they should be eternally banned. I couldn't even get a full refund.
I can't imagine actual hospitality places with a long tradition around Mediterranean to ever do something like that.
I feel like it's very similar with everything:
* suitcases without nice silent rubber wheels, even premium suitcases have loud plastic ones,
* airplanes are a chore, descending into madness over time,
* eternally inefficient software, becoming slower and slower on faster hardware,
* tiktok guitarists without skill showing off their montaged videos earning a living through popularity,
the majority is voting out quality and care out of everything.
This same thing can be said for Google Maps and many other platforms.
I effectively stopped using Airbnb, both due to prices that are approaching or more expensive than hotels, but also because of this shift of hosts to only caring about reviews and focusing on making a steady stream of new people checking in, without really doing any effort of making someone return. As long as the review scores are fine, all is good.
The original idea of Airbnb is long gone, and I experienced more than once someone writing on Airbnb, then another person sending a message with check in instructions. It is a business - nothing wrong with that in general, but it is disguised as people renting their spare rooms, which is rarely the case now.
They will happily oblige and put your review down if the host asks nicely. Happened to me, happened to my friends. Also they don’t care a bit about fake obvious reviews. Not like “not actively monitoring”, like telling you idk if you care to report it.
Strong cosign. Ratings and reviews should always be independent and beyond the control of that being reviewed. Reddit would be an amazing service if it supported commenting on any page/site/product/entity, but this is anathemic to advertising dollars.
Reddit at least used to have a form of value as a recommendations engine—searches for "best x site:reddit.com" would yield anything from decent to fantastic results depending on the product. But even that is completely useless nowadays due to bots and AI spam. Product recommendation services like Wirecutter have been ruined by Amazon affiliate links.
I have no idea who to trust on the quality of products in an era where the amount of choices available is overwhelming and the number of real human responses on the internet in any place where there's money to be made is dwindling by the day.
Airbnb is a giant example of what happens when you go too far into thinking you can solve real world issues with software UI.
Or run a hospitality business without doing any real hospitality.
Yes, a marketplace is a dream business from a profitability perspective, but it’s too easy to forget the marketplace is not the actual product that people come to the marketplace for.
It doesn’t matter if you have 5000 overpaid developers building the slickest software, the end product is not the Airbnb software, it’s the actual hospitality experience.
I don't think anyone at AirBnB wanted to solve a real world issue.
They wanted to disrupt a market, same as uber, and did this by circumventing laws and breaking everything.
There is a reason why we have zoning laws: To protect housing for people. AirBnB broke this. Took my city munich / germany years in curt to get the data from AirBnB.
While Covid, plenty of reports came up how suddenly good flats in good locations became available again for renting to humans.
My mother uses flats for her retirement (she is not employed by a company and therefore doesn't get benefits) and she always tries to keep the rent low. Just that someone tried to AirBnB HER flat for more money than the rent.
Uber, just in case you are not aware of, takes the cake from taxi companies. Taxis who are there even if uber is not available. The only problem with taxis i have: They fight accepting credit cards still today. "Oh credit card? Mh were do you want to go?" yeah fu...
Taxis were a nightmare to use before Uber; and they often weren’t available at all.
The whole concept of taxi medallions is also extreme market manipulation with basically no benefit to the average consumer, which makes it doubly odd that someone would consider them somehow more ethical or less manipulative.
Again: if you tried to get a taxi prior to Uber existing, it was a nightmare and not at all reliable. You called the taxi company and if they felt like sending someone, they would. Often they'd say, "Sure, we'll send someone in 2 hours," and the driver never showed up. More than once I was stranded somewhere because of an unreliable taxi company.
This experience doesn't exist anymore, because Uber/Lyft/ridesharing apps out competed useless taxi companies.
People who needed to get taxis certainly didn't always get taxis.
I'm not sure where you made this experience though.
But at least here most cities i'm aware of, do not offer uber. But Taxis.
Big cities sure they have uber.
I also agree though, i don't like that uber is disrupting existing markets just because but taxis are shitty. Still i haven't seen an uber doing dialisis drive in my hometown, its taxis not ubers.
You can't link a web page to the person behind it. Maybe Airbnb is in the right to offer the service in the country, it's just nobody could verify/enforce the ability to rent short term.
You should probably consume less sensationalist activist propaganda and spend more time delving into the actual unglamorous history of how, where, when, and why they came about. Chesterton's Fence [1] is a very relevant concept here.
Can cars be used as a weapon? Yes. Was Henry Ford a racist antisemite? Also yes. Do cars exist so people can run over Jews and minorities? No. (Family Guy cutaway aside)
Zoning isn't as simple as that though. Zoning laws can restrict neighborhoods to with height limits, density limits, large minimum lot sizes, single family homes only, etc, with the aim of prohibiting affordable housing for undesirables.
I think we're come to declining marginal gains of software driven businesses when the real competitive advantage comes from real product and operations.
Have had some insanely bad experiences with AirBNB and swore them off forever.
People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.
Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.
I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
I’ve had my share of bad Airbnb hosts too, not as bad as yours, but still enough to ruin a holiday and make me hesitant to use them again.
The bit that I should have expected but didn't was how strongly they side with the hosts in case of disputes. In hindsight, of course they do; the hosts are their money makers, while I'm booking them only a few times a year.
I stopped using Airbnb and closed my account. Hotels are fine, and never had any major issues.
I used to be a big defender of AirBnB due to the many amazing experiences I've had with them over the years. But since then I've had several experiences that matched the negative feedback I had been hearing from other people, especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best.
The CEO knows exactly what the problem is because he spells it out in the article...
> Chesky explains that historically, people used Airbnb only once or twice a year, so its design had to be exceptionally simple.
It's true! I've probably averaged no more than 1-2 AirBnB stays per year for a lot of years. But the average host is probably handling 50+ guests per year. That means the host is the AirBnB customer, not me. I'm about as important to them as their cleaning service. The hosts and the execs are all just trying to make some money, and my dumb ass is in their way asking for extra towels and late checkout. Hotels are essentially just as hostile, except they are good at it. And since the cost savings have essentially disappeared I'm inclined to go with the pros and only look at AirBnB when the location or context give me some reason to choose the complicated option.
The hotel is at least a known quantity. You have a pretty good idea of what you're getting into, the expectations are clear between all parties, and you're having a fairly consistent experience between different hotels. With Airbnb you have no idea who or what you're dealing with.
With a hotel, I don't have to worry about a doorman asking me who I am and then having to lie, per the host's instructions (yes, this happened to me). I probably don't have to worry about the pictures being of an entirely different unit and having an entire day of my vacation ruined trying to find somewhere else to stay (yes, this happened to me). I know exactly where the hotel is before I hand over hundreds of dollars.
I've used AirBnB exactly once because the alternative resort-type places were insanely expensive and it was great. (Just one room and a screened porch which were great. No kitchen but didn't want one.) One other time I was canceled well in advance for no obvious reason but wasn't a big deal.
Per another comment, if I'm in a city, I mostly look for a functional/predictable hotel. Sometimes stay in conventional B&Bs as well, which may list on AirBnB as well.
> especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best.
I have been using AirBNB for years (top 5% guest at one point) with virtually no issues (that weren't quickly resolved by support) and I imagine my experiences are this way because I am almost never in the US. I would love to see a poll on how people rate AirBnB broken down by where they usually stay.
In addition to stuff people are saying about AirBnB reviews in other comments, as far as I can tell there is no way to leave a review or otherwise provide public feedback in cases where the host cancels the booking before you get there. This seems to grossly incentivize scamming.
I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.
Had this happen a few times with booking.com too. With the difference that booking offered a alternative accommodation and if that one was more expensive, the host who cancelled my booking has to pay for the difference.
I mostly stopped using Airbnb. The same listings often appear in other sites too and those usually have less bad UX for search and booking.
Its worth noting that hotels do this kind of thing, too; just rarer, for bigger events. Its specifically been known to happen for things like Taylor Swift concerts, etc.
In this case it wouldn't really matter. It's fine for weeding out exceptionally-chaotic hosts, but hosts who rug-pull on a once-in-a-lifetime event like the eclipse (whether to re-rent for higher prices or because they forgot to take the listing down and were planning on using the facility themselves) aren't affected.
Also host can't offer that date for another guest (at least it used to be like that). In case of cancelling 1 day prior then they either have a serious issue or another booking so thats not so punishing.
It may also affect internal ranking order by which they show properties to people, but who knows whats implemented internally right now, and what will be in place in 3 months.
I never book AirBnB's because they refuse to address the core issues of privacy within the homes - such as owners installing hidden cameras. So many private videos are shared from AirBnB's and yet they do nothing about it - simply because they're just the glorified middlemen here and don't have actual staff who physically vet their locations. This is why hotels rule are preferred. IF I book a room in Hilton, I know full well knowing I will receive a guaranteed comfort level. An AirBnB's host's mood determins if I will enter their property or will be stranded in the middle of the road (been there, done that). And I would much rather talk to someone at a reception than type out an email hoping I get a reply.
I booked an AirBnb in Spain, no cameras mentioned in the listing. When I arrived, I found two, one of them pointed at the bathroom door, so most of the bathroom was visible when the door was open. Also, even though photos mostly matched the apartment, the address in the listing was not the real address. The host directed me to a different address in private messages. Reported it all to AirBnb, they ignored it.
Cameras in short term rentals in Spain is another level of insolence. If you rent over airbnb and booking in Spain there WILL BE camera(s) in the apartment. They will frivolously say "it's disabled right now". I have no idea how they are not sued into fucking oblivion. I know about "ocupas", but I am not "ocupas" and I'm paying you 100 euro per night for this shithole with cameras inside.
It creeped me out that I didn’t find a camera in the bedroom. There was one pointing at the bathroom and one at the general living room and kitchen area. The bedroom had so many decorations that I couldn’t tell if there was a hidden camera. I made sure to only change in the bathroom with the door closed, but I (female, traveling alone) still felt uneasy.
Up until then I stayed in Airbnbs plenty of times but I haven't stayed in one since then and don't plan to unless there's no other choice.
I am also deterred by the never ending shady descriptions and filtering. Too many times, selecting something with two bedrooms, and when you look and read closely, it shows a couch in the living room which is the "second bedroom". This and quality issues, and sometimes even blatant cancellations from the owners.
My GF loves it though and has a bigger preference of staying somewhere more homely as opposed to a hotel. Truth be told she has found a couple of great places...
Potential hidden cameras is the #1 reason I prefer hotels over Airbnb.
I've seen Airbnb slowly get banned in many places I've visited over the last 5-6 years. Hong Kong. Banned and heavily restricted. Singapore. Same. Saigon. Same. All of China. Same. Taipei. Same.
I sold all my Airbnb stocks. I couldn't be wrong and maybe they'll find a way but it seems like the world wants less and less Airbnb and not more.
why are they banned ? is it violation of local regulations or is it pressure from the hotel lobby - specifically singapore which has capitalist aspirations.
in my experience, the local regulations are at least somewhat "informed" by the hotel lobby - that was the watercooler talk in/around Honolulu, at least. i still prefer hotels to AirBnBs in almost all cases but i see the benefit for large groups/families.
just curious why they would not let a business like airbnb operate - is it pressure on housing (investors soaking up the housing stock) or is it something else ? By capitalist aspirations I meant friendly to business, and less regulations. I do understand that - housing, like education and healthcare cannot be left entirely to private means.
Half the airbnbs I try to book these days turn out to be resellers of un booked hotel rooms. Try to book, get a message from “host” just checking availability… silence for three days then sorry, not free … it’s a deeply flawed experience and Airbnb need to get a lot better at policing their platform
What needs consideration are the people that live near the places that are rented out for Airbnb or Booking. It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community, sometimes those strangers are also very problematic by e.g. throwing loud parties.
On top of that it drives up the prices pushing out normal people out of the better parts of the city.
For about seven years, I lived between two of Chattanooga's top tourist attractions / revenue generators. Although our city has banned new STRs, pre-existing properties are grandfathered (which conveys with deed).
>It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community.
Absolutely this. Literally half on my former neighborhood was AirBNBs, mostly small-time couples (1 or 2 properties) but also mega-owners (dozens).
During my few years on the side of Lookout Mountain (a relatively nice part of the city), we had several small-time police altercations (typically younger folks with drugs/alcohol), but one huge event stands out in particular: a D-list soundcloud rapper concluded a raging party by attempting to intentionally burn the structure down [paid on a stolen credit card]. The only reason his group was caught: they posted TikTok footage of "they new crib," which included them trashing the place — it only didn't become a structure fire because we heard the smoke alarms early!
I'm not sure what concessions AirBNB gave the homeowner, but very quickly the house was sold (and is again for sale).
My brother lives nearby, and literally none [¡ZERO!] of his neighboring houses house neighbors. You get to the point that you just ignore everybody in the neighborhood (this constant stream of changing faces) and mumble bitterly to yourself when mega-AirBNB-owner purchases his tenth home/hotel.
Isn't this why cities initially created zoning?!
----
Fortunately for me, I moved to a less-desirable part of town which houses zero AirBNBs (and lots of wonderful working-class neighbors).
I was surprised by two things when Chattanooga banned new short-term rental applications:
First) that it even passed
& 2nd) that the grandfathering clause conveys with the deed on all future sales [†]
But still I consider this a small and necessary victory to prevent future homebuilds from unhousing. A year later (last year) our surrounding county also placed its own bespoke STR restrictions, mostly different from the city's (of course!).
[†] IMHO, these have ALWAYS been a violation of most SFH zonings (e.g. R-1), so I would like to see some sort of "phase out" or "non-conveyance" so that eventually everybody is following laws enacted of its constituencies —if not immediate/timed
“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)
End quote
Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.
Utilizing unused processor cycles seems interesting! Those cycles are just sitting there in people's homes, waiting to be harnessed. So maybe you should call it something-At-Home.
I dunno, now that I typed it it seems a bit awkward. How about "something@home"...?
They should have launched services for hosts instead. Airbnbers interface with cleaning / repairpeople, not masseuses. They could even expand to construction and interior design as so many people are building and converting airbnbs. They could take advantage of their synergies there.
They are bringing more "amateur professionals" along with the hosts by adding all those services. this is a big, unruly crowd of half-assed servicepeople
I love ABNB and I hope they can find a long-term business that works. Their original promise was so interesting and exciting…but reality has kind of caught up.
They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.
Yeah, Uber has pretty much got it dialled in. I remember the early days when “taking an Uber” was a weird mysterious thing. Now it is, for me, the most normal thing in the world. I’ve had one mediocre experience: I had a 60 mile one-way trip from an airport and multiple drivers accepted and then cancelled. I went and talk to one of the taxis at the taxi stand and they were asking double what Uber was… so I waited another 15 minutes or so and found a driver. Otherwise it’s been a completely satisfying experience.
Airbnb has definitely gone the opposite way. My first Airbnb experience involved getting woken up by the daughter of the family that lived downstairs asking me if I wanted breakfast for 5€. I was getting whole apartments for 30€/night. Now it’s just as expensive as regular hotels, half of them expect you to wash all of the linen before you leave, and it’s totally unpredictable what you’re going to get. I just book with Hilton instead. There’s free bottled water and snacks waiting for me when I get there, it’s a pretty consistent experience, and free good breakfast at most of them.
Uber is a lot better than AirBnb. I use an app and the person picks me up and drops me off. If the driver cancels I automatically get another one scheduled, they don’t check my ratings or care if I have never used an Uber before, don’t have to worry about the Uber not picking me up because of the color of my skin.
The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
With lodging, they have the risk of people finding a listing off-platform and paying cash, but because lodging is such a key aspect of a trip, people are often willing to pay the premium to have everything vetted/supported by Airbnb.
With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.
It was triggered by press release from them possibly embargoed so they could prepare the article on time. So it's not really an ad but driven by promotion. Without the PR there would be no article.
The PR pack contain actual ad for the company announcing API platform etc. this was submitted to HN at the same time by a few different people.
Most press just replicate whatever is in a press release from a company but some, better, publishers use it to write an article.
The irony is the CEO probably can't tell it's mocking him.
What's the first sign of a midlife crisis?
That someone thinks a new car will turn them into a not-asshole.
> He wanted to bust the company he’d cofounded out of its pigeonhole of short-term home rentals. Amazon, he was fond of pointing out, was first an online bookstore before it became the everything store.
> “I was basically going from room to room just pouring out this stream-of-consciousness manifesto, like Jack Kerouac writing On the Road,” he says
> Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
> “Brian’s been badly underrated as a tech CEO,” Altman says of his friend. “He's not usually mentioned in the same breath as Larry Page or Bill Gates, but I think he is on a path to build as big of a company.”
> “Steve Jobs, to me, is like Michelangelo or da Vinci,” he says. Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did, in a way that you only possibly could by starting a tech company as a creative person and going on a rocket ship,”
> “[AirBnB experiences] was like our Newton,” says Chesky, referring to Apple’s handheld device that predated the iPhone.
Yeah... somehow I don't think that guy understands subtlety or nuance. What a douche.
Just seeing the number of different ways people have typed the name in this thread reminds me that "Airbnb" has got to be the ugliest, most confusing, and least riffable name of any startup to achieve unicorn status. I would guess it has cost them something.
I have an airbnb experience and just hired 2 people. Airbnb decided to pause my experience for no reason. Tried hitting up their support but they didn't provide a reason for the pause and a date when it would be resumed. This is why you never rely on one customer channel
Airbnb is, in my opinion, one of the companies with the biggest negative societal impact.
Airbnb complementary destroyed some great places and rural cities around the world, because of them:
- Food/Restaurant prices go up
- Food/Restaurant quality goes down
- Real estate price goes up
- Dirtiness goes up
- Bugs and other animals thrive
- Quality of shops goes down, everything is disposable
- Quality of building/materials goes down, why install a wooden window if it's for an airbnb?
You could argue that it's not because of Airbnb but because of tourism, but I don't think so, Hotels are heavily regulated, they have strict cleaning rules, max occupancy and are built to host a certain amount of people, mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.
Airbnb is great for smaller places though. I was looking at some smaller Italian cities and there are mostly traditional b&b's, plus a couple of hotels. So the Airbnb's blend in well, and I think it is too small to really destroy the city itself.
> mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.
Have you not travelled before Airbnb is a thing in a place? There were always similar alternatives?
The blame game with Airbnb is the most ridiculous thing ever.
Completely unfounded to try to blame so many things such as the housing crisis. Oh, that is just Airbnb. Just ignore that you still have problems due to taxes, government policies in places where there's virtually no Airbnb offera.
Hotels being regulated generally means nothing in places where there's a lot of tourism because you still get extremely poor services and experiences at times and Airbnb and other similar BnB services (this is not new, come on, is everyone <30 years old?) have provided much needed competition improving quality, which has otherwise been going downward steadily (cleaning, breakfast, bathrooms, etc).
You seem to dislike supply so youd problably want to ban low cost airlines so that less of the "rubble/mass tourists" would travel, right?
There is a massive difference between a bed-and-breakfast and what AirBnB offers. Old-style B&Bs are (family) businesses, open all year round, and registered with tourism entities, much like a hotel.
Vacation home rentals have been a thing for decades. As far back as the 1980s my family would book houses for vacation, usually in areas where lots of houses booked out that way.
In vacation destinations there are real estate companies that specialize in this. In the old days you would contact the local chamber of commerce for a referral, or look them up in the phone book. After that, there were websites like VRBO (still around, still works well). Now they put their stock onto AirBnB as well.
AirBnB did not invent short-term rentals. The parent is right that housing supply issues have a much deeper root cause than AirBnB.
Vacation rentals are just as far from what AirBnB (originally) offered as a B&B. Usually handled by a property manager, entire home, nice location / popular holiday destinations and facilities as it is someone's second property. Much higher prices. This is a far cry from an "air bed" in a corner of a standard urban family apartment in São Paulo, which you'd find by the thousands in the early years before regulations caught up.
I think you're underestimating how much AirBnB as a platform opened up this market to the average traveller, including business travel, and yes, absolutely contributed to the housing crisis, though I wasn't even making a point about that.
Experience wise for the customer, because I've been in both, not that much. Also there's a lot of Airbnb that are family businesses and BnBs that aren't so that's just a romantic moot point.
There's interest in painting these strawmen by people who didn't use the service or just tried to get cheap stuff and didn't pick good places, which can happen with booking.com or google maps. The govs love blaming their failings on apps and regulations mean market capture by certain entities.
It's funny how you can call for Airbnb's to be banned to solve the housing crisis but you can't call for stopping hotels being built everywhere which are then used to house refugees/socially disadvantage people in a beautiful money making cycle for government contractors, to just name one thing happening in at least a few European countries.
maybe they should admit they are not special anymore and expand into other large markets like hotels? I don't even care anymore, I just use Google Maps or Booking, whether it's a "property" on Booking or a hotel, each one has it's pros and cons, I choose whatever feels right at the moment from what seems to be an exhaustive list of both. Properties can be more fun and better for larger groups, hotels are cleaned and don't have annoying "house rules" like washing the dishes etc, or chasing the owner if the lock doesn't work. I don't know how many travelers still stick exclusively to properties anymore.
You'd be surprised by how many rich people there are. Airbnb doesn't need to sell millions of these services to make millions off them. If an "experience" costs $150, that's just as good as a night in their rooms, if not more profitable.
The "Experiences" thing sounds like Groupon. What killed Groupon was that Groupon wanted too big a cut, and the service providers dropped out.
This trick only works if you reach oligopoly levels, so providers have to sign up or go broke.
AirBnB is there in short-stay housing. Doordash/Uber are there in food delivery. Doordash/Lyft are there in gig rides, but might not survive Waymo. Amazon is there in e-commerce, but it took decades.
Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?
I had always heard what killed Groupon was the bad economics.
The "loss leader" concept is Business 101, and Groupon was presented to customers as a gallery of loss leaders they can shop.
Actually delivering a good loss leader is hard. Design the offer wrong, and people don't attach properly-- they either don't load up their cart with additional, higher-margin items, or they don't return for future full-price services. I suspect Groupon didn't help-- if they provided consulting, it was probably to steer the merchants to give the store away to make Groupon look compelling regardless of bankrupting the merchant.
Over time, a lot of industries pulled away, either because they personally ran the numbers or simply saw their peers trying it and losing their shirt. The offers eventually retreated to what could survive in the cost structure: stuff like classes (near-zero marginal cost per attendee) rather than food or personal services with significant cost of goods or labour.
And the volume of people caused the good customers to get shitty service so it was basically impossible to make it work. Also it was a mega loss leader since Groupon took a huge cut
For me, it was one of those businesses that, as a consumer, you realized was sort of a novelty but the coupons weren't really really worth it and they were a PITA to use a lot of the time. And once the novelty wore off, they sort of slipped off your radar and weren't worth thinking about any longer even if there might be an interesting deal here or there.
Also there are already other products like that, like Viator and Klook. I wish companies like Airbnb didn't feel the need to conquer everything all the time. It already is useful as it is.
The appeal and selling point of Airbnb experiences was local guides and small groups compared to Viator with more traditional group tours. In my experience it was quite good in Europe at the beginning. But now prices are just too high to justify, like 200+ euros for few hours walking tour.
As someone living in a condo in a pretty touristic place: fuck Airbnb; or maybe fuck the local government that allows Airbnb to advertise properties that don't have (because they can't have) a license to operate.
There are places which allow officially licensed airbnb, vrbo etc apartments. They don't need to follow same code as hotels, its a special category. Ie in France this is true, and France is consistently the most visited country by tourists globally.
In many top places hotels would not be able to accommodate all visitors coming, meaning only the richest would get them.
They’re supposedly regulated where I live, too, but the property has to meet certain criteria like having an independent entrance in the building, which most apartments can’t meet so they operate illegaly, and Airbnb happily allows them to be in their platform.
So now I have to put up with the apartment next door being an illegal Airbnb, with all the inconveniences that come with that.
I'm surprised they're not launching with more coverage. I just spot-checked what was available in NYC - it's a handful of unappealing tours. Some categories, like massage, are totally empty.
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?
Airbnb started strong, but it has become a minefield for travelers. Scam listings have exploded -- Airbnb admitted in 2023 that it removed nearly 60,000 fake ones, but that's only a fraction of what slips through. Investigations like one by VICE uncovered organized scams exploiting the platform for years, yet Airbnb has been slow to implement meaningful preventative measures. Meanwhile, pricing has grown increasingly deceptive: hosts tack on hefty cleaning and service fees, often doubling the advertised nightly rate. Although Airbnb recently added an option to show total prices up front, it's not the default, and hidden costs remain a major complaint.
Even more troubling are the widespread privacy violations. Thousands of guests have reported hidden cameras in their rentals -- some even found in bedrooms and bathrooms. Airbnb didn't ban indoor cameras until March 2024, after more than a decade of complaints and several high-profile criminal cases. Combined with fake photos, misleading descriptions, and little accountability for bad hosts, it's clear the trust that once defined the platform has eroded. Airbnb didn't just lose its shine -- it actively neglected the safety and transparency that made it appealing in the first place.
Yep. A few bad experiences and never again. The idea is pretty nice, but it always adds a layer of stress with the unreasonable cleaning demands and all. Hotels are more consistent and I know what I'm going to get as long as I stick with one of the main brands. I don't have to clean the entire house either.
Pretty much my exact experience before. I have another fun one.
One time the host kicked us out on the second day of a week-long stay to sell the house. She then put us up in a nicer house, but not in the area we wanted to be in. Our schedule was also completely screwed as we had to move our stuff over and the other family wasn't even out of the newer house yet. Everyone was confused and upset. Then there is a cleaning crew that typically doesn't speak English, so it's hard to communicate what is going on. You also don't want to leave your stuff there at the time as although they're just doing their jobs, they're also strangers and you don't know if they'll steal any of your stuff. So we had to end up waiting for awhile and burning up valuable vacation time. Never again.
I am baffled that every time the Airbnb issues come up, there is a plethora of "just book hotels" comments. The use cases are, or can be, wildly different.
I am not a particular fan of Airbnb--nobody is a fan of real estate agents, they are intermediaries that provide a service, facilitate discovery, etc.--but I am currently staying in an apartment I booked on Airbnb, and I am spending $2k a month for it. Decent space, a kitchen I can use, space for my clothes, a washing machine, a big fridge. If I had to book a hotel room, I would spend at least $8k a month for it.
“Book a hotel room” sounds like when a former university instructor told a student to "just install Linux" when they had some authorization issues on their Windows computer. The use cases are different.
I think Airbnb is net better than hotels, including places with agents that are basically condo hotels. Much more variety.. hotels are OTOH more predictable and reliable. If I don't need variety (a kitchen? A place very close to some obscure spot? Fancy? Cheap?) i'd pick a hotel. Or if I need weird checkin times and the airbnbs have in person check in.
Contrary to other comments
I wish they'd actually focus on both the agent and the random host scenarios...
But personally my favorite things are weird places that are a bedroom in a house.
The mild form is when they have a dog you get to pet/play with. The less mild is staying with people who are weird in a non dangerous way.
My only bad experience was also with dogs, a place where when you step out to the bathroom at night two formerly friendly large dogs shadow you, growling cause, a rando walking around at night! Really helps the bowel movement.
And the weirdest experience I had was 2 girls roommates who advertised their open floor plan living room as a "separate bedroom" (it was not instant book and I'm very obviously a dude). With a cat that slept at my feet, and a dog that woke me up in the morning (they did offer to lock up both). Then when I was talking to one of them in the kitchen she told me without any context that they were not lesbians. I am in a relationship and it was pretty awkward so I didn't develop the subject further, but I am still wondering.
I lived next to an AirBnB in Toronto, guests partying until 4am on a Wednesday.
Owner of the unit did nothing and as did AirBnB.
Luckily it was only a few nights a year - there's no mechanism to eject a guest like this. They create new accounts if they are banned from the platform.
Hilariously, I had the opposite experience; the Airbnb host was the one that partied when it wasn't booked.
Either way our condo started enforcing a rule that was long on the books that owners couldn't rent out their unites for less than 3 months. It was the bedbugs that did it.
It sounds like that is the true issue here (which the unit being an Airbnb is exacerbating to be sure). If it was a normal home, and it happened to have owners who were assholes and didn't care about the neighborhood disturbance, you would be in just as bad of a situation (probably worse tbh). The fact that it is being turned over for lots of short term rentals makes it more likely that you'll get asshole tenants there at some point, but ultimately to fix this the people of Toronto would have to pass noise ordinances and make the police enforce them.
I don't think I claimed they did. The cops don't give a shit. But AirBNB cares that the police get called on a property over and over. They'll eventually cut off the owner.
This is giving me Groupon vibes. Airbnb went from offering something of a unique product to having no real identity anymore.
Just like with Groupon where the idea was so novel for the time but quickly faded away as irrelevant, a diluted shell of its former self.
When you really think about it, Airbnb offers you nothing that a normal travel booking site by the giant incumbents like Expedia group offer, and unlike Airbnb, Expedia group sites can compare rentals by owner alongside real hotels, too.
So basically when you go to Airbnb you're going to a partial travel site and it's also a travel site without any extra travel functionality like rental cars, hotels, and other vacation packages.
I wonder if Airbnb's pivot toward local experiences is a much bigger mistake than using their momentum to make a real attempt at competing more directly with Expedia/Priceline. Why didn't Airbnb start working with hotels and other traditional travel industry players?
Airbnb is brilliant in concept. It's finding value where there used to be essentially waste.
BUT then came the growing pains caused by investors and speculators. Both of which clashed with governments who were manipulating their housing markets.
This isnt a place you want your business competing; the governments will come take you out.
Toronto for example, airbnbs can only be your principal residence. You have to register and license. there's a 4% airbnb tax.
This wipes out the investors and speculators. toronto's housing pricing is down 5% across the board. There's now people selling and losing ~$400,000. We're at record highs for number of units unsold. # of Sales are down 20%
There has to be a correction, but how that doesnt pop the housing bubbles, i dunno. doesnt help that toronto's unemployment is at 10% which is worse than the financial crisis. Toronto's also losing their film industry shortly. Auto industry is suspended if not moving.
Unlike others, I have only had good experiences with Airbnb, both as a host and as a guest. The platform has improved a lot in the past couple of years -- many small quality-of-life improvements for non-professional hosts to make things easier to manage, such as automatic pricing, automatic blocking of days to avoid back-to-back bookings (if you need it), instant booking but only for guests that match your criteria, templated instruction messages to guests, etc. etc. Customer support has been decent too, though I have also heard the horror stories. It's too bad they feel the need to turn it into an everything app, I can only imagine how great the platform could be if they just decided to be the very best short rental platform. For one, they could ditch Jony Ive's reworking of the review process in favor of something that actually solves the issue with rating inflation and differences in how people rate.
You can select on minimum guest rating, and anyone with special requests (eg an extra guest, an infant) also cannot instant book. Not age or race if that’s what you were thinking :-)
I wish cancellation policies were more reasonable or they offered some kind of inexpensive cancellation insurance. It’s hard to always know where you’ll be months in advance.
Also do they let your search by final price now or do they still hide a bunch of fees?
Why even allow fees? Make the owners set a price that includes what they need for cleaning, etc.
I see this sentiment a lot these days. People who were around a person all day, everyday, for several years can say "this was the worst person I've ever known and they were completely incompetent"/"this person was an absolute saint and I was blessed to spend time alongside them", and some person who never met them will be like "your experiences are wrong and I know them better."
It's always weird and I have no clue why people get that mindset.
Here is how it should work. When people go on vacation they want an Apple like experience where it all just works. That is what AirBnB needs to sell. The only other person who probably understands this is Richard Branson (and Disney)...
call it AirBnB Concierge (or even AirBnB vacations) to blend in the AmEx style angle. It's easy peasy Chesky, make it happen.
That's exactly where Airbnb's business model collapses. They don't own or run the properties. They'll never be able to offer "it all just works" at any meaningful scale.
I think they can. It is pretty easy to start simply and experiment: AirBnB San Francisco. AirBnb Paris. AirBnB London. I'll give you an example. My wife is going to France with friends and we can pay money for a good experience but they are going 5-star and we can only afford 3-4 star which is where an AirBnB is also competitive. This sub-luxe market is wide open. If AirBnB isn't interested this is a YC startup for anyone who is.
You've not really addressed the core problem: they don't own the stuff. They are facilitating a transaction between you and the owner of the listing. It's very difficult to ensure any level of experience, especially without adding a ton of cost.
FWIW I’ve probably stayed in 30+ airbnbs over more than a decade and the experience has been almost universally superior to hotels. Not denying others have had different experience, but always find these threads surprising.
I’ve had great experiences renting houses when that is what the situation calls for, but the most of my travel is to cities. In cities the main challenge is inventory and price and today I’m quite willing to spend a little more for staff and a free breakfast, after countless hassles trying to spend a little less on Airbnbs. That said I’ve recently stayed in nice hotels in NYC for $150/night which you can’t touch on Airbnb.
AirBnB allows you to find a temporary dwelling in places where hotels are few, or absent.
AirBnB also provides extra capacity when a city or town gets overcrowded due to an event (matches, concerts, convents, etc). Building a proper hotel is much more capital intensive than converting a house or an apartment into an AirBnB place, and back into a normal long-term rent unit, or your own abode, when needed.
I would like a pony and a million dollars, but the real world is full of tradeoffs.
Vacation rental fulfil a niche that hotels do not, and I don't understand people who view them as substitutes. The fewer people use them the better. More for me and at better prices.
That said, Im probably not the median consumer. When I vacation, hotels cover almost none of my needs.
Im looking for a private beachfront Jacuzzi, hobbit hut in the forest, or someplace to party with family and kids.
To me this transition seems much more obvious for something like Uber:
Manage rides -> manage deliveries -> manage booking with places that are already in network -> expand bookings from restaurants to other services -> expand bookings to hotels -> vacation homes.
But honestly going the other way around isn’t that crazy.
It amazes me that companies like AirBnB get huge valuations and user bases when the fundamental feature of searching for listings is phenomenally atrocious.
- Paginated results that reset and call an API for new results when the map is moved (even to a subset of the initial call such as in a zoom).
- Inability to change pagination size.
- Inability to hide listings you aren't interested in.
- Map only displaying listings on the current page, which change dramatically per page.
- Page changes (the thing you do more of than comparing options), take way too long.
Maybe it's a real-estate website related issue as the two main property sites in Australia (Domain and RealEstate) as also garbage. I have a feeling it's also designed this way to prevent scraping.
Can someone at AirBnB please sort these basic QoL things out.
Did you notice that the search at Amazon is not that precise? It's not because they could not make it more precise. Equally, did you notice how milk and bread are in the opposite end of the grocery store? It's not because they could not put them next to the entrance. I suspect that a similar factor can be in play here.
As of slowness, I suspect they don't have a DC an Australia, so your packets need to travel across Pacific and back.
I also suspect that their web site already brings enough customers, and a serious rework to make it more usable won't bring in many more customers, and any more money. Investing in that is likely a poor business decision. I bet their resources mostly go to protection from fraud, legal battles, and other non-engineering concerns.
I understand your point, nobody is claiming that separating the bread and milk is a particularly good experience either and while it probably makes more money in a physical store where you want to buy multiple options at once, this doesn't apply to AirBnB with a single item checkout. The search at Amazon almost always gets me what I want on the first page, which is the desired behaviour almost everywhere to reduce friction to checkout. Why would I want to increase user frustration and bounce rate on a single product checkout?
I imagine significantly reducing database calls and blob downloads due to short-sighted pagination behaviour would result in significant cost saving, reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.
There are even more search issues that sometimes make it unusable:
- Impossible to filter / search by rating, which is a must-have if I am going to travel, no way I am risking staying at a first-time host, a lot of horror stories from forgetting bedsheets to outright scams.
- There is no way to see the precise location, which is understandable for safety in some places (mostly listings in areas with "single-family" similar neighborhoods, like Orlando suburbs, you don't want to advertise your home as "available"). But, in some cities, for example, in Rio, a large radius can make you uncertain if the apartment listing is beachside or in the favela's entrance.
As somebody traveling with small children, what's even more frustrating is that AirBnB seems to have a tag "Well reviewed by families", but refuses to allow you to search for it. Which means using more indirect filters (like "has a baby bed") and clicking through dozens of listings to find one with that tag.
I get why they do it (looking at more listing is great for them), but I feel like they're wasting my time and it sucks, researching holidays is a frustrating timesink as it is, and they make it worse.
Uninstalled my AirBNB because of 2 resolution issues with hosts that were not in my favor despite me providing all documentation and (damning) evidence.
The reason I should have uninstalled it much longer is because it's toxic for rent prices. I now pay more for hotels and sleep well.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Because those CEO are unhappy. They want more in their life, they want everything; so that maybe then, they'll be fulfilled.
The path to success is made by many failures; and when you get to success, you can't take the success, you can't be 'done', you need more success. It's a long form of chasing the next dopamine rush.
He probably hasn't felt more alive than the week he threw everything in the blender. It's a mix of issues that starts with childhood and leads to a life of addiction for more.
On the cover of a magazine, it's an inspiring story, but deep down it's a sad human trait.
All power to him though, it sure makes for interesting stories.
> “I’m 43 and at a crossroads, where I can either be almost done or just getting started,” he tells me. “There's a scenario where I'm basically done. Airbnb is very profitable. We've kind of, mostly, nailed vacation rentals. But we can do more.”
The irony is that they haven't even nailed vacation rentals. It's probably different in US, but in the rest of the world, wherever I've traveled in the rest of the world I got better deals by using a combination of Google Maps, Booking, Agoda, etc...
AirBNB from 10 years ago "nailed" it in a better way than AirBnB of 2025, but that's the customer's perspective. From the business perspective, they probably "nailed it" in a sense of squeezing as much juice out of the unwitting guest...
Because the writing is sort of on the wall for airbnb's current business model. Local regulations are finally catching up to them, limiting new listings or applying the same taxes and fees applied to regular hotels. And airbnb's are not cheaper anymore, and many times not any more convenient than a hotel, due crappy hosts and their excessive fees and regulations.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
There used to be very few hotels with kitchenettes, any space really beside just a bed.
There's way more suite and kitchenette options.
Lots of people travel for longer than just a night or two, or to travel beyond just business, where you might want to be able to actually enjoy being in your private space.
Hotels weren't really designed for this.
They wanted you to never be in your room, and instead upselling you at the bar.
Now, you can pretty easily find relatively affordable hotels that have many different types of rooms layouts for all different purposes.
Now, that defeats a lot of the point in having an AirBNB.
As you said, AirBNB is really only good if you're traveling somewhere with lousy hotel options, you're going to be staying somewhere for a long time, or traveling in a huge group, or you want to host a rager party or something...
My experiences in travel has been the same. Airbnb competition has been awesome just like Uber has been awesome for taxis in many places.
The narrative is always that "it's worse and making things worse" and gets blamed for everything such as the housing crisis which is insane but it's been an awesome asset to humanity. Not just Airbnb but other similar search lodging offerings.
Maybe I'm just not in the right cities but people say 2 things: Airbnbs are just as expensive as hotels and hotels have upgraded and I never see these two things as true. Airbnbs are typically cheaper than hotels and hotels, at least where I travel are still just a bed and a bath. Extended stay hotels have kitchenettes but extended stay hotels have always had kitchenettes and they were always the most expensive options because they are typically purchased by businessmen who have high budgets.
Hotels seem cheaper in some cities and if you’re solo or with only people who are ok sleeping in one small room with max 2 beds.
As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.
It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.
Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
This depends on where you live. Not every country is like this and you sure can't call a taxi or have the same level of drivers (and add other ride share apps).
There's an incentive by many to just trash these competition apps and services but they've been a net good.
I will always love AirBnB for driving down prices by breaking the hotel cartels in major cities.
Over 10 years ago I rented a folding couch right off of Pearl ST. Boulder, CO.
I stayed in the living room of someones 1 bedroom apartment for $300 a night instead of 1k+ a night for the equivalent at what amounted to a travel lodge motel. The prices there were out of control, no inventory, just awful.
There are "plausible deniability" cartels everywhere, it's and it's always nice to see their grip on a region drop.
Can you actually? Every major city I've been to in the past five years is pretty harsh on that sort of thing. I'd happily pay $300 to avoid the risks of arrest and having all my stuff stolen.
Funny but couches can be pretty comfortable, and in the days of Airbnb being a monetized couchsurf, you'd at least wake up to fresh coffee
Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door
> there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now
Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
> Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.
DC Union station charged me I think 10usd per bag per 24hr , no smaller unit accommodated, but I decided $30 was worth it to enjoy my Amtrak layover for 3 hours and walked to the botanic garden unencumbered
Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.
All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)
Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.
Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"
I don't get airbnbs because they're cheaper, I get them because I want to rent something other than a hotel room. If best western had in-laws or 1br quadplexes I'd be happy to stay there, but most hotels I've stayed at are bad rooms in bad locations that almost always include at least one negative surprise every trip, and as you move up to more expensive ones they somehow get fancier but worse.
For travel it’s just an option and always will be. Thats okay because the travel use case only hits most people once or twice a year. The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home. The app update and launch into these lifestyle categories are the starting point of this.
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
> The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home.
The future of Airbnb was and always will be a place to book stays in someone's home. These other things they are doing are a bad joke that will at best waste money for no gain, and at worst will cause their actual business to suffer. Trying to be all things to all people is idiocy, stick to what you're good at.
a bad joke is a little harsh. It's worth trying to do a few new things. Having stayed in many airbnbs, I have wondered why they don't start adding a menu of things I can do once I am there. It feels like a space they could deploy some offerings and have the attention of their customer. There are bad jokes that cost a lot more money. Look at Apple Vision Pro. I think this is relatively cheap vs. their cash flow.
You can get the same experience with VRBO. People list in both usually. AirBNB hasn’t cornered the market. Plus, VRBO or sites like VacationRentals pre dated AirBNB
They actually don't list on both usually. Go lookup the data before you start making statements like that. In fact just go punch this into Google:
"how much of airbnb inventory is unique?"
I’m basing it on personal experience looking into renting a vacation rental and I have family who list on both. I am not going to google that because I know what is true
That's quite a broad assumption based on anecdotal evidence, you know what's true based on your few experiences renting and from a few listings your immediate family has, how can you even believe it's true based on this flimsy data?
Quick edit: just searched on both VRBO and Airbnb for rentals in my city for the same date range, VRBO shows me 191 options, Airbnb shows 330 options.
My point already shows that your whole assumption is flawed, which was entirely my point... You don't need to argue but it'd be in good faith to at least acknowledge that your point has no basis at all, it's just your feeling, not a point.
By the way, I live in a capital city in Europe so the discrepancies between listings would probably translate to many other places...
> I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Greed. Founders and employees who cannot understand the value of a sustainable business that does one thing well and keeps people employed. We shouldn't seek to grow indefinitely, we should seek to reach comfortable levels of success and then focus our efforts on rewarding the people who are clients and employees maximally.
Yeah, I spent the whole time reading this article wondering "has this man lost his mind?". Airbnb works great for what it is. But nobody wants it to be an "everything" platform, and all that the CEO is accomplishing is wasting money chasing ventures that have no real chance of success. And that's if those ventures don't cause their actual business to suffer because resources are being spent elsewhere.
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
“ Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company”
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
How? The reviews aren’t visible until after the window of time to review is closed or the review has already been submitted. AFAIK there’s no way to retaliate.
There is no threat of retaliation for reviews because hosts and guests can't see each other's reviews until the review period is expired or they have already left their own review.
The Airbnb review process is so weird I can only assume it’s actually broken.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
I think paypal is probably an example of why this is probably imposible for a publicly traded company.
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
"Duty to the shareholders": if you aren't the CEO growing revenue quarter over quarter, then your mostly stock compensation is worthless and the board is interviewing replacements.
Airbnb host here. A couple months ago we found a bug where Airbnb allowed two different guests to book the same night. Absolute madness ensued.
The worst part is we had their support on the line for hours. And he told that they didn't even have a way to escalate technical issues. His job was to stall on the phone and be yelled at until hosts gave up.
Unfortunately it's just the latest example of awful experiences with the company. As a host you are liable for everything. The only way to get them to hold up their end of the bargain is small claims court. They collect their fees for doing nearly nothing for either party.
You will not find a way to contact any individual at Airbnb. It's an impressively seamless anti-human design. They have built a wall and kicked down the ladder.
There are two ways of looking at Airbnb, as a hotel substitute or as a resort substitute. It has a very hard time competing with hotels, as others have stated there are advantages but overall an airbnb is going to be worse and/or more expensive. BUT the resort substitute is where it is a lot more competitive, and this whole experience thing seems like a good way to lean into that element.
Are we talking about the same Airbnb? When I think of resorts, I think of staff, bars, restaurants, activities, often all inclusive, and often catered to my desired demographic (adults only, family friendly, etc.)
When I think of Airbnb, I think of an apartment with a pool in the Caribbean, where I have to hunt around to figure out the best places to eat, or cook myself.
Some people genuinely prefer it that way. Or they cannot afford a "true" all-inclusive resort experience but still want to go on vacation in a nice location.
In some countries at least the latter is a well-established tradition that long predates Airbnb. Like, you'd literally just drive or take a train to some coastal town and then look around for signs that say "vacancy".
Airbnb has been trying to push their "experiences" and they are mostly bad. The ones that were recommended to me were either far out of my target city or very nondescript. I hope more cities start to regulate Airbnb out of existence. I was comparing hotels and Airbnbs for a recent trip and found 25 houses that were Airbnbs owned by the same person. Completely absurd.
High service and cleaning fees while being a significant source of Airbnb's revenue, helping to drive topline growth are also the biggest source of frustration for many users. Throw in privacy issues and the fact that hotels are stepping up their game and the midlife crisis sounds about right.
I have used airbnb before across many countries, but now its more of uncertainties. Cleanliness, having urself to take trash etc etc. High cleaning fees, collecting key from a lockbox etc. Especially when traveling with kids.
booking.com also offers apartments too, and has far better pay upon arrival and pay nothing right now features.
Airbnb is generally fine but I would never probably use it again if I could. They have very high fees and zero support when something goes wrong. I now pretty much prefer hotels, the price is the sane but the service is not comparable. At least for shorter stays
I love Airbnb and have had nothing but excellent experiences. At least where I have stayed at them the quality and amenities seem to be far better than a hotel for the money.
The article repeatedly cites “2 billion users” of Airbnb. That isn’t true, right? From casual Googling, I’ve seen is 5 million hosts and 1.5b stays—which is nowhere near 2b users (alltime, MAU, or otherwise).
its about consistency to me. if you have a lot of time to kill on potential issues then sure. stopped using abnb when i traveled once and the AC was broken/leaking b/c the host thought i wouldn't mind it, then asked if i would be fine waiting 1-2 days while a repair guy came to fix it. thankfully the host was apologetic and worked with me and airbnb to get the refund, but i still had to book a hotel elsewhere.
with some chain hotel at least i know what to relatively expect in terms of service and amenities and have someone to complain to to make it right.
Basic problem with Airbnb is that you’re dealing with small proprietors and the quality and value can be pretty inconsistent. Airbnb has relied on reviews to enforce this but what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
Additionally there’s a creep factor in the number of cameras on the property. Hotels have lots of cameras but you don’t get the same sense that you’re being policed. I realize some of this is necessary but it can still be off-putting; usually everyone in the rental comments on the cameras.
Airbnb could normalize the value by enforcing standards and capping certain unreasonable charges in particular cleaning fees. A uniform cancellation policy would also help.
Additionally there are no rewards for booking Airbnb and no perks at all for repeat customers.
I’ve moved from Airbnb to Marriot and I get 4pm late check out, upgrades to suites, free breakfast, priority booking etc… and I don’t have to take the garbage out, bundle up sheets, do the dishes, etc…
As an occasional host we always wait until the guest writes a review. Our goal is to basically never have a guest write a review so we don't write them hoping they just forget. If we write one they get an email telling them that we did and really pushing them to review.
Our place is all five star reviews and there is very little benefit for further five star reviews. So it's kind of all risk for us at this point when someone does review.
Yeah well, the main talent required for being a host on Airbnb isn't to host well, it's to manage reviews well.
Reviews should have an expiration date, because places age and wear out; I'm not interested in learning about the experience of someone from five years ago, I'd like to know how it was last week.
Maybe they do now. I have only left 2 mixed reviews. One when the place they rented was not the one showed in photos. The people weren’t allowed to rent in their building and this was not something that was advertised. This meant none of the building’s amenities were available to us despite being advertised. I ended up getting dinged somehow. I thought maybe they could see the review by a 2nd account or something. Could be wrong.
As someone who doesn't have whatever lead poisoning makes people post reviews on yelp the review system is worse than useless.
I'm not gonna leave a mixed or negative review because snitches get stitches and I can't imagine anyone else reviewing has any less pathological incentives.
There are actually some really interesting problems to solve there:
It's now widely understood that online reviews can have a large impact on the success of a small business.
- What rating do you leave if you have a disappointing service from a really kind proprietor (like if the best humans make you the worst food)?
- Are we entering a world where there will be ramifications for the reviews you give? Will a restaurant be less likely to seat you if you left a middling review? As more places require you to identify with a phone number before you can be seated, will you receive worse service if you left a disappointing review or tip? It feels like reputation is about to flow in both directions.
- How do you avoid rating inflation when people who have bad experiences are reluctant to write about them?
And there are a bunch of little bugs in the current rating ecosystem:
- Culture impacts a rating. Americans are conditioned to start from 5 and deduct stars, which makes it harder to identify truly great places. Contrast this with Japan, where 3.5 stars is a really good rating, because Japanese people start from the median.
- If a place has thousands of reviews and a really high score, they're probably bribing people to rate them.
- How do you protect against spam? That includes reviews being bought from call centers, but also shitposts from people who don't like that something exists, or the way its staff behaves outside work.
- If people who eat fast food like a fast food place, it could have a better rating than an objectively better place that caters to more discerning clientele. How do you communicate that the people leaving reviews are/aren't representative of your tastes?
And as you alluded to, writing reviews (and HN comments) takes time that would often be better spent doing other things. What incentives do people have to take the time to leave a useful review? Can we find a way to make the process less burdensome?
Hopefully the person flipping through reviews knows how to filter out illegitimate ones. Maybe my legitimate review tips the scale and they have a good time or avoid a bad time. Anyway, my point is that we don't all harbor such pathological perspectives regarding community contributions.
i think on Google Maps they can't rate you back (maybe on Booking too?), so depends on the service. I don't review much anyway, but about a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place that I can't help but compliment, and once in a blue moon a really crappy place that really upsets me so I feel like sharing that too. I see absolutely nothing pathological about that.
In the 2 mixed reviews the hosts substantially misrepresented the property and the legality of their listing impacting the quality of our stay and the value we were receiving.
As someone that has a backbone and isn’t afraid of the consequences of reporting when I get ripped off, I find mixed reviews to be valuable.
> what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
yea i usually refrain from bad reviews because i might want to go stay with them in future.
Turning Airbnb into an "everything app" feels... conflicted. The platform's core strength was always about trusting strangers in a very specific context
I find that the Airbnb fees are too high for what you get, which often boils down to the contact information of the renter. For some regions in Europe, I actually prefer again local vacation rental agencies, which have similar fees but much more service. Of course, their websites are often not great, but describing your requirements via phone or email gives great options.
One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years.
I used to use AirBnB all the time.
They gradually become more and more, well, "large company".
I used to still look at AirBnB (until very recently, when one of the founders joined DOGE), but I saw that their fee continually rose over time, and became like 10% or 15%, and there's in many places (Paris, Amsterdam, New York, London...) no meaningful listings (which is due to State bans).
I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was a set of listings which I concluded was a scam, the same very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line elsewhere. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews.
AirBnB itself (and here we see "large company") became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work.
I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time, and had of course no reason to have confidence in the boilerplate estimate of "few days".
After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB when I log in suspending my account, which I then have to have support fix, which of course means the account cannot be used until support get back to me, and assuming they actually do unblock the account, and given how variable support is, this is not a given.
I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness, which was eventually resolved by dint of the new process AirBnB had imposed on users (something about ID and account photos, IIRC) actually not working properly, so in the end it turned out Support (some poor Indian woman working from home) and I were able to circumvent the problem.
I've also been reading people write about AirBnB blocking their valid negative reviews on spurious grounds. That undermines all reviews on all properties; you're looking at reviews wondering if there were valid bad reviews you're not seeing because AirBnB has been blocking them.
To summarize, fees are now rather high, when it comes to Support my response is Jesus please God anything but Support, I had to backdoor my own HTTPS traffic to use the service, I'm now uncertain about the veracity of reviews, and no viable apartments in quite a lot of locations.
So, for me, AirBnB was great, but now it's really not.
Then, recently, one of the founders (his role now is only on the board) came out as pro-MAGA and joined DOGE, and that was the end of AirBnB for me.
The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.
I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.
Sometimes, places I've been to before, where the owners and I know each other.
Another approach is to look on AirBnB and if there is anything, use the images n reverse image search to find the listing on other sites - and often places are on other sites.
Other times, a more general search for the location of interest and see what's there which is simply not on AirBnB, and negotiate discount for long stay.
For the now considerable number of cities where AirBnB has been or has effectively been banned by State, you have to use these approaches anyway - that's how I got into Paris.
Explains why ABB recruiters have been filling my inbox with invites to interview.
Note they have a fucking ridiculous interview process of at least _6 rounds_. Absolutely bonkers.
I was tempted to go for it but fortunately have many other companies in my pipeline with much saner interview processes.
Good luck to whoever gets those positions. Seems they pay quite well, but the question is whether ABB push to expand will pay off and become self sustaining.
It looks like senior roles top out at $220k and staff at $250k, with another $10k or so in indirect financial benefits (401k matching, ESPP, etc). The pay is certainly enough to be well-off, but it's on par with what any random startup offers, so for the sort of person likely to qualify for an ABB position I'm not sure cash would be the motivating factor for choosing them over the other options.
where are you getting that info? ABB total comp per levels.fyi 449K for senior and 626 for staff. Their compensation is pretty competitive. I don't know any startup that offers that much that is also liquid comp.
I was going off the posted salary ranges on their website and ignoring stuff everyone has like decent healthcare and vacation. Do they have a bonus program or stock beyond the ESPP to make up the difference?
I've never really liked AirBnB, and my experience this year has confirmed my feelings.
On two separate occasions this year I've had issues with them.
First, my wife had booked a lodge in the lakes with lots of outdoor space for us to go with the kids and hopefully see the stars, and give them room to roam outdoors; for months our children had been looking forward to it, and a mere 4 days before, the host contacted us saying they'd have to cancel because the power was out; clearly bullshit, no apology, they'd obviously gotten a better price elsewhere because it just happened the weather was looking better than expected that weekend; and I don't see how it would take 4 days to get the power back on; it wasn't remote.
On a separate occasion, 2 friends and I had booked an AirBnB in Wales to attend a wedding together in the area, the host cancelled days later because they'd accidentally double booked; we booked another, they cancelled, no excuse; half a dozen cancellations later, we currently have a booking, and we'll find out in a couple of weeks how that goes.
I don't have the time or the patience for this kind of game-playing bullshit from hosts, and I certainly don't like disappointing my children; I would choose a hotel at a higher cost but they're not always able to provide the experience you're aiming for; it's not always just a room to stay in.
We've used AirBnB in other parts of the world without issues, but we'd usually book those for a few days into a trip, and start with a hotel, so you're not arriving somewhere and immediately have problems when something goes wrong.
One country in particular; my wife and I travelled with two friends who were travelling to arrange their wedding in said (European) country, booked two double rooms, we arrive and we knock at the address we're given, since we've been given no further details; the "host" says to come with him; first tries to put us all up in a box room in some lady's house, with two bunk beds with an adjacent toilet that was flooded and pouring in to the room; when we decline, he takes us to another place where an old man was looking to rent a room, he seemed like a nice man, but my wife was uncomfortable because his living area had a window into the shared shower room, no thanks; the old man was quite upset that we'd declined, he probably needed the money and we felt a little guilty about that; after a couple more examples of this wandering around the town with this guy, it had become apparent, he was taking bookings for rooms that didn't exist and trying to put people up in random peoples homes; I suspect he also wasn't paying them near what he was taking for these bookings.
It was a disgrace, and when we became irritated after so much time wondering around with our cases in the heat we suggested we'll book rooms at the Hilton we had passed while wandering and deal with AirBnB after our break, he managed to find us something suitable; both "almost" to the standard we had booked, and both places he had the keys to in his pocket.
We reported it to AirBnB, but they of course did nothing.
No, I don't care about hotels or hotel prices. People need places to live. You can deal with Hotel prices a bit high. There are millions of people in rich countries right now having hard time paying rent or finding any.
Zoning laws are a way bigger restriction on housing than anything else, Airbnb is a symptom and arguably a scapegoat compared to the dampening of the demand of building new housing supply.
Maybe in America. Outside the US, that's really not the problem. It's people buying up loads of houses and apartments in town centers and pushing everyone else out. Then landlords realize they can jack up rent because they can make more money in one weekend with some foreign tourists through Airbnb than they would from a local living there.
You can build new houses. But if locals are pushed miles away from town, the town dies. A new town is formed. And if that new town gets the slightest bit of popularity on social media, Airbnb swoops in to suck the blood out of it.
It's absolutely killing communities with incomes below the US average.
I think the issue is locals who are already property owners and long time local tax payers will have a greater say than newcomers on new developments in that area.
There’s many places with a lot of Airbnb’s per resident, just look outside of major cities where people still want to visit.
Things have mostly settled down, but suddenly taking a lot of housing off the market meant real supply shocks even if there was plenty of land available for development.
Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.
As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock.
And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect on price. Plus, for people that rent out a room, in can essentially have the effect of increasing the amount they are willing to pay ("I could normally not afford this apartment, but I could if I rent out a room on AirBnB"), which also increases prices.
More importantly, though, people have actually done studies on the effect of AirBnBs on prices, and found they have a positive (i.e. housing gets more expensive) effect on rents and home prices. One example: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/...
> Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.
Quite the opposite. See for Montreal a recent article https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7445844
Officials estimate 4k airbnbs which gives 0.2% of all residential dwellings.
I don't think this is true. The proportion of short term rental places in some districts in European cities are as high as 8-10% and it's growing.
IMO it's meaningless to cite this 0.1% non-sense, because nobody will rent an AirBnB on the outskirts of huge cities far from tourist hotspots, so whoever comes up with these numbers, they probably try smearing the data by selecting an unreasonably wide area for comparison
I am not a chronic traveler but never understood the appeal of airbnb. Most low-mid to midrange chain hotels offer reasonably clean rooms for equivalent (or sometimes cheaper) price than airbnb after fees and I don’t need to play housekeeper either, or worry about weird owners, which seems to me like the whole nice thing about renting a short term place to sleep.
I have a 17 month old and she needs a dedicated space to nap; this is price prohibitive in hotels (suites, etc). So while I typically hate Airbnb, it’s the only solution for us right now.
Same here, plus if you’re traveling with extended family (like siblings’ families) the total price can become insane in a hotel. And feeding all of those people is cheaper if you have a normal sized kitchen.
I just wish more Airbnbs had really dark rooms with blackout curtains. Hotels normally have that covered
Airbnbs with kitchens are especially useful in the US due to the cost of eating out, with tax and tip etc. In other countries I use them more for getting luxury places at a lower cost, such as in parts of Asia, where eating out is much cheaper.
It’s just the standard investor grift where initially Airbnb was cheaper and had higher quality options, then once they established a dominant market position they enshitified
Hotels have been disgusting for years. They weren’t great before Covid. After Covid hotel owners stopped cleaning during your stay. Trash piles up in my room, with guests leaving trash in the halls. Carpets quickly get nasty. Nobody cleaning up the common hallways.
An Airbnb isn’t cleaned during my stay either, but at least the trash can can hold a day’s worth of trash, and there’s a proper kitchen and more space.
If hotels brought back proper service I would prefer them.
Can't blame people for having an existential dread about stacking all those W's for exactly no more cultural impact than a perfectly designed recycling bin.
I'm looking forward to the book (or movie) at least, I dunno about the rest
https://archive.is/yYdut
Maybe I'm in the minority but I've generally had very good -- or at least, "good as I expected" -- experiences at AirBnbs, even recently. Sometimes I've stayed with rich friends who book nice places, and the experience is, as expected, very nice. Many other times I have stayed at bottom-of-the-barrel places, which were, as expected, bottom of the barrel flophouses. But tolerably so, and true to the advertisement (funny how they all have that exact same fake black leather futon though).
People say hotels are as cheap, but they never have the same amenities, and the location in town is often worse. An AirBnb with a kitchen is essentially $20-30 cheaper per day than a hotel without one. Add to that laundry, more privacy, and other perks and it's not really a fair comparison. It does seem like there are more hotel resellers and leasing companies using it as a stopgap between tenants, which I understand, but hate.
I get why they want to be an "everything app" (rich people have more money to spend on "experiences"), but other commenters are spot-on regarding the dangers of taking their eye off the ball. Seems like a better use of company attention would be to really boost and reward the genuine hosts that put their heart into it, and at least put in a modest amount of friction to slow down the corporate resellers with barebones apartments in half-remodeled buildings.
I think the people who say hotels are better than AirBnb aren't traveling with kids.
Having an actual kitchen when you travel with kids is great. Having actual separate bedrooms so we don't have to go to sleep at 8pm when the kids go to sleep is great. Being able to do laundry without tracking down a laundromat or pay exorbitant hotel prices is great. Having a living room or similar area with at least a few square metres of floor space where kids can sprawl is great.
Perhaps the difference is that you’ve been fortunate enough to never need Airbnb support to help you on something serious.
When things go well, it’s amazing. When things go poorly, you realize how anti-guest the policies and support team behave.
That’s when it changed for me. I realized how pro-host, anti-guest they are. Hotels generally seem to care when something goes wrong. Airbnb support behaves like you have inconvenienced them by raising the issue.
Yeah, Chesky is crazy if he thinks people are going to trust AirBnb enough to use it as a passport. You pay them money but their support is what you'd expect from Google's free services, i.e. nonexistent.
For me AirBnb has the dubious distinction of being the only online service I'm banned from, and I have no idea why. I barely used it and the few times I did the hosts were happy. One day I tried to log in and the app wouldn't work properly. I filed a support ticket and they told me they weren't going to tell me anything and there was no appeals process either. And that was that. My guess is I got IP clustered with another person whose account was legit banned, but really, who knows. What's the point of the ID verification process if they act like a free webmail operation anyway?
With booking.com and hotels, you're paying about the same but avoid the BS that comes with Airbnb. It's a much more reliable and predictable experience. The idea of people requiring Airbnb for anything more important than a vacation rental is horrifying.
Not every hotel cares.
The hotel I’m staying at right now is dirty as fuck.
The valve for the shower does not operate properly, the water pressure is extremely low and it barely gets above 90F. Other rooms in the same hotel have a different valve and the showers work fine.
“We will send a maintenance person right away” it’s been a week.
There is old food under and behind my bed.
They empty trash in the hall once a week, it fills up in two days.
They advertise laundry but the driers are all out of order. Apparently the only reason is the change collection bucket is full, the owner doesn’t trust anyone but himself to empty it, but he’s two states away.
I can hear everything through all the walls around me. I can hear people fart.
This hotel has 4.5 stars with >2000 reviews.
An unclean room would be an instant nope for me. Ask for a refund or file a chargeback.
I’m here because my dad had an aneurysm on vacation and idgaf
Sorry to hear that. Sister had an aneurysm a couple years ago. They coiled it, lasted two weeks, then gone. Best wishes for your father and your family.
Let me guess, New York City?
Worst hotels I've ever stayed, in the whole world, were indeed in NYC.
Known chains I've stayed in there have generally been fine--but be prepared for fairly high prices and generally small rooms. Also, any sort of a view is very hit and miss given how close many tall buildings are to each other. I have had some very nice rooms but it's partly luck of the draw and partly someone else paying the tab.
South Dakota.
I'm dealing with this right now and it has definitely shifted my perception of the platform
I think this is different in different countries. I use them a lot in the UK and the customer support has been excellent.
Oh wow. Do I have a story about one of their competitors.
I booked a cabin via VRBO for a few nights as a celebration. It was somewhat remote, but the architecture was neat, and it was a decent deal for my budget. There was some weird cotton-like stuff and...snapping?...in one of the walls that was a bit off-putting, but nothing seemed serious.
Then, night came.
I awoke in my bedroom to something moving. Bleary eyed, I turned on the bedside light and saw something flitting almost silently in the darkness. It seemed like a large insect perhaps to my blurred vision. But whether it was the size or the weird sounds, it eventually clicked: it was a bat trapped in the high-ceiling bedroom.
So, after swiftly getting out of the room, doing some hasty research, and calling animal control, I learned two things. First, bat encounters in the area have a standing policy to IMMEDIATELY see the nearest emergency room to receive a rabies vaccination. It turns out bat bites can be super-tiny and difficult to detect, and they are carriers.
Second, I struggled to convince the limited support channels at VRBO that there was a freaking bat in their property. There was no real emergency line for support I could locate at the time, and I really hope that the information I left would somehow be used to prevent someone else using said property from, ya know, potentially contracting rabies.
To this day, I find myself more wary of property encounters. I don't think I ever got a refund for that debacle, but admittedly I may have been a bit more focused on my mortality.
> Hotels generally seem to care when something goes wrong.
Not really. When was the last time you stayed at a non-chain 2-star hotel in Asia?
Hotel chains care because they care about their brand. Not that's a result of being a chain, not of being a hotel.
There are plenty of hotels where you can get multiple rooms and a washing machine. When traveling with kids, one big advantage of hotels is predictability.
The last thing I want to do when I'm pulling in after a long flight an hour past the kids' bedtime is to deal with potentially dealbreaking problems with the place. In a hotel, they generally have maintenance on staff and extra rooms to switch into in case of problems. Generally with Airbnb, the staff is 30 minutes away and is annoyed that you've called them. Most of the time, everything is fine, but there can be snafus with locks, plumbing, cleanliness, etc, and kids make these more complicated. This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
In Europe certainly, it’s very expensive to get anything close to what you’re describing in a hotel.
Just having a separate living room and bedroom in your hotel can be hundreds more per night.
Interconnecting rooms are rare, you can request it, and it’ll be subject to availability. So you can’t even guarantee you’ll have one.
Airbnb is always over 200 a night after fees
This is the same everywhere I have been in the US.
A trick is to know which brands you need. Marriott's Residence Inn is a big reliable one (for multiple "rooms" and kitchen/laundry) that exists almost everywhere in the US. It's a part of the whole Marriott system and often in tourism lulls in various cities has deals that keep it comparatively well priced with other Marriotts in that city and will let you use Marriott points to further defray costs.
Hilton and IHG both have similar brands, but their exact names escape me at the moments. The search keywords are "extended stay" and "apartment hotels".
Comfort Suites by Choice Hotels as well.
Depends where you are. Maybe in expensive cities where space is at a premium. But suite hotels (with various levels of kitchenette/kitchen) in the US are not, in my experience, notably more expensive--though often have simpler facilities--than more conventional hotels. (Bedroom may not be actually a different room from living room area but is often at least somewhat separated. So may not help with kids. Stay in this type of hotel in the US a lot.)
Have you been anywhere besides NYC and Vegas?
The parent led off with the value of having a full kitchen, which you have dropped—obviously because there are extremely few hotels in the U.S. that include this.
Your description of how well hotels are run does not match my experience. I’m sure it’s true of very nice hotels. It’s also true of very nice AirBnB’s! And VRBOs, which are not as well known but similar idea.
There are a whole lot of hotels that include a kitchen in the U.S. Many extended stay/suite hotels have a stove, microwave, utensils/dishes, refrigerator, and some a dishwasher. It's more rare to have an oven, although I have seen it.
There are a tiny amount of hotels that have a full kitchen. Maybe less than 3% of hotels have a full kitchen.
Whereas I would not be surprised if more than 80% of Airbnb's have a full kitchen or access to one.
I have never stayed in a hotel room that had a washing machine.
There are long-term stay hotels that generally cater to business clientele, plus most of the chains have a laundry room somewhere on premise for guest use.
Plenty of hotels have washers/dryers for guests to use, sometimes having a laundry room on each floor of the hotel.
I haven’t seen one on each floor, either, but that’s still not as convenient as one in the room that’s yours so you can run it while you’re out to dinner or overnight while you sleep. It’s shared so you have to plan around it.
I have stayed at many hotels of varying degrees of quality all over the U.S., and I have never, not once, seen the laundry being used. It’s always been available.
On my trips outside the US, the hotel laundry rooms are usually busy. Enough that many of the hotels show individual machine status from a top-level page in the TV menu.
They're not common but the hotel I often stay in London has a laundry room that I use pretty routinely on longer trips.
Maybe regional. This is common in mid-tier hotels in Asia and hostels across the world.
Do you mind elaboration on at least what region of the world you are talking about? I think this whole main thread is suffering from the globalism v diversity collision; we are a global group of people trying to compare regionally, nationally, local, or even personal experiences that differ so widely that it regresses into noise.
My experience is that e.g. it used to be a lot easier in the USA to find hotels that even just had a kitchenette or even a pay to wash “laundromat” (which is what I assume you are referring to), but maybe that is also just my personal experience. But my sense is that those offerings have been in stark decline especially over the last decades, and especially outside of the inland western half of the country that in some places is still a kind of real America that has not yet succumbed to con job level corporate practices.
It seems fairly accurate to include AB&B in those who have succumbed to “enshitification” for whatever of the several reasons that may be. In the case of AB&B it feels like MBA Wall Street types pressed to slide or chip away at ever more standards to drive “growth” and/or “cost cutting”, the only two real tricks the number monkeys have in their bag.
> My experience is that e.g. it used to be a lot easier in the USA to find hotels that even just had a kitchenette or even a pay to wash “laundromat” (which is what I assume you are referring to), but maybe that is also just my personal experience. But my sense is that those offerings have been in stark decline especially over the last decades, and especially outside of the inland western half of the country that in some places is still a kind of real America that has not yet succumbed to con job level corporate practices.
American here. The opposite is true -- there used to be few of these, and they were "upscale". Now there are tons of different low-end chains that specialize in it. Homewood Suites, Marriott/Hilton/Sheraton Suites, Embassy Suites, DoubleTree, Hyatt Place, Springhill Suites, and maybe half a dozen others.
These are usually, but not exclusively, located in areas that are a bit more rural -- I don't know if you'll find one in Manhattan, for example, and you'll see definitely them by pretty much every major freeway interchange. But I've stayed in one on Maui, in San Diego, and near the airport in SF, so you see them in "tourist" places as well.
Sorry, Embassy Suites is a "low-end" chain??
No, I just was typing fast and grouped everything together I could think of. Embassy Suites is one of the OG "suite" chains that I'd characterize as "formerly high end, maybe mid-level right now", but YMMV.
I wouldn't characterize any of those as genuinely low-end which I'd reserve for things like Travelodge and below. Probably various shades of the midrange scale with some on the upper and some on the lower side. I'm in a Marriott SpringHill Suits at the moment which is boring but clean and comfortable enough.
Yeah, it varies. I think fundamentally you're paying for square footage, so bigger rooms will always be "mid-market", to some extent. The ones in tourist spots are fancier than the ones by Exit 5A of a freeway interchange in rural Nebraska.
The suite hotel I used in Maui, for example was pretty fancy: pool, restaurant, bar, gym, balcony rooms, etc. But the price point was certainly below equivalent hotels in the same area.
In North America, across hundreds of hotel stays, I have seen exactly zero ensuite washing machines. For extended stays, being able to kick off your laundry and leave for the day is absolutely priceless. Having to set timers and babysit coin-operated laundry on a different floor just isn't worth it, to the point where I'd rather just pay $$$ for hotel laundry service over using their communal laundry room.
A lot of "extended stay" hotels have this. One brand I've used and have had pretty good luck with is Sonder. They're not quite full service -- they have a spartan reception and want you to use their app for everything, but they do have multiple rooms, an adequate kitchen, and washing machines in the rooms.
> There are plenty of hotels where you can get multiple rooms and a washing machine
Ok... Can you show me some like that in the EU?
> This is all not to mention being asked to strip beds, take out trash, etc, after you've paid thousands of dollars, including cleaning fees for the place.
Just don't do that.
I staid at a hotel in Lisbon [1]that had a kitchen and washing machine. (And a kids club that would watch the kids)
There ended up being an issue with the dryer not drying. So the hotel staff took a laundry basket of clothes and delivered them washed and folded the next morning. That level of service would not have happened in an Airbnb.
[1] https://www.martinhal.com
> Ok... Can you show me some like that in the EU?
Yes, trivially. There are filters for it on booking.com. Here's a link for rooms in Paris suitable for 2 adults and 2 kids with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen/kitchenette and a washing machine.
https://www.booking.com/searchresults.en-gb.html?label=gen17...
Great, now look at the prices and compare that to your typical AirBnB.
Most 4 start hotels and resorts have either connecting rooms or family rooms in Europe (the latter especially true for resorts). They are far less common on lower categories though. I suppose to book connecting room you might have to call sometimes rather than going through online platforms though. Hotel with kitchenette and washing are not that hard to find either. They certainly more common on location were people tend to spend longer stay rather than in touristic cities were people spend on average just a few nights (ie. mountain and seaside places were people sometimes spend weeks or even months), usually they call them aparthotels or suites depending or something like that.
Got some links? And how do their prices compare to the typical AirBnB?
In Europe, this is mostly called an aparthotel. Or look out for keywords like suites or residences.
This is different from Airbnb's where they abuse a residential building for short term stays.
> this is mostly called an aparthotel
Which is quite different from, and far more expensive than, a hotel which GP was talking about.
> This is different from Airbnb's where they abuse a residential building for short term stays.
As allowed by local regulations, so not quite abuse. Sure it used to be the wild west several years ago but it's been cracked down on since.
For the same price, airbnb usually provides more than hotels (but with higher variation in quality).
Hotels tend to be pretty consistently good when it is over a certain price point, and at any higher price point, all you get is better views/location (and may be some amenities such as gym or pool) - aka, quality caps out and just becomes expensive.
Airbnb prices are quite correlated to quality. High priced airbnb (for example, a holiday lodge) can be _very_ good for the price. But airbnb is a sort of buyers beware type deal.
Hotels also provide tons of variation in quality. Just look up hotels in, say, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City where the options are much more than just the typical Western chains. Or compare the many non-chain "motels" in North America.
I think what you mean is "chains" tend to be pretty consistent. Which, yeah, that's always been the main value prop of a chain. You go to McDonald's in Tunisia and you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get.
Chains consistency kills half the fun of travelling the world.
Kids enforce a filter on what sort of fun you look for. Without kids, the bottom tenth percentile hotel experiences is often a few hours of bad sleep before escaping in the morning. With them, it's hours of tantrums, desperate searches for acceptable food or sleeping arrangements, and worrying for days afterwards about the effects of smoke, mold, dust etc on their health.
Going to a local place doesn't necessarily mean going in shitty places, even with family. I traveled in many countries, especially Europe and Asia, with my 2 daughters and while they do throw the usual tantrum for their ages, we always find something local they like to eat, and they don't really mind one room or another to sleep, as long as they are in the same room with at least one of us.
Yeah for sure, normally it's fine and more fun. But the potential 10th-percentile scenario can be much worse. I don't for a second judge parents that decide based on that.
I don't judge parents either, my initial comment was more global, plenty of tourists with no kids in international fast-food chains for example. For hotels also the "chains sample" is usually skewed. There are basically no low/mid-range chains outside their core country or region. You just find high-end hotels (Hilton, Radisson, Sheraton, Four Seasons etc) all over the world.
>and worrying for days afterwards about the effects of smoke, mold, dust etc on their health.
I mean, that one is on you. It is possible to go on vacation even camping with kids without having anxiety attack over everything.
Also, while some kids are difficult and kids are slow and certainly limit you, hours of tantrumps every holiday and impossibility to eat are not normal.
Sure. I've camped at a festival with a 1 yr old. Even stayed in a campervan at a festival when they were 6 weeks old. I'm just explaining why parents might prefer the safety of well-known chain hotels vs whatever "fun" darkwater was referring to.
The air usually seems pretty fresh and healthy when camping.
There tend to be a lot of dust. Less hygiene then in hotel.
What about the carpets?
I’m not sure I follow the implication here, but: my point was that “camping” is generated seen as a fairly healthy vacationing option, so it seems weird to use it as the lower-bound on a spectrum that contains moldy Airbnbs and hotels.
Well, there's a reason people build homes and apartments to live in, and a reason that societies with homes and apartments are healthier than societies that sleep in tents and shacks. Dirt is... dirty.
And yes, the point being advanced in the thread is that compared to camping - which is generally healthy and not something to freak out about! - homes are going to be cleaner, occasional mold issues aside. So it's silly to freak out over the infinitesimally-slight chances of little Timmy and Sally getting dust-mold-smoke cancer-AIDS from a less-than-perfectly-sterile room.
People build houses to protect ourselves and our stuff from the elements (and other climate control reasons), for privacy, for security, that sort of stuff. They are necessary for high-density living (plumbing helps to keep poop away).
Generally though, I would expect camping to be healthier than a hotel room. Hotel rooms and airbnbs are places that many humans go through, and humans are generally the main carriers of human pathogens. The only germs on your camping gear are your own ones.
For food and drinks, I agree, but when I’m ready to go to bed, I don’t want an adventure, I want a comfortable and quiet room that I’m already accustomed to.
And the other half being a disappointment?;)
I have three kids. We prefer to stay in hotels with suites where the kids can sleep in a separate room. I prefer the fact that they have on-site staff. All hotels that we've stayed in for the past few years include a breakfast buffet.
The kids generally prefer hotels because they have pools.
We've found plenty of professionally run "resorts" where the space is like a small apartment, with a full kitchen and multiple bedrooms. These tend to be right in ski areas where we could walk to the lift if we were staying during the ski season. We did stay in one that was AirBNB-like because it was privately owned but the ski area handled the reservation and any issues that came up while we were there.
As I pretty avid skier its my experience that at most ski towns airbnbs cost about 50% more than hotels but have about 3x the square ft for the cost. Yea I can pay 4 grand a night for 4 hotel rooms or whatever setup youve got, or I could pay a half of that for a 3 bedroom airbnb with an outdoor hot tub. Easy decision for me
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I can't put a finger on it, but I have never used AirBnB, so I probably do not know what I am missing. I have kids now, and when we move around within the EU, I have always found the hotel experience predictable and reliable (and like many say here, perhaps more expensive, though I don't know by how much). Our daily life at home/base camp is filled with chores - laundry, cooking, cleaning etc. So going and staying at a hotel with good amenities and services is a welcome change. Nice breakfast every day, in-room service, laundry on-demand etc. Of course there is a price tag, though our family has found it quite affordable with a regular EU software paycheck. Also, my experience does not extend for stays beyond a week. Anything longer would demand an apartment, for sure.
I'm very mixed on the subject.
I, like you, prefer the hotel offering. Messing around with hosts and their rules is not on my list of things I want to care about, the fact that there are hidden fees and stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Hotels, I know the rules. Don't destroy or steal, make life easier for the maid: done.
With AirBNB, there's the cleaning fee, there's the self-replacement of items situation, there's the unknown state going in; and there's some faff about checking in.
However, the laundry fee's are definitely killer in hotels. I prefer to travel light and paying €8 for a pair of socks (or.. depending on the hotel manager PER SOCK) to get them washed is just painful. It's not just a high price tag at that point, it's borderline criminal markup.
I have also noticed that amenities such as Irons are less common in hotel rooms these days, which is annoying as I've started wearing shirts in my old age- worse still is the toilet situation. Modern hotels must think we're all voyeurs or something. The majority of hotels I've stayed at in the last 3 years I would not want to be with a child, frosted glass bathrooms, rarely a lock, sometimes it's just slatted wooden cabinet doors... idk, something wild is going on with hotel bathrooms man.
IME, you can quite often get an iron and ironing board brought to your room (or to pick up somewhere) by asking for one at the reception. It's kinda standard in any hotel that gets business travelers, which is most of them.
That has been my experience also.
The ironing board is sometimes.. however..
Kinda small: https://www.amazon.com/Ironing-Tabletop-Foldable-Collars-Han...
Strange. As a father of two I prefer hotels over AirBnB. Laundry could be an issue, yes, but not having a kitchen is actually a feature for me. Someone else taking care of feeding the little ones is exactly what hotels are for
Sounds like you are looking for the hotel apartments. I stayed in plenty of those and they are good deal, you get kitchen, plenty of space. Think it was 100GBP/night and with the company discount it went down to 75GBP/month
There's a lot of truth in that.
Normally, I never use a kitchen when traveling. When with GF, she does often like eggs in the morning though. So if there isn't a hotel/inn breaffast that can sometimes be useful.
I agree with respect to circumstances where you want houses or at least multi-room apartments though. Hotels aren't mostly a good fit for that although suite hotels sometimes have a couple of bedrooms.
My decision tree is simple:
- If I need a kitchen? AirBnB
- Am I staying somewhere with low population density for more than a couple of nights? AirBnb
- Am I staying somewhere with low population density for a couple of nights or less? Motel or camping
- Everywhere else: Hotel
I have 2 kids and I kinda agree but I now stay with hotels with kitchens. I have not stayed at Airbnb since they ruined me and my family’s stay during my wedding. The flat we had didn’t have a working toilet and they refused to find us a new place. They just offered a refund (only if the host confirmed toilet can’t be fixed)
And this is after I explained it’s my wedding!!
Never again.
Indeed, hell is being cooped up in a hotel with kids -- for the kids, the parents, the rest of the occupants, and the staff.
I think this is a huge factor in why my family always camped when I was a kid.
And to be frank, I don't like being cooped up in a hotel either.
Hotels aren't designed to be cooped up in. Hotels are designed for 2 things: Housing many people at the same place, and giving you a comfortable place to sleep, shower and have a breakfast in. And they're great at those.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If the kids are not toddlers any more, booking a place where you share the apartment/house with the host (or maybe other travelers) can also be a great experience.
I mean, it's an adventure, and those can also go poorly, but our experiences have been just excellent. And at those bottom-of-the-barrel prices mentioned earlier.
Definitely not something that hotels offer.
That sounds like a living hell to me.
> aren't traveling with kids
Just as much as many parents think having had kids is one of the proudest decisions (or happiest accidents) they have made, I think not having them is one of my best decisions, travelling is one of my many reasons for that, and I find the assumption from some parents that we should bend around their choice is a little presumptuous.
Furthermore, ignoring various other definitions of better, hotels are sometimes better value (or, at least, just less expensive) then AirBnBs these days, unless you are lucky, and inexpensive/value-for-money seems to be a very important factor for parents that I know.
Having said that I still use AirBnB sometimes, it just certainly isn't my only/preferred option as it was for a time.
People had to tolerate your existence when your parents decided to bring you into this world. Why not show the same courtesy?
It isn't about tolerance for the kids. I have no objection to them being around¹, I don't begrudge my taxes going into education and relevant parts of the NHS for them.
My issue is the assumption, amongst many of those with kids, that everything should be optimised for people with kids, and anything that isn't is wrong. Because why would you want to optimise anything for other conditions in some cases?
>Why not show the same courtesy?
There is courtesy, and there is being expected to accept suboptimal things for myself so that everything can be optimal for other peoples' choices.
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[1] except perhaps the particularly uncontrolled ones, and I acknowledge that is sometimes unavoidable
So many weird assumptions here.
How exactly is everything optimised with families in mind? Ask any parent and I'm sure they will tell you how unoptimised their life is.
Why does a single person with their own expendable income worry so much about being catered for specifically? Your only responsibility is to yourself. Do you look around and bemoan family specific services? It's such an odd thing to care about unless you had a grudge.
Kids aren't a 'lifestyle choice' like deciding to travel. Do I need to go into the reasons why kids are important or who will be paying to keep you alive when your older?
> So many weird assumptions here.
In your response, yes. Either that or you are significantly misreading my posts.
> How exactly is everything optimised with families in mind?
It isn't. I didn't say that at all. Some things are, possibly not enough, but many parents think everything should be and everything that isn't implies some deliberate slight.
> Ask any parent and I'm sure they will tell you how unoptimised their life is.
Ah, the old “you are not a parent, you don't know how hard it is”. I know many parents, and even without that personal context the issues with parenthood are well documented throughout our culture. If anyone is ignorant of reality here it is parents who are surprised to find it isn't easy…¹
> Why does a single person with their own expendable income worry so much about being catered for specifically?
I don't, and that isn't what I said.
> Your only responsibility is to yourself.
Incorrect. I have parents, other family, friends, pets, my work (though that could be filed under responsibility to myself I suppose - I'm not a public servant by any description), other organisations (both commercial and charitable) that I interact with, certain responsibilities we all have to society in general, etc.
> Do you look around and bemoan family specific services?
I very much do not, I don't even bemoan funding them, and I explicitly said as much (to quote: “I don't begrudge my taxes going into education and relevant parts of the NHS…”). Try reading what you reply to before replying to it!
> It's such an odd thing to care about unless you had a grudge.
Not a grudge as such. Just an irritation that if I'm sometimes seen as selfish if I appreciate something that is optimised for my lifestyle. I've been called selfish for just not wanting to have kids.
> Kids aren't a 'lifestyle choice'
They very much are. It is a choice that affects your lifestyle in a great many ways whichever side you choose (or, in some cases, have chosen for you).
> Do I need to go into the reasons why kids are important
No need, I've been told these things, despite already knowing them, many many many times already!
> who will be paying to keep you alive when your older?
That is a complicated discussion that I really don't have time for ATM, but further to “why kids are important” I am well aware of the problems an average ageing population can cause.
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[1] Obviously excluding those whose kids have specific issues, be they physical, mental, or both. Those matters are not predictable unlike the general challenges almost all parents face.
Most parents want everything to cater to their family... you say. This irritates you.
However, you find it irritating when people call you selfish when things are catered for you.
Who are these people calling you selfish by the way? Who has said your selfish for not having kids for example.
This frustration with parents seem to come from a sense of guilt? Not that I agree you should feel that way. But all this talk of feeling selfish and being called selfish. I have never felt that way about any friends or family I know without kids. Never even crossed my mind.
If you're truly happy with your lifestyle choice, these things shouldn't bother you at all.
> Most parents want everything to cater to their family... you say.
You are twisting my words again. I'm strongly suspecting this is deliberate, to make my position sound more hard-line, rather than a misunderstanding on your part. I said many, which is far from most, and to those with kids not to their specific family¹.
> This irritates you.
Not directly. If you pay attention to the start of this thread² you'll see that the source of irritation was the implied “you aren't a parent so you don't understand”. Here it was said lightly, but often there is more than a hint of suggesting that those without kids, particularly those who very much don't want them, are somehow both inferior in terms of knowledge, intellect, morality, or some mix of the three.
> Who are these people calling you selfish by the way?
Currently, directly to me? No one. I've successfully convinced the world around me that my line ending here is not a bad thing!
Though it was explicitly stated in my direction in my younger years when talking about future life plans. Who was saying it? Quite a mix of people, though there was certainly a bias towards those to whom religion was an important part of how they gauge the actions/intent of others. In some cases I think people take my explicitly not wanting that way of life is me saying that the other choice is generally wrong and that they, by inference, are wrong³, which is not the case. My original home town has a prevalence of certain opinions about the world, and there was from some people a suggestion that other cultures having more children than was a concern so breeding is some sort of duty, but that is part of a different kettle of mouldy fish.
As an example more outside of myself: I have a couple of friends who would like to have themselves rendered incapable without the hassle of pills and other treatments which, for them and quite a few others, can have significant side effects, but that isn't something they are allowed to choose in this country even at their own expense. The word selfish has definitely been levelled at them (also “misguided” and similar, along with “you'll change your mind and regret it” as if they are a 14-year-old wanting a face tattoo not a 30-something trying to make their life less problemful for a week each month).
> This frustration with parents…
Again, your wording seems to be trying to frame me as saying things that I am not, here that all parents have unreasonable expectations. That is rather disingenuous of you.
> seem to come from a sense of guilt?
Nope. I don't see what I would feel guilty about here.
> If you're truly happy with your lifestyle choice, these things shouldn't bother you at all.
I am, but I have to admit to not being high-minded enough not to be bothered by the implied inferiority (“you aren't a parent, you wouldn't understand”, etc.) or that everything should cater for the other choice.
Also, I am not the only one who matters here. That the pressure to conform to traditional family models exists, means that some end up in a place that they really wouldn't have chosen for themselves and that they are not happy about.
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[1] The latter would imply I think that their view point is from an entirely self-centred perspective
[2] Assuming you are not an LLM with a limited context window so don't have access to that!
[3] This certainly applies to a couple of people who have since popped out enough, or been the cause of others having them, to make up for my lack of desire to have any. How much it applies more generally is less provable.
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It is really location specific. For some locations, the hotel experience is better/cheaper and hotels (serviced apartments) can have kitchens/privacy.
The problem is not much of the hotel/apartment but rather the platform. AirBnb manipulates search results, prices and UX to squeeze harder. It now wants to up sell "experiences" that it puts in your face every-time you open the app. It is just exhausting as the rest of everything on the internet that is taking the same path.
I don't even really understand the concept of comparing AirBnB prices to hotel prices? Unless you're literally just looking for the cheapest place to safely spend the night with zero considerations beyond that they just aren't the same product. Staying in an apartment or house and staying in a hotel are vastly different experiences.
There's also...apartment hotels!
Want hotel quality and safety with apartment perks? Just go to an apartment hotel! It costs more than a hotel/AirBnB but you're also not at the whims of random hit-or-miss listings and shady shit. And they clean your room if you want them to!
> There's also...apartment hotels!
They're not nearly as common as Airbnb apartments in most countries. I also trust Airbnb listings and reviews more than what I find on most booking sites.
I don't trust AirBnb reviews much at all. When I've found the same place on AirBnb and Booking, the difference was always clear: AirBnb has only glowing reviews with nothing wrong at all, while Booking reviews were much more realistic with also some critical but fair observations included.
The AirBnB review system feels fairly useless. I've had some pretty poor experiences with AirBnB, but I am loath to give severe ratings or write anything too awful. I would like to give fair warnings to subsequent guests but it never feels like it would help. Instead I do try to give direct feedback to hosts if they are available.
Maybe some way to secretly write problems, and get next guests to agree/disagree with each concern?
Repeatable patterns of problems (rather than one-off bad luck) are what I'm most interested in avoiding.
I find booking.com has been more reliable, and less risks of unexpected costs. AirBnB is usually way less professional.
When writing reviews in-app, there's a certain pressure to not fuck someone over.
For instance, hypothetically, there might be a listing that mentions plenty of clean towels, a swimming pool, and a walk to a convenience store. I get there and there were two towels, the swimming pool was one of those above-ground models, and the convenience store was a 20 minute walk.
Leaving a negative review on AirBnB might fuck the guy over in search results or certain incentives, so I wouldn't really delve into the definition of "plenty" and how a "swimming pool" should mean "a pool that's large enough to swim in" and not "a big puddle that's perfectly suited for splashing around in, but less so for actual swimming". I might mention them in a private note to the renter or something, but it's not egregious enough to sabotage the otherwise-perfectly-fine service I was provided.
There's no such direct gamification with a third-party review site, so I might bring these things up there.
It's similar to leaving a thumbs up for an Amazon driver who walks on the lawn because he didn't notice the paved walkway. Was it "perfect delivery"? No. But is it something I'd want the guy to have negative employment ramifications over? Also no.
The problem I've seen with those is that all those places have turned to using Airbnb to manage guests and bookings. The whole little industry that spawned is beyond bizarre to me. Like everyone wanting to hyper optimize and the uniqueness disappeared.
From a utility perspective not really. You need a safe comfortable place to sleep, a clean bathroom, maybe a TV, some space for your stuff and that’s basically it.
The experience is OUT THERE, not where you are staying.
So yea I’m looking for the cheapest place that meets the bar. Sometimes it’s Airbnb but usually it’s a hotel.
What a ridiculous comment. Along the lines of you can't compare iphone and android phones.
Most people just want somewhere to stay while they visit a city or relatives or an event.
Even if you want a kitchen many hotels offer some basic facilities.
In this way they are perfectly comparable.
I used to like Airbnb. It's not better or cheaper than hotels, but when travelling with kids it makes a big difference.
Until I had a bad experience, that turned horrible. I saw a side of the company that made me think "never again".
I rented a place from a "superhost" that looked very nice on paper. It was in fact very bad. Everything in the description was misleading, photos were doctored to look nice, "windows" opened to a wall on the next building two feet away, there was mold everywhere, the shower flowed into the bedroom, etc.
At this point it wasn't the end of the world; I stayed two nights and went home. Then I wrote a bad review. It was simply descriptive and contained no harsh language of any kind.
The review was immediately taken down; I asked why, and received a barrage of emails from Airbnb (some automated, some maybe not) saying that they were very sorry, they understood this wasn't the outcome I expected, but they couldn't publish it.
Turns out, Airbnb will go to extreme lengths to protect their hosts, because they are much more valuable to the company than one random customer.
But if the reviews are fake or filtered, then I can't trust the platform.
I went back to booking.com; they now have properties in addition to hotels, and are much more professional.
I don't agree that Booking.com handles customer complaints better than Airbnb. I had booked a flat through Booking.com. The host wanted a deposit of my credit card information via an untrustworthy customised Italian website for a deposit before handing over the pin to collect the key. I do not speak Italian. Giving my credit card information to a strange website whose language I don't speak was not part of the agreement. The host then refused to give me access to the flat. My complaint to Booking.com was answered with standard texts pointing out that the deposit was obligatory in the small print and therefore part of the contract. However, the small print, which I admittedly had not read before booking, stated that the deposit was to be paid in cash. It didn't say anything about credit cards. I tried over five rounds of back and forth to get a complaint and a refund via Booking, as I didn't actually receive the flat and therefore didn't get any service. Booking then simply stopped replying. When I then wanted to take legal action and claim the amount, it turned out that I would have had to sue somewhere in Holland. So all the money was gone and I had double the cost for that night because I had to book a room elsewhere. So I've had the worst experience with booking.com customer support.
I booked one with swimming pool, advertising enough room for 6 person.
View was amazing, as advertised. The bed in the living room was inflatable and deflated over night. Only three forks in kitchen drawer. Convoluted scheme to enter the building and room cause they want to hide the fact it's an Airbnb as it's not really allowed in that building. Swimming pool was on maintenance since 2 months.
Airbnb couldn't care less, basically I was being annoying to them. They didn't publish my honest review.
Sure having a kitchen and a comfy place to rest is nice, since that experience I'm very reluctant to take again that risk, especially with kids.
Not as bad as my worst airBNB experience.
Everything from rats to exposed wiring next to a shower!
Review got removed. Full story here: https://pietersz.co.uk/2017/02/airbnb-block-bad-reviews
Same experience here. It was shocking how bad Airbnb’s customer service was. When 95% of the stays are good it doesn’t matter but that one bad stay soured me on the company entirely
Almost every Airbnb I've stayed over the past few years has been subpar compared to how it is advertised. The most recent one in Malaysia had cockroaches in the kitchen. Airbnb is now the last resort after I've exhausted staying in hotels.
At this point, I stay away from serviced apartments altogether. At least with a hotel you can go to reception and demand they fix your issue.
This has been my experience, as well.
The only exception is actual vacation homes that people rent out when they're not there. If it's not clearly a vacation home, I know that it's going to suck in at least one way.
Booking also gives you the final price in search results.
At least in the US now all companies have to as the FTC put out a rule that went into effect.
https://skift.com/2025/05/09/no-more-hidden-hotel-fees-new-f...
This is the same asymmetry why I wont buy a tesla until tesla allows any mechanic to fix problems with it. ie, you are beholden to the manufacturer or seller, and are at their mercy. This becomes more important as the car ages.
In this case also, it appears that the customer has no recourse (bad reviews are taken down.)
In Germany it's apparently illegal to leave a bad review of a business. Even if their experience was bad. Even if you can prove in a court of law that they lied on their listing.
Leaving a negative review is not outright illegal, but it can lead to legal consequences if deemed defamatory or false. If a review contains unsubstantiated claims or personal attacks, the business can pursue legal action for defamation.
The nuances of these laws can vary, so context matters significantly in legal interpretations.
I think we're just the silent majority.
I've been a digital nomad for the last 9 years. Airbnb is a huge reason why my experience has been so great. How else can I show up in a city in a new country , spend 5 minutes the day before I arrive, and end up with a nice furnished apartment in a great location for a week's stay?
Oh, how lovely it is so convenient for you, e.g. the "silent majority" while the residents of those cities foot the direct and indirect bill from reduced availability of the real-estate and the ever-increasing costs.
Anywhere you could build a hotel you could also build more housing, so they pose the same issue. There is necessarily some tension between using space for permanent housing and using it for tourism / short term stays. Tourism often keeps a city's economy healthy, and having short term stays is important for those visiting even for non-tourism reasons (e.g. in town to visit family, for work, etc).
The housing issue is more complex than just Airbnb / short-term housing as well: is there enough housing investment? what is the effect of international or corporate investment? are local regulations supporting or sabotaging the effort to build more housing? is there a large speculation market?
Ignoring some nuances, I see what you're saying-- At least in the long run.
The issue is however in the short run, air BNB encourages taking existing rentals out of the market to turn into short term rentals. The effect is driving long term rental prices toward the short term price level supported by income level of the visitors. (untenable for most residents).
The conversation of new units refers to a decades long process dependent on credit cycles and investment interest.
It is like arguing that the exodus from the rust belt in the late 80s and 90s was good for the cities because it made the cost of housing go down.
This is true if we focus entirely on housing cost and basically ignore all the down sides. Of course, ignoring the perspective of those who owned real estate too at that time.
Real estate always has quite a bit of preference falsification associated with it too. Everyone is always publicly outraged at the cost increase of real estate while those who own the increasing real estate are internally quite happy with the situation. I suspect that is the main variable why we can never solve this problem.
But...why should some direct investment towards "housing" if they can direct them towards the day-rentals ? Its definitely in their economical self-interest. So as long as we allow these platforms (be it AirBnB, Amazon or FB) to amplify a single parameter at the detriment of everything else in the society as a whole, I am afraid all the philosophical discussions about "complex" aspects will not help.
This is a supply/demand problem. Your solution is to restrict the supply of short term rentals. Restrictions rarely work, the hypothetical situation you mention would benefit from allowing more building of long term rentals.
No, I did not suggest the solution you are implying my comment meant. What I am saying is that these PLATFORMS are not the right way to handle the supply of short-term rentals, as they incentivise the home-owners to take them off the market for long-term rentals. I would be perfectly fine with short-term rentals which were not the converted living units. We have to think differently here. But if the push comes to shove, actually restrictions would work here in favour of the long-term rentals, because being, as you said yourself, a supply-demand problem, it would raise the supply of long-term rentals and reduce the prices. Just as it was happening before AirBnB. Its just that we have to be moral enough to recognise that the basic human right of a local in a tourist location to live affordably is set higher than the luxury problem of the so-called digital natives, namely, booking a short-term rental in a city center (so they can produce yet another piece of "content"). Not to mention that a platform which does not generate profit should not even be allowed to exist.
Most of the case it is because more building is simply not possible.
And anyway as long as there is no restrictions on the day-rental, investor will choose the option in their economical self-interest. Restriction must apply to force long term rentals.
That's the problem, isn't it? Capitalism sucks. City governments could set rules like: you must build 3 residential units for every hotel room.
> Tourism often keeps a city's economy healthy
I would not say "healthy", there is many situation where it is wealthy but not really healthy
I think what's at play here is the unusually palpable crowding out effects of tourism compared to any other industry. That is, when local stores get replaced by tourism shops, Landmarks etc. become more important than everyday amenities and the town becomes a sort of museum of itself.
Of course tourism can pipe in money and help a place invest in high quality services and amentaties compared to catering to industry.
However tourism often has a tremendous income distribution problem (see Hawaii or Colorado living conditions of service workers). This remains a fundamentally political problem to guarantee income distribution through living wage guarantees etc.
> Anywhere you could build a hotel you could also build more housing
Not really in practice. Ex: there's lots of hotels around airports and highways. Would anyone want to buy a house there? Definitely not. The markets and thus economics are totally different.
> having short term stays is important for those visiting even for non-tourism reasons (e.g. in town to visit family, for work, etc)
I don't know about "important", but "useful" yeah. The thing is like, how ubiquitous is this? I'd naively guess for every 1 person who finds this useful, 1000s more are negatively impacted by Airbnb.
There is endless housing immediately by airports and highways. Like literally any major American airport or highway has tons of housing right next to it. Even in more rural areas people deliberately building a house right by the airport to make routine traveling easier
"Endless"? The proportion of housing near to not near airports and highways is infinitesimal.
You're blaming the wrong people for the issue. Obviously there is demand for tourism in a way that hotels do not fulfill and the people who bought and rent out/host these residences are the ones enabling it by adding supply.
As someone who spends time being digital nomad myself, it isn't my fault when I stay in an AirBNB that is available somewhere since I'm just consuming the available supply that is permitted by the local government and I'm all for residents having priority. Often time its a local resident who owns and rents out the place in the first place, blame them for not renting to locals if you want. Its the local regulations and governments responsibility to regulate this.
real estate supply is not fixed. It is the cities fault for refusing to expand supply in the face of rising demand.
I started out loving AirBNB. Then I had quite a few bad experiences and flipped back to hotels as the price equalised. In the last year or two I’ve gone back to AirBNB as the hosts seem to have professionalised and hotel prices have headed north.
Hotels.com also cancelled a brilliant loyalty programme of buy 9 nights get the 10th free which was another motivation to look elsewhere.
I am currently on vacation in the Mediterranean and find a hybrid model to be the best of both worlds. We strictly use booking.com (we need to find a hotel at 6pm and check in at 7. Same thing the next day.Airbnb would never work.) Booking.com lists apartments too. I would imagine there's a huge overlap with airbnb properties. This way you're using the better company (they helped me out a bunch of times. And the listers are more inclined to behave on booking.com.) but staying in the same apartments with all the positives you listed. It's all self check in now too. I have yet to see any owner or manager.
Booking costumer service is a lot better. In it you find a great ally in negotiating with the property. But Airbnb...
This has always been my experience as well. And like I mentioned above, the people listing places on booking.com are much more likely to try to deal with you properly. I think on AirBNB the renters can even look at your prior reviews to judge how likely you are to give a positive review before they accept the reservation. And they can cancel at any time even after you've paid.
I think the core value prop of Airbnb is (or should be) to provide a different experience than a hotel. It may have been "cheaper than a hotel" at one point and idk what the numbers are on how people are using it but in my experience it excels for larger groups or for people just looking for a more house-like experience than a hotel. Being able to stay in a nice house with a bunch of friends in any city is an amazing thing they made a lot more accessible.
Doesn't really make a lot of sense to me to just shop on price and then compare the experience to booking a hotel room, it's totally different.
I think it gets complicated when there's a long, long list of chores you have to do when you leave.
At the you're paying more than a hotel and you have to spend 2 hours deep cleaning the place... That's when you start to really reconsider.
Which has been VRBO to a large degree. Not sure how common that is for Airbnb as a use case. A lot of what I see is looking for a cheaper room.
Anecdotally I've never heard anyone say "VRBO." Maybe they are using it but just saying "yeah we stayed in an Airbnb" kind of like if you use Lyft but call it Uber cause that's the more common noun.
So I feel like they did successfully establish themselves as the noun for that kind of thing, which to me speaks to the power of the idea and the marketplace they created because the name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
But overall I think the hotel room market is just much larger than the "boutique group stay" market so they have to maintain position as a direct hotel competitor (but I think it is an issue vis-a-vis people complaining here about things like having to coordinate with an individual even though they willingly chose that route).
I agree with all that. One or two people mostly looking for a decent place to stay in the right location without hassle probably describes most travelers under most circumstances. I know it does me and I've travelled over 100 days a year at times. And that's probably not atypical of a lot of business travelers.
Even these days I'm not mostly looking to deeply research my overnight stays much of the time and often default to my hotel chain of choice or a hotel/Aparthotel that I have previous experience with.
Chesky is having a Jobs moment, when Apple went from making Computers to smartphones and much much more. It didn’t happen in a day though. More importantly, by that time, Jobs had already built Next from the ground up, and supported and funded the growth of Pixar into an animation powerhouse. He had all the additional experience shaping his perception on what people want and how people will react to something.
I think Airbnb will have a branding issue. By transitioning from rentals to offering a wide range of services, they might dilute their brand before people have the chance to fully embrace and experience the new offerings.
Perhaps they should reinvent themselves as a platform that manages travel and stays, emphasizing that their “airbnb certified experience” includes access to specific facilities and guarantees. This way, users can choose from other service providers in their marketplace with their own standards. That way, expanding to more services over time would seem like an organic expansion.
Essentially, Airbnb could transition from managing services to a marketplace model that also hosts managed services and other providers. However, by maintaining a focus on “stays” or “travels” and slowly adding more ancillary services would prevent dilution before their metamorphosis is complete.
There will be a rebranding in the next ten years. Airbnb will get a slightly more blocky or rounded version of the same logo and ads everywhere announcing how "Airbnb is now Air".
I can't tell who owns air.com, but the website it hosts is a tiny landing page from someone who would obviously sell.
The rebranding will be met by a slew of astonished articles asking "they spent how much?" and almost as many apparently-thoughtful midwit counterpoints saying no, it looks obvious in hindsight, but it took real marketing genius to conceive of this in advance.
My issue with Airbnb stays is privacy. I don’t trust that the vendors (they’re really not ‘hosts’ nowadays) have not placed cameras and microphones throughout the rooms. I do trust that most (not all!) hotel owners don’t.
is this even a widespread problem? kind of reminds me of the tiktoks of "hotel safety tips"[1]. Makes me think these levels of paranoia are unique to the US
[1] https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/hotel-safety-hacks-t...
Agree. OP is weird. Google tells me:
It should not be difficult to find a security camera. (Microphone is a different matter.) If you find one, you can report to AirBnB, and I am sure the renter will be immediately delisted. And, it is probably just plan illegal in many jurisdictions.Security cameras (like Google Nest) are not the concern people have: hidden cameras are. It is possible to rig an entire property without any chance of guests finding the cameras. The scale at which it happens is a question (and varies based on country) but the illegality isn't the issue. The dissemination of videos and photos secretly recorded of guests and their children is the issue. There are people in prison for doing this but the damage is done, videos and photos of their guests are online forever.
> The scale at which it happens is a question
and my point is that there is no reason to think this is enough of a problem that any well-adjusted person should factor it into the "should I use Airbnb?" calculation. If someone thinks that is an issue then I would assume they never use public bathrooms.
> And, it is probably just plan illegal in many jurisdictions.
Yes because of course nobody would ever do anything illegal.
This is not a useful response. The intent of my comment was to say: If you are renting an AirBnB and you find "hidden" cameras, then you can first complain to AirBnB. If the local jurisdiction prohits cameras, then you can call the police to report it.
Neither is this.
If I’ve already been recorded and say, the footage distributed no amount of complaining nor dealing with the police is going to reverse it.
That's not real. People don't live like that. That's just engagement slop for tiktok.
Also, I would argue that it may not be common, but it's much more likely with airbnb versus a hotel chain. Two reasons; more access to the space without witnesses, and the owner is more likely to know if their preferred gender is going to occupy that particular space.
Meaning, hotel staff can be walked in on by other hotel staff, and there is no guarantee that the attractive person you want to see nude is going to get room 203. Whereas you can see who is renting your Airbnb, and you have access to it by yourself all the time.
Yeah, I've had pretty great experiences with Airbnbs. I'm usually traveling with kids, hotel rooms are small, it's really nice to have a kitchen with kids, and a lot of airbnbs have amenities that the kids like.
Hotels try to milk parents with kids and either force you to take basically another booking, or have few 2-bedroom (or 1 bedroom and living room = parental bedroom) ones, often for almost double the price. Most were designed in another era, and it shows - booked rooms are basically just caves for sleeping.
We only use such if there are no other options in given area or if we want food prepared (this quickly becomes another chore with small kids).
I've never seen a well rated airbnb place with many reviews being bad. They may not be stellar in some aspect, ie small maintenance may be lacking but otherwise having a full kitchen with wash machine is pretty amazing for any type of trip, and one has a wide variety of locations and prices. Also it allows you to experience the place a bit more, compared to hyper sterile and uniform hotel experiences.
Lets not forget airbnbs would never become a thing if they werent cheaper than hotels (or at least provided much better experience at similar price).
They've gotten much much better in the last 5 years. After all the small time would-be "empire builders" who overcharged for shoddy units and abused residential real estate laws got cleaned out of the system, it seems like what's left is a decent middle ground of professional operators running full time rental units, with a few of the original style unique experiences left here and there. The standards have gone way up, and it's generally better than a hotel at the same price point again, which it was absolutely not for most of 2015-2020ish.
Depending on the location you get a bunch of people basically who own a vacation home they get priority to use and rent out the rest of the time. Which is honestly rather nice for both the guests and the hosts.
That was my preferred experience too - well maintained and lived in just enough to make sense. Some places do cheap out on "perks" that seem there only to boost themselves in rankings/filters, but otherwise been a pleasant experience.
We did this in the 80s and 90s so this is not something unique to airbnb, airbnb just did it "on an app". When I say "did this" I mean rented a duplex or house for a couple weeks for a vacation.
VRBO did whole-house vacation rentals in the U.S. well before AirBnB. Still around and works well. I’d say we book about half the time through VRBO and half the time through AirBnB.
AirBnB’s differentiator on launch was “rent just one room” in an owner-occupied dwelling. Remember when it was “the sharing economy”? There are still listings like that, but I think most of the money is in whole-dwelling rentals now.
I genuinely love that 'rent just a room' (or even just a bed!) function of Airbnb, and continue to use it till this day. Have met many interesting people (or as I heard another comment on here say "weird in a non-dangerous way" lol), and it's always felt like a safe and quality experience to me (so long as I always do the due diligence and use common sense to stay with hosts that have tons of positive reviews, etc). IIRC Airbnb had a push a few 'releases' ago to revive this core part of their founding purpose, but now it seems they've moved on to 'services'.
Rented 25 Airbnb’s . half were bad. by bad I mean they were not as advertised. Claimed to have parking for my car. didn’t. claimed to have wifi. didn’t. claimed to be at a particular location on a quiet street, were actually several blocks away on a busy street. been to ones who’s hvac was so loud as to be unusable, etc…
I stopped using them. will not got back
The whole cleaning routine for these places is getting pretty ridiculous though. I have to pay a cleaning fee, get the sheets from the bed and put it in the laundry, and whatever arbitrary stuff is in the checkout list. It never felt turnkey as a hotel.
I think I’m the wrong audience though, as I’m happy as a clam with something like a Best Western or a Motel 6.
Prices are pretty close to hotels, but laundry and Kitchen always tilt the scale in favour of AirBnb.
When travelling for a week, I don't want to each out every day. I appreciate having a couple of things in the fridge for lazy moment, or being able to cook breakfast if I want to stay in late.
And I can wash a bunch of clothes instead of paying €8 to wash a single shirt.
I was a digital nomad for 4 years. The ability to do your own laundry is why I prefer an Airbnb over hotel, especially when you’re only living out of carryon luggage with a few days of clothing. Relying on hotel laundry is hard to time and is not cheap.
If you were an analog nomad for 4 days you would have encountered a laundromat.
How widespread those are depends very much on the country. There are some in which most people haven't seen a laundromat in their life outside of American movies.
Laundromats are commonplace in every country I have visited, none of which are in America.
I didn't say that they are unique to America. And yes, many countries do have them in abundance. Many others do not, or they are rare enough that you might not have one nearby.
I'm from Russia originally and the first time I have ever seen one outside of a movie was when I moved to Canada. Russia does have them, but, generally speaking, only in large cities.
I get the ambition behind the "everything app," but if the core product gets diluted, none of the shiny extras will matter.
markets are, by and large, too competitive for the "everything" app to ever exist. Air BnB works because they have figured out managing search and and a network of "hotels". This may not translate to other services in a way that other platforms could not do better. 'Why doesn't Uber do hotels?' - type of thing.
Yeah, this is way too snarky for what Airbnb actually is.
Airbnb made the same mistake Google did: They screwed up their core service. I used to be a steady ABB customer but now hotels are almost always cheaper, offer better service, and are more predictable.
Not to mention that hotel websites are typically easier to navigate and contain a lot less React-sludge that makes every click take forever to respond.
I had this experience too. Booked on AirBnb with someone who was about the same price as the hotels. Turns out the hosts were just employees of some letting company. They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_, which I declined. Contacting AirBnb support they said this was fully allowed and I should have read the description harder. I did get a full refund but was told it was only because it was "my first time" and I've never had other issues.
I'm glad I turned around and booked with a hotel. It was very personable, good value, and better than what I would've gotten for the same price on AirBnb for that city.
> They wanted photo ID, a deposit, and sign a second contract in a _separate website_
Yup my average airbnb experience in eg Spain is: dealing with an agent, asked to submit all my personal data to some random third party, all other communication done via WhatsApp, and often my number is given to third parties without my consent who spam me with things like offers of experiences/day trips etc
Just note that in a lot of countries, like Spain, the rental or hotel establishments are required by law to collect a lot of your information. It feels totally intrusive, but it's the law unfortunately.
Sure, but I expect AirBnB to handle this. (At least clearly communicate the requirement, cite the relevant statutes, link them, explain them, and help both parties be compliant while respecting users' privacy and hosts' time.)
Also, in places where there are such requirements, someone not following them and requesting the information could be a significant red flag. What other ordinances are they ignoring that could affect your safety or just your enjoyment?
I had some random folks in hostel reception taking full photo with their private smartphone of my id document "for the police", despite I clearly said I do not consent to have a copy of my document taken. Spanish hosts are absolutely shady and sloppy privacy wise.
EDIT. Spaniards don't take it personally. There is a war at the EU borders and there are waves of scams and various predatory behaviours, plus usual organised scams from Balkans, China, and India. Visitors will not be happy about their documents being scanned.
Where it’s the law for the lodging provides to have a copy of ID, you either consent to have them make a copy of your ID or you don’t get a place to stay. You don’t get to not consent and also get a place to stay.
Look up "spanish hotel/hostel fined for copying guest id". They certainly are not allowed to copy documents of EU citizens.
They were fined because they weren’t using the third-party online service that GGGGP is complaining about: https://spanishnewstoday.com/tourism-sector-wages-war-as-new...
They were probably telling the truth. It’s pretty common to have to register hotel/hostel stays with the authorities, and it’s increasingly uncommon to own a flatbed scanner - so what did you expect them to do, pull out a DSLR?
I'd expect them to get the right equipment for them to operate their business instead of having people use their private cell phones to save my photo id to their personal iCloud account and God knows where else.
It's like you're arguing banks should be absolved of using tls because it's just so tricky.
If your business requires you to handle PII I expect you to have the right equipment and processes to handle it.
Identify the guest and write down the details read from the document, that's what most in Europe outside of Spain are doing.
I stayed with a friend in a Balkan country a couple years back and she had to take my passport and that of a couple of relatives down to the police station.
There are too many shady middlemen in the vacation rentals space. I refuse to rent any place that has a separate lease, but they're no longer unheard of.
To some degree, I understand the businessification of rentals - it's uncomfortable for both parties if you're trying to get a grandma to meet you to exchange keys after a late flight. But also, that person-to-person charm is a big part of why people chose Airbnbs in the first place. If it's just an IKEA flip of an old apartment, why bother?
I've actually noticed that my taste in interior design has been impacted. The "pastel and sculpted veneer" aesthetic that took over Airbnb, "modern" coffee shops, and supposedly adult furniture brands like West Elm disgusts me now. I suspect it would have appealed to me if it hadn't been badly copied with shitty materials so many times. Now, I associate it with hollow experiences, poor craftsmanship, and attempts to get me to pay more for a "quality" I won't receive.
Here in Italy the law say that it’s mandatory to meet in person to give you the keys and to do identification, so the grandma should meet you anyway
Of course there are people that still ignore this, but the government has started to crackdown on this a bit, for example some months ago they started removing key boxes on the walls in the street
What city was this booking for?
Not OP but something similar to me has happened in Berlin, but in my understanding this is more due to local regulation which effectively makes "true" Airbnb's illegal and the places that remain on the platform are basically apartment letting businesses
Not the OP, but happened to me in London.
This was in Manchester, UK
any chance this was the "sonder" brand? They have weirdly invasive identity requirements.
Nope, this was CEFAS
I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
I think airbnb is still the better option in many situations - such as when you are willing to pay a premium to be in nature or you going on vacation with 6+ people.
I don't really see how better tech would ever prevent this outcome. Perhaps this disappointing in terms of continual growth, but I think it was inevitable and still provides a good path for the company to be uniquely useful.
The only way to compete against the economy of scale was the original thesis of AirBnB. People were renting out their primary homes to bring in an extra stream of income. It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
> It was never going to be mainstream profitable to buy a normal apartment and rent it out on AirBnB.
It was never meant to be. It definitely has been though. Lots of people making much more money renting out AirBnBs rather than using their property for long term leasing. Which has obviously compounded the housing issues most cities are currently experiencing.
Cities ossified to unimaginably bad levels, which clamped down demand for large-scale construction, which significantly contributed to the productivity of said industry stagnating since "forever".
Compared to these structural problems short term tourist rentals are a complete red herring.
I don't think this is material to the user?
Say I own a house and I just rent it out a few weeks a year. Even if it's not a source of income I am still going to price it to the highest amount that people are willing to pay.
> there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price.
That way was to skirt laws around obtaining hotel permits and zoning and paying all the relevant hotel taxes and business insurance.
Exactly. Airbnb was much cheaper than hotels when it started because of this.
And better. It was all around a better experience, analogous to Uber vs taxi. But while Uber is still more convenient than taxi, I haven't even considered using AirBnB in years.
agreeing (strongly) that uber is better than taxi, and yet again on price it is because uber skirts the law-- drivers typically do not have commercial insurance etc and also uber subsidized rides for a long time with VC money.
That does not seem to be true:
https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/insurance/?city=portland
>When you earn with a transportation network company (TNC), referred to here as ridesharing, most states require extra—and costly—insurance.
>Uber maintains this commercial insurance on your behalf. What’s covered depends on factors such as who was at fault; whether you were offline, online, en route, or on-trip; and your personal insurance policy. Learn more about the commercial insurance coverage Uber maintains on your behalf below.
This is a very good point.
But I still think it was inevitable that cities caught up, either by restricting AirBNB units or giving in and allowing more hotel construction. There was no path for Airbnb to grow for 30 years without it ending up with basic econmics.
Here in Europe there are a lot of local websites for this kind of group accomodations in nature etc. and often the hosts there are much much more approachable and friendly, plus it's often cheaper than Airbnb.
One big example is Gites de France [1] with 55k listings, which is a 70 year old guide. Most of these aren't anywhere else. It doesn't make sense to look elsewhere when travelling in France. Other countries often have something similar, maybe in a smaller scale. For example there are holiday homes websites in the Netherlands, with close to 1000 listings [2].
[1] https://www.gites-de-france.com/en [2] https://www.vakantieadressen.nl/
They shouldn’t be competing. Renting out space on AirBnB was supposed to be an occasional thing and not a full time business.
> I disagree. In the long run there was never a way for individual hosts to compete with hotels on price. Hotels have economy of scale so of course they are going to be better bang for the buck in places where both are options.
Reminder that airbnb was supposed to be about renting your place when you were out of town, not buying 5 buildings to become an hotel chain yourself...
At least hotels don't ask you to clean the dishes, switch of the fridge and do the laundry before you leave
Shouldn’t it expected that a hotel would be able to provide a better service considering they are doing it in bulk and specialise in it. Vs a bunch of individual untrained hosts.
Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
I think it's mostly the fact that AirBnB stopped being outside the law. Once municipalities started regulating them, hosts started paying taxes etc.. they lost the price edge.
In corporate lingo, I think their “core business” is any vacation rental? Partnering with hotels could perhaps have been a viable path for them to grow that and still fit with their business acumen. But I use other platforms for that service now.
What kind of partnership with hotels could they have made that would have set them apart from the dozen options I already have for booking hotels?
There's no need to be super different. AirBnB has a huge userbase, cashflow, reputation, etc... they ought to provide a good search and booking service to users. (And there's all the potential for adding more and more upsell points and value-added services. From flights, insurance, car rental, local activities, museum and national park tickets to ... whatever they are now fucking around with, like fitness and food.)
No, AirBnB just became much more expensive. And it's disguised as processing fees, cleaning fees, etc.
So if I ever take the risk of getting an Airbnb instead of a hotel, then I know the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.
It's like uber: the bait and switch to a service that becomes less good and more expensive is costing them because the competition survived the first wave.
Also, the regulations caught up with them.
Basically, they wanted to win by scummy means, like a lot of American startup that calls doing illegal or immoral stuff "growth hacks".
Still worked well, they are a leader, but not enough to kill the game, and now they have to fight.
Good.
> ...the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper.
This probably won't work for you. It specifically violates Airbnb's TOS to attempt this, and Airbnb scans all messages between you and the host to ensure that you are not attempting this.
As for arranging it with a F2F conversation with the host, it's been years since I've rented an Airbnb and met a host F2F. That doesn't happen much any more.
The next ones I'll do it and I know it will work because I've been doing it regularly for years. I always get the personal phone number of the host, AirBnB can't do jack about it.
In fact, it's not legal for AirBnB to prevent it in my country.
Between loyalty programs, clearer pricing, and just not having to stress about cleaning rules or weird checkout times, they’ve quietly caught up while Airbnb got distracted
>same mistake Google did
This made me realize that their original strategy was to extract the promise from the fat long tail of their respective supply ("unique experience" for abnb, "relevant search results" for goog). But then the Septembers are apt to become eternal if you can't keep it at a level manageable by humans, like a dang-or-2
From TFA
>I want to be a luchador!” he tells me, then immediately regrets it.
(dang is probably quite great at minimizing regrets a la Jeff, the insta ones most of all)
>Leave it to the subconscious to highlight what matters.
> Chesky figured that Airbnb’s experience in attractively displaying homes, vetting hosts, and responding to crises could make it more trustworthy than competitors and therefore the go-to option for virtually anything.
Online reviews are totally broken. I recently spent a week at an Airbnb in the Gold Coast, Australia. The property was rated 5* but was tired and worn. The photos must have been 5 years old before a soul set foot in the place.
I rated it 3*. Shortly after, I got a phone call from the owner. He had my number because I'd had to call him because one of the two toilets in a five-bedroom 14-guest 'villa' was blocked. As in, overflowing with fecal matter blocked.
He essentially tried to bribe me to raise my review. I refused. The house is currently listed as 4.9* with those same photos. A preposterous exaggeration of its quality.
I too had similar experience. I booked a 4.9 rated property with 30 reviews. But experience was really poor and I rated 1 stars post checkout. The propery owner reachout to me asking for explanation but I wasn’t in any mood to discuss.
Hours later they filed fake complaint to Airbnb that I rated poorly as I wanted late checkout and asked money to remove review. Airbnb removed my review post that. I had a flight to catch so I couldn’t checkout late anyway. I shared even flight details with Airbnb but they didn’t reinstate review and added a strike to my account. I expect host did this previously as well to improve their rating.
Had a similar experience where a Sydney AirBnB listed their property as air-conditioned. Had a misting fan. That doesn't quite cut it as "air conditioning" in 45C weather. Had the same outcome as you. Ended up doing a chargeback on my card and got banned from the platform.
Wouldn't go back anyway.
Yes, I had a similar experience. Reviews on Airbnb can't be trusted because most hosts are experts at having bad reviews removed. But if reviews can't be trusted then the whole thing is worthless.
I've become a lot more jaded about online reviews over the years.
I had an Amazon review removed because apparently mentioning that a competing product is more effective goes against their TOS.
I had a WordPress plugin review removed because apparently a critical vulnerability that got our site hacked isn't a valid reason to give it one star.
I had a local BBQ chain offer to give me a free bottle of sauce if I let them watch me give them a 5-star rating on Google.
I've seen tons of video game and app websites apply "anti review-bombing" measures to factor out thousands of low ratings for being supposedly off-topic, often for major games that they're financially affiliated with through sales or advertising.
And that's just for third-party websites. If a company's website has customer ratings/reviews for their own products, then the conflict of interest is too great to even pretend that they might be legitimate.
Oh absolutely. This makes leaving bad reviews even more important.
- leave unemotional matter-of-fact reviews so they can't complain for slander
- leave them days later so they can't link them to you
- leave them for businesses that provide incentives for 5-star reviews
- leave them when multiple reviews already complain about unethical actions taken by the owner
A 4-star HIG hotel in Bangkok once proposed I leave a good review to fix one of their mistakes. I firmly said I wouldn't and then mentioned the request in my 2-star review. The mistake was assigning "free breakfast" to the wrong room in a 2-room booking. Had to fight 3 days to get it fixed.
The problems you mention are real; but on average it seems Google Maps review are fair; in my experience they tend to reflect the reality better.
I think it would be interesting to be able to see an Airbnb place directly on Google maps (via a direct link), to compare reviews there; I'm working on a simple Tampermonkey script to do just that, will post it when ready.
Recent changes make it very hard for hosts to remove reviews. Hosts are of course complaining.
Hopefully goes without saying that all communications should happen in the app.
Ye reviews doesn't work when the reviewed know who reviews and what they say.
It is technically possible to add a delay or whatever such that the land lord doesn't know who gave the review.
And there are social problems too. It is like you never give anyone anything but 5/5 if some app make you rate someone, unless maybe the worker try to murder you. A 4 is a 1.
But I think landlords are in a way better position vs AirBnB than gig workers are versus their employers.
[flagged]
At least he was apologetic about the shitty toilet.
The last time I ever directly gave Airbnb money the host accused my female work colleague of blocking the toilet with menstrual products and charged us 400CAD for a plumber to "fix" it. My colleague was incensed -- she angrily stated that the chronology was wrong, demonstrated that no aforesaid items were in her possession, but the host didn't believe it. We ended up with my card being billed before claiming successfully on travel insurance. I can't believe that happened in Toronto -- Canada is one of the nicest places on the planet -- but (US) Airbnb support took the hosts side instantly and wouldn't budge. We had a shitty toilet for a week!
The last time I stayed in one was in a urine soaked crash pad with cardboard covering the broken windows in Montréal. We spent five hours there around the unsafe electrical unit before they did actually sort something else out. The host didn't reply to emails and it later turned out had been arrested, explaining both his silence and the less than salubrious people we'd previously been sharing with.
I deleted my account and refuse to go in airbnbs now. Booking.com is far from brilliant but at least it's scatologically free so far...
> At least he was apologetic about the shitty toilet.
I never said that! He was not.
You're lucky. I had a real bad experience and the host managed to get Airbnb delete my review, I think the reason was something like host interactions were not relevant to the review? It was completely ridiculous.
This reminds me of the time Amazon deleted my review about being sent expired products because the review wasn't about the product. It made me very dubious of the veracity of other reviews.
What I’ve learned (the hard way) is that you just get what you pay for. If an Airbnb is $100 and all the hotels in the area are $200, no matter what the photos look like and how good the reviews are, it will be terrible. Most people review at the end of their trip, when the disappointment of getting a crappy place is starting to fade, and tend to rate cheap places better than they really deserve.
This is a general problem. These things worked before those platforms became successful enough to warrant a cottage industry around them. Nowadays there are "reputation management" companies specializing in getting bad reviews deleted by any means and shady businesses will actively bribe or shame customers into giving them perfect scores. For a while everyone knew that 5 star and 1 star ratings are often fake and that you should check the ratings in between to get the real ones but nowadays those often don't exist or are just as fake (often left by shadier "reputation management" companies to score them an easy win if the business hires them).
What services like Airbnb would need would be direct partners actually testing the listings in person. But that costs money and requires hiring staff, which is antithetical to the business model of "gig economy" apps which exist in order to avoid the overhead of running a real company in that industry by instead offloading all the work to "gig workers" as independent contractors.
This is not a general problem. Reviews on booking.com are not removed and you can see low star reviews with details what is wrong. It is Airbnb issue.
online reviews are inflated for everything
bribes or people just commenting "great" on avg or below avg offerings
If someone rents a place with scheduled roof repairs, not informing AirBnB or customer, they should be eternally banned. I couldn't even get a full refund. I can't imagine actual hospitality places with a long tradition around Mediterranean to ever do something like that.
I feel like it's very similar with everything:
* suitcases without nice silent rubber wheels, even premium suitcases have loud plastic ones,
* airplanes are a chore, descending into madness over time,
* eternally inefficient software, becoming slower and slower on faster hardware,
* tiktok guitarists without skill showing off their montaged videos earning a living through popularity,
the majority is voting out quality and care out of everything.
I had a related experience where the host asked me to change my average review, but didn't try to bribe me (Italy, booking.com).
A friend of mine had the same bribe experience (Airbnb, Israel) with a terrible accommodation (moldy, dirty etc).
In hindsight, why wouldn't they? Even if their reviews tank they can just register again with different credentials.
This same thing can be said for Google Maps and many other platforms.
I effectively stopped using Airbnb, both due to prices that are approaching or more expensive than hotels, but also because of this shift of hosts to only caring about reviews and focusing on making a steady stream of new people checking in, without really doing any effort of making someone return. As long as the review scores are fine, all is good.
The original idea of Airbnb is long gone, and I experienced more than once someone writing on Airbnb, then another person sending a message with check in instructions. It is a business - nothing wrong with that in general, but it is disguised as people renting their spare rooms, which is rarely the case now.
They will happily oblige and put your review down if the host asks nicely. Happened to me, happened to my friends. Also they don’t care a bit about fake obvious reviews. Not like “not actively monitoring”, like telling you idk if you care to report it.
> Online reviews are totally broken
Strong cosign. Ratings and reviews should always be independent and beyond the control of that being reviewed. Reddit would be an amazing service if it supported commenting on any page/site/product/entity, but this is anathemic to advertising dollars.
Reddit at least used to have a form of value as a recommendations engine—searches for "best x site:reddit.com" would yield anything from decent to fantastic results depending on the product. But even that is completely useless nowadays due to bots and AI spam. Product recommendation services like Wirecutter have been ruined by Amazon affiliate links.
I have no idea who to trust on the quality of products in an era where the amount of choices available is overwhelming and the number of real human responses on the internet in any place where there's money to be made is dwindling by the day.
The most forbidden speech on the web is not racist, or sexist, it's anti-consumption.
Airbnb is a giant example of what happens when you go too far into thinking you can solve real world issues with software UI.
Or run a hospitality business without doing any real hospitality.
Yes, a marketplace is a dream business from a profitability perspective, but it’s too easy to forget the marketplace is not the actual product that people come to the marketplace for.
It doesn’t matter if you have 5000 overpaid developers building the slickest software, the end product is not the Airbnb software, it’s the actual hospitality experience.
I don't think anyone at AirBnB wanted to solve a real world issue.
They wanted to disrupt a market, same as uber, and did this by circumventing laws and breaking everything.
There is a reason why we have zoning laws: To protect housing for people. AirBnB broke this. Took my city munich / germany years in curt to get the data from AirBnB.
While Covid, plenty of reports came up how suddenly good flats in good locations became available again for renting to humans.
My mother uses flats for her retirement (she is not employed by a company and therefore doesn't get benefits) and she always tries to keep the rent low. Just that someone tried to AirBnB HER flat for more money than the rent.
Uber, just in case you are not aware of, takes the cake from taxi companies. Taxis who are there even if uber is not available. The only problem with taxis i have: They fight accepting credit cards still today. "Oh credit card? Mh were do you want to go?" yeah fu...
Taxis were a nightmare to use before Uber; and they often weren’t available at all.
The whole concept of taxi medallions is also extreme market manipulation with basically no benefit to the average consumer, which makes it doubly odd that someone would consider them somehow more ethical or less manipulative.
The benefit is, that people who need taxis, get taxis. Old people or sick people.
I have not seen any uber in smaller cities.
Uber goes were the market is 'cake'
Again: if you tried to get a taxi prior to Uber existing, it was a nightmare and not at all reliable. You called the taxi company and if they felt like sending someone, they would. Often they'd say, "Sure, we'll send someone in 2 hours," and the driver never showed up. More than once I was stranded somewhere because of an unreliable taxi company.
This experience doesn't exist anymore, because Uber/Lyft/ridesharing apps out competed useless taxi companies.
People who needed to get taxis certainly didn't always get taxis.
I'm not sure where you made this experience though.
But at least here most cities i'm aware of, do not offer uber. But Taxis.
Big cities sure they have uber.
I also agree though, i don't like that uber is disrupting existing markets just because but taxis are shitty. Still i haven't seen an uber doing dialisis drive in my hometown, its taxis not ubers.
> Took my city munich / germany years in curt to get the data from AirBnB.
This is so strange. Why can't the beurocrats just read the listings as everyone else? Is it too cumbersome to prove an apartment is sublet?
Yes its a lot of effort to scrape some website which might change its UI.
Also an UI is not a scraping API.
Also yes you also need proof. Just putting it online is not a problem. Even doing temporarily because you are really away for a period is fine.
You can't link a web page to the person behind it. Maybe Airbnb is in the right to offer the service in the country, it's just nobody could verify/enforce the ability to rent short term.
> There is a reason why we have zoning laws: To protect housing for people.
Really? In practice it looks more like zoning laws exist so NIMBYs can increase their property value and keep black people away.
You should probably consume less sensationalist activist propaganda and spend more time delving into the actual unglamorous history of how, where, when, and why they came about. Chesterton's Fence [1] is a very relevant concept here.
Can cars be used as a weapon? Yes. Was Henry Ford a racist antisemite? Also yes. Do cars exist so people can run over Jews and minorities? No. (Family Guy cutaway aside)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
Don't have to consume any propaganda. I just need to look at the zoning in my town and the shitty actions of my own HOA
I would recommend not living anywhere with an HOA. Hell is your unqualified neighbors pretending they're lawyers.
I don't know what you mean referencing black people.
The zoning laws i mean are: commercial vs. non commercial vs. heavy industry (loud, safety requirements).
Zoning isn't as simple as that though. Zoning laws can restrict neighborhoods to with height limits, density limits, large minimum lot sizes, single family homes only, etc, with the aim of prohibiting affordable housing for undesirables.
The only product for them is the profit margin for share holders. Your vacation is just side effect :)
I think we're come to declining marginal gains of software driven businesses when the real competitive advantage comes from real product and operations.
Have had some insanely bad experiences with AirBNB and swore them off forever.
People listing mcmansions they cant sell in a state of disrepair, lies about amenities and internet. Had to relocate several people repeatedly in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and it took months for the refunds to process.
Had another host try to pressure me into a cash deal and then claim damages to extract fees when I turned it down. After supplying their text messages and proof that the place was fine I had to wait 18 months for a refund and was locked out of renting a safer place.
I can't imagine trusting them for anything else. I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
I’ve had my share of bad Airbnb hosts too, not as bad as yours, but still enough to ruin a holiday and make me hesitant to use them again.
The bit that I should have expected but didn't was how strongly they side with the hosts in case of disputes. In hindsight, of course they do; the hosts are their money makers, while I'm booking them only a few times a year.
I stopped using Airbnb and closed my account. Hotels are fine, and never had any major issues.
> I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners and have been really impressed.
So apparently you have found the ~10% or so of craigslist short term rental listings that aren't outright scams?
> I now exclusively use craigslist and other sites that allow you to directly deal with property owners
You rent vacation rentals on Craigslist? That's the first I have heard of this even being a thing.
I used to be a big defender of AirBnB due to the many amazing experiences I've had with them over the years. But since then I've had several experiences that matched the negative feedback I had been hearing from other people, especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best.
The CEO knows exactly what the problem is because he spells it out in the article...
> Chesky explains that historically, people used Airbnb only once or twice a year, so its design had to be exceptionally simple.
It's true! I've probably averaged no more than 1-2 AirBnB stays per year for a lot of years. But the average host is probably handling 50+ guests per year. That means the host is the AirBnB customer, not me. I'm about as important to them as their cleaning service. The hosts and the execs are all just trying to make some money, and my dumb ass is in their way asking for extra towels and late checkout. Hotels are essentially just as hostile, except they are good at it. And since the cost savings have essentially disappeared I'm inclined to go with the pros and only look at AirBnB when the location or context give me some reason to choose the complicated option.
The hotel is at least a known quantity. You have a pretty good idea of what you're getting into, the expectations are clear between all parties, and you're having a fairly consistent experience between different hotels. With Airbnb you have no idea who or what you're dealing with.
With a hotel, I don't have to worry about a doorman asking me who I am and then having to lie, per the host's instructions (yes, this happened to me). I probably don't have to worry about the pictures being of an entirely different unit and having an entire day of my vacation ruined trying to find somewhere else to stay (yes, this happened to me). I know exactly where the hotel is before I hand over hundreds of dollars.
I've used AirBnB exactly once because the alternative resort-type places were insanely expensive and it was great. (Just one room and a screened porch which were great. No kitchen but didn't want one.) One other time I was canceled well in advance for no obvious reason but wasn't a big deal.
Per another comment, if I'm in a city, I mostly look for a functional/predictable hotel. Sometimes stay in conventional B&Bs as well, which may list on AirBnB as well.
> especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best.
I have been using AirBNB for years (top 5% guest at one point) with virtually no issues (that weren't quickly resolved by support) and I imagine my experiences are this way because I am almost never in the US. I would love to see a poll on how people rate AirBnB broken down by where they usually stay.
I agree, it's the US-based rentals that seem to all have become soulless, bare-minimum hovels as opposed to the lived-in homes of yesteryear.
In addition to stuff people are saying about AirBnB reviews in other comments, as far as I can tell there is no way to leave a review or otherwise provide public feedback in cases where the host cancels the booking before you get there. This seems to grossly incentivize scamming.
I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.
Had this happen a few times with booking.com too. With the difference that booking offered a alternative accommodation and if that one was more expensive, the host who cancelled my booking has to pay for the difference.
I mostly stopped using Airbnb. The same listings often appear in other sites too and those usually have less bad UX for search and booking.
Yeah, that's my experience with booking and even with hotels in general. Much more customer-friendly.
Its worth noting that hotels do this kind of thing, too; just rarer, for bigger events. Its specifically been known to happen for things like Taylor Swift concerts, etc.
That is not true. You can rate them on booking.com or on google or tripadvisor.
They added a penalty a while ago. So it is very unlikely for hosts to do that now.
I went to Dublin in March and had two places cancel before we got the third.
I find it hard to believe those places paid any penalty and if they did it’s not enough.
it use to say something along the lines of "host canceled reservation less then xx time" in the reviews. did they remove that?
In this case it wouldn't really matter. It's fine for weeding out exceptionally-chaotic hosts, but hosts who rug-pull on a once-in-a-lifetime event like the eclipse (whether to re-rent for higher prices or because they forgot to take the listing down and were planning on using the facility themselves) aren't affected.
Also host can't offer that date for another guest (at least it used to be like that). In case of cancelling 1 day prior then they either have a serious issue or another booking so thats not so punishing.
It may also affect internal ranking order by which they show properties to people, but who knows whats implemented internally right now, and what will be in place in 3 months.
I believe there is a penalty for the host
I never book AirBnB's because they refuse to address the core issues of privacy within the homes - such as owners installing hidden cameras. So many private videos are shared from AirBnB's and yet they do nothing about it - simply because they're just the glorified middlemen here and don't have actual staff who physically vet their locations. This is why hotels rule are preferred. IF I book a room in Hilton, I know full well knowing I will receive a guaranteed comfort level. An AirBnB's host's mood determins if I will enter their property or will be stranded in the middle of the road (been there, done that). And I would much rather talk to someone at a reception than type out an email hoping I get a reply.
I booked an AirBnb in Spain, no cameras mentioned in the listing. When I arrived, I found two, one of them pointed at the bathroom door, so most of the bathroom was visible when the door was open. Also, even though photos mostly matched the apartment, the address in the listing was not the real address. The host directed me to a different address in private messages. Reported it all to AirBnb, they ignored it.
Cameras in short term rentals in Spain is another level of insolence. If you rent over airbnb and booking in Spain there WILL BE camera(s) in the apartment. They will frivolously say "it's disabled right now". I have no idea how they are not sued into fucking oblivion. I know about "ocupas", but I am not "ocupas" and I'm paying you 100 euro per night for this shithole with cameras inside.
It creeped me out that I didn’t find a camera in the bedroom. There was one pointing at the bathroom and one at the general living room and kitchen area. The bedroom had so many decorations that I couldn’t tell if there was a hidden camera. I made sure to only change in the bathroom with the door closed, but I (female, traveling alone) still felt uneasy. Up until then I stayed in Airbnbs plenty of times but I haven't stayed in one since then and don't plan to unless there's no other choice.
I am also deterred by the never ending shady descriptions and filtering. Too many times, selecting something with two bedrooms, and when you look and read closely, it shows a couch in the living room which is the "second bedroom". This and quality issues, and sometimes even blatant cancellations from the owners.
My GF loves it though and has a bigger preference of staying somewhere more homely as opposed to a hotel. Truth be told she has found a couple of great places...
Also the high cleaning fees and service fees when its obvious the apartments barely see any cleaning.
Potential hidden cameras is the #1 reason I prefer hotels over Airbnb.
I've seen Airbnb slowly get banned in many places I've visited over the last 5-6 years. Hong Kong. Banned and heavily restricted. Singapore. Same. Saigon. Same. All of China. Same. Taipei. Same.
I sold all my Airbnb stocks. I couldn't be wrong and maybe they'll find a way but it seems like the world wants less and less Airbnb and not more.
why are they banned ? is it violation of local regulations or is it pressure from the hotel lobby - specifically singapore which has capitalist aspirations.
in my experience, the local regulations are at least somewhat "informed" by the hotel lobby - that was the watercooler talk in/around Honolulu, at least. i still prefer hotels to AirBnBs in almost all cases but i see the benefit for large groups/families.
Singapore is a global financial hub. I'm not sure, what do you mean by "capitalist aspirations"?
just curious why they would not let a business like airbnb operate - is it pressure on housing (investors soaking up the housing stock) or is it something else ? By capitalist aspirations I meant friendly to business, and less regulations. I do understand that - housing, like education and healthcare cannot be left entirely to private means.
Half the airbnbs I try to book these days turn out to be resellers of un booked hotel rooms. Try to book, get a message from “host” just checking availability… silence for three days then sorry, not free … it’s a deeply flawed experience and Airbnb need to get a lot better at policing their platform
What needs consideration are the people that live near the places that are rented out for Airbnb or Booking. It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community, sometimes those strangers are also very problematic by e.g. throwing loud parties. On top of that it drives up the prices pushing out normal people out of the better parts of the city.
For about seven years, I lived between two of Chattanooga's top tourist attractions / revenue generators. Although our city has banned new STRs, pre-existing properties are grandfathered (which conveys with deed).
>It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community.
Absolutely this. Literally half on my former neighborhood was AirBNBs, mostly small-time couples (1 or 2 properties) but also mega-owners (dozens).
During my few years on the side of Lookout Mountain (a relatively nice part of the city), we had several small-time police altercations (typically younger folks with drugs/alcohol), but one huge event stands out in particular: a D-list soundcloud rapper concluded a raging party by attempting to intentionally burn the structure down [paid on a stolen credit card]. The only reason his group was caught: they posted TikTok footage of "they new crib," which included them trashing the place — it only didn't become a structure fire because we heard the smoke alarms early!
I'm not sure what concessions AirBNB gave the homeowner, but very quickly the house was sold (and is again for sale).
My brother lives nearby, and literally none [¡ZERO!] of his neighboring houses house neighbors. You get to the point that you just ignore everybody in the neighborhood (this constant stream of changing faces) and mumble bitterly to yourself when mega-AirBNB-owner purchases his tenth home/hotel.
Isn't this why cities initially created zoning?!
----
Fortunately for me, I moved to a less-desirable part of town which houses zero AirBNBs (and lots of wonderful working-class neighbors).
Yep, exactly what I meant. This is essentially privatizing profits, socializing costs. And it should be ended using the government.
If you want to play hotel owner then build one without exploiting people that want to live normal lives with their families.
>And it should be ended using the government.
I was surprised by two things when Chattanooga banned new short-term rental applications:
First) that it even passed
& 2nd) that the grandfathering clause conveys with the deed on all future sales [†]
But still I consider this a small and necessary victory to prevent future homebuilds from unhousing. A year later (last year) our surrounding county also placed its own bespoke STR restrictions, mostly different from the city's (of course!).
[†] IMHO, these have ALWAYS been a violation of most SFH zonings (e.g. R-1), so I would like to see some sort of "phase out" or "non-conveyance" so that eventually everybody is following laws enacted of its constituencies —if not immediate/timed
A nugget in this that seemed significant:
Quote
“I don’t know if I want to call it a social network, because of the stigma associated with it,” says Ari Balogh, Airbnb’s CTO. So they employ a fuzzier term. “We think of it as a connection platform,” he says. “You’re going to see us build a lot more stuff on top of it, although we’re not an advertising system, thank goodness.” (My own observation is that any for-profit company that can host advertising will, but whatever.)
End quote
Launching a communications tool in 2025 that isn't one of the two overly trod spaces (the advertising-hyperengagement loop of instagram, etc. or the people-you-already-know of whatsapp) is a genuine moonshot in a way that "what if airbnb but for manicures" isn't, and it's something that an incumbent like Airbnb could do that would be impractical for anyone else.
"Airbnb for X" startup ideas, now done by Airbnb lol
Perhaps they can use AI to create bespoke services?
Maybe I can rent other people's compute and prompt engineering, a sort of uber-for-openai-for-airbnb-for-x operation
Utilizing unused processor cycles seems interesting! Those cycles are just sitting there in people's homes, waiting to be harnessed. So maybe you should call it something-At-Home.
I dunno, now that I typed it it seems a bit awkward. How about "something@home"...?
wow YC S25 right there. i'll build the tools that power your operation, a cursor-for-yc-for-uber-for-openai-for-airbnb-for-x
They should have launched services for hosts instead. Airbnbers interface with cleaning / repairpeople, not masseuses. They could even expand to construction and interior design as so many people are building and converting airbnbs. They could take advantage of their synergies there.
They are bringing more "amateur professionals" along with the hosts by adding all those services. this is a big, unruly crowd of half-assed servicepeople
That’s a good idea. I’m just setting up an AirBNB and need all of the above.
I love ABNB and I hope they can find a long-term business that works. Their original promise was so interesting and exciting…but reality has kind of caught up.
They’re kind of like Uber, in that way. But where Uber has become faceless and quiet, Airbnb wants to be a leader, and I respect that. Certainly there’s lots of cool things that _could_ happen with experiences, and I hope they do.
Yeah, Uber has pretty much got it dialled in. I remember the early days when “taking an Uber” was a weird mysterious thing. Now it is, for me, the most normal thing in the world. I’ve had one mediocre experience: I had a 60 mile one-way trip from an airport and multiple drivers accepted and then cancelled. I went and talk to one of the taxis at the taxi stand and they were asking double what Uber was… so I waited another 15 minutes or so and found a driver. Otherwise it’s been a completely satisfying experience.
Airbnb has definitely gone the opposite way. My first Airbnb experience involved getting woken up by the daughter of the family that lived downstairs asking me if I wanted breakfast for 5€. I was getting whole apartments for 30€/night. Now it’s just as expensive as regular hotels, half of them expect you to wash all of the linen before you leave, and it’s totally unpredictable what you’re going to get. I just book with Hilton instead. There’s free bottled water and snacks waiting for me when I get there, it’s a pretty consistent experience, and free good breakfast at most of them.
Uber is a lot better than AirBnb. I use an app and the person picks me up and drops me off. If the driver cancels I automatically get another one scheduled, they don’t check my ratings or care if I have never used an Uber before, don’t have to worry about the Uber not picking me up because of the color of my skin.
The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
I’m curious, what has made Uber feel safe for you in terms of racism?
And also did you have a problem with AirBnB based on skin color?
Airbnb admitted it to their credit
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/tech/airbnb-project-lighthous...
I spent over $10K on Uber over a year a couple of years ago.
With lodging, they have the risk of people finding a listing off-platform and paying cash, but because lodging is such a key aspect of a trip, people are often willing to pay the premium to have everything vetted/supported by Airbnb.
With personal services, they're risking having that problem at a lot bigger scale: are you willing to pay your barber or masseuse 18% extra to cover Airbnb's commission? I suspect a lot of people would use Airbnb to find a reputable provider, and then make contact off-platform.
People said the same thing about Wag. Ultimately if the platform acts as good lead gen and offers other protections and benefits it will work out!
Didn't Homejoy fall victim to this? People would just contract directly with any cleaners cutting them out completely.
Yeah we do the same with Airbnb if the place is legit we book direct next time. The site offers no protection for the renter so they can suck it.
FWIW, I had a place in Vietnam that was gross. I complained to Airbnb: they cancelled the rest of my stay, and put me in a hotel.
Risk is lower for a second stay for both landlords and tenant so it makes sense to bypass abb
Reading this article felt like reading an ad.
It was triggered by press release from them possibly embargoed so they could prepare the article on time. So it's not really an ad but driven by promotion. Without the PR there would be no article.
The PR pack contain actual ad for the company announcing API platform etc. this was submitted to HN at the same time by a few different people.
Most press just replicate whatever is in a press release from a company but some, better, publishers use it to write an article.
There's a critical element there. I'm very skeptical they can pull off being a luxury Groupon.
Same feeling, so much words and story telling just for that.
Really? Because it’s kind of mocking them the whole time
The irony is the CEO probably can't tell it's mocking him.
What's the first sign of a midlife crisis?
That someone thinks a new car will turn them into a not-asshole.
> He wanted to bust the company he’d cofounded out of its pigeonhole of short-term home rentals. Amazon, he was fond of pointing out, was first an online bookstore before it became the everything store.
> “I was basically going from room to room just pouring out this stream-of-consciousness manifesto, like Jack Kerouac writing On the Road,” he says
> Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
> “Brian’s been badly underrated as a tech CEO,” Altman says of his friend. “He's not usually mentioned in the same breath as Larry Page or Bill Gates, but I think he is on a path to build as big of a company.”
> “Steve Jobs, to me, is like Michelangelo or da Vinci,” he says. Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did, in a way that you only possibly could by starting a tech company as a creative person and going on a rocket ship,”
> “[AirBnB experiences] was like our Newton,” says Chesky, referring to Apple’s handheld device that predated the iPhone.
Yeah... somehow I don't think that guy understands subtlety or nuance. What a douche.
Which was extra weird since it's behind a paywall.
Just seeing the number of different ways people have typed the name in this thread reminds me that "Airbnb" has got to be the ugliest, most confusing, and least riffable name of any startup to achieve unicorn status. I would guess it has cost them something.
I have an airbnb experience and just hired 2 people. Airbnb decided to pause my experience for no reason. Tried hitting up their support but they didn't provide a reason for the pause and a date when it would be resumed. This is why you never rely on one customer channel
Airbnb is, in my opinion, one of the companies with the biggest negative societal impact.
Airbnb complementary destroyed some great places and rural cities around the world, because of them:
- Food/Restaurant prices go up
- Food/Restaurant quality goes down
- Real estate price goes up
- Dirtiness goes up
- Bugs and other animals thrive
- Quality of shops goes down, everything is disposable
- Quality of building/materials goes down, why install a wooden window if it's for an airbnb?
You could argue that it's not because of Airbnb but because of tourism, but I don't think so, Hotels are heavily regulated, they have strict cleaning rules, max occupancy and are built to host a certain amount of people, mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.
Airbnb is great for smaller places though. I was looking at some smaller Italian cities and there are mostly traditional b&b's, plus a couple of hotels. So the Airbnb's blend in well, and I think it is too small to really destroy the city itself.
We had already plenty of websites supporting real B&Bs because real B&Bs are registered and can use normal hotel searching websites and portals.
> mass tourism wouldn't be possible without Airbnb.
Have you not travelled before Airbnb is a thing in a place? There were always similar alternatives?
The blame game with Airbnb is the most ridiculous thing ever.
Completely unfounded to try to blame so many things such as the housing crisis. Oh, that is just Airbnb. Just ignore that you still have problems due to taxes, government policies in places where there's virtually no Airbnb offera.
Hotels being regulated generally means nothing in places where there's a lot of tourism because you still get extremely poor services and experiences at times and Airbnb and other similar BnB services (this is not new, come on, is everyone <30 years old?) have provided much needed competition improving quality, which has otherwise been going downward steadily (cleaning, breakfast, bathrooms, etc).
You seem to dislike supply so youd problably want to ban low cost airlines so that less of the "rubble/mass tourists" would travel, right?
There is a massive difference between a bed-and-breakfast and what AirBnB offers. Old-style B&Bs are (family) businesses, open all year round, and registered with tourism entities, much like a hotel.
Vacation home rentals have been a thing for decades. As far back as the 1980s my family would book houses for vacation, usually in areas where lots of houses booked out that way.
In vacation destinations there are real estate companies that specialize in this. In the old days you would contact the local chamber of commerce for a referral, or look them up in the phone book. After that, there were websites like VRBO (still around, still works well). Now they put their stock onto AirBnB as well.
AirBnB did not invent short-term rentals. The parent is right that housing supply issues have a much deeper root cause than AirBnB.
Vacation rentals are just as far from what AirBnB (originally) offered as a B&B. Usually handled by a property manager, entire home, nice location / popular holiday destinations and facilities as it is someone's second property. Much higher prices. This is a far cry from an "air bed" in a corner of a standard urban family apartment in São Paulo, which you'd find by the thousands in the early years before regulations caught up.
I think you're underestimating how much AirBnB as a platform opened up this market to the average traveller, including business travel, and yes, absolutely contributed to the housing crisis, though I wasn't even making a point about that.
Experience wise for the customer, because I've been in both, not that much. Also there's a lot of Airbnb that are family businesses and BnBs that aren't so that's just a romantic moot point.
There's interest in painting these strawmen by people who didn't use the service or just tried to get cheap stuff and didn't pick good places, which can happen with booking.com or google maps. The govs love blaming their failings on apps and regulations mean market capture by certain entities.
It's funny how you can call for Airbnb's to be banned to solve the housing crisis but you can't call for stopping hotels being built everywhere which are then used to house refugees/socially disadvantage people in a beautiful money making cycle for government contractors, to just name one thing happening in at least a few European countries.
The anti Airbnb narrative is tired and dishonest.
maybe they should admit they are not special anymore and expand into other large markets like hotels? I don't even care anymore, I just use Google Maps or Booking, whether it's a "property" on Booking or a hotel, each one has it's pros and cons, I choose whatever feels right at the moment from what seems to be an exhaustive list of both. Properties can be more fun and better for larger groups, hotels are cleaned and don't have annoying "house rules" like washing the dishes etc, or chasing the owner if the lock doesn't work. I don't know how many travelers still stick exclusively to properties anymore.
> but whenever they needed to find a portrait photographer, a personal trainer, or someone to cook their meals
Oh, the disconnect. Your average person rarely hires services like this, maybe a handful of times over a lifetime.
You'd be surprised by how many rich people there are. Airbnb doesn't need to sell millions of these services to make millions off them. If an "experience" costs $150, that's just as good as a night in their rooms, if not more profitable.
Good people are hard to find these days.
While probably an eternal truth, many/most people in the US can't afford to pay a lot of people for personal services.
Ye sorry should have added an "/s".
Don't tell us, tell the PA you hired to do your HN comments for today! :)
The "Experiences" thing sounds like Groupon. What killed Groupon was that Groupon wanted too big a cut, and the service providers dropped out. This trick only works if you reach oligopoly levels, so providers have to sign up or go broke. AirBnB is there in short-stay housing. Doordash/Uber are there in food delivery. Doordash/Lyft are there in gig rides, but might not survive Waymo. Amazon is there in e-commerce, but it took decades.
Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?
I had always heard what killed Groupon was the bad economics.
The "loss leader" concept is Business 101, and Groupon was presented to customers as a gallery of loss leaders they can shop.
Actually delivering a good loss leader is hard. Design the offer wrong, and people don't attach properly-- they either don't load up their cart with additional, higher-margin items, or they don't return for future full-price services. I suspect Groupon didn't help-- if they provided consulting, it was probably to steer the merchants to give the store away to make Groupon look compelling regardless of bankrupting the merchant.
Over time, a lot of industries pulled away, either because they personally ran the numbers or simply saw their peers trying it and losing their shirt. The offers eventually retreated to what could survive in the cost structure: stuff like classes (near-zero marginal cost per attendee) rather than food or personal services with significant cost of goods or labour.
They bringing a large pool of customers who will only ever pay "loss leading" prices. The ultimate problem with Groupon is their customers.
And the volume of people caused the good customers to get shitty service so it was basically impossible to make it work. Also it was a mega loss leader since Groupon took a huge cut
And as customers, I quickly realized that businesses didn't actually want me there either. I was a distraction to their actual profitable customers.
For me, it was one of those businesses that, as a consumer, you realized was sort of a novelty but the coupons weren't really really worth it and they were a PITA to use a lot of the time. And once the novelty wore off, they sort of slipped off your radar and weren't worth thinking about any longer even if there might be an interesting deal here or there.
Also there are already other products like that, like Viator and Klook. I wish companies like Airbnb didn't feel the need to conquer everything all the time. It already is useful as it is.
The appeal and selling point of Airbnb experiences was local guides and small groups compared to Viator with more traditional group tours. In my experience it was quite good in Europe at the beginning. But now prices are just too high to justify, like 200+ euros for few hours walking tour.
As someone living in a condo in a pretty touristic place: fuck Airbnb; or maybe fuck the local government that allows Airbnb to advertise properties that don't have (because they can't have) a license to operate.
There are places which allow officially licensed airbnb, vrbo etc apartments. They don't need to follow same code as hotels, its a special category. Ie in France this is true, and France is consistently the most visited country by tourists globally.
In many top places hotels would not be able to accommodate all visitors coming, meaning only the richest would get them.
They’re supposedly regulated where I live, too, but the property has to meet certain criteria like having an independent entrance in the building, which most apartments can’t meet so they operate illegaly, and Airbnb happily allows them to be in their platform.
So now I have to put up with the apartment next door being an illegal Airbnb, with all the inconveniences that come with that.
I'm surprised they're not launching with more coverage. I just spot-checked what was available in NYC - it's a handful of unappealing tours. Some categories, like massage, are totally empty.
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?
Airbnb started strong, but it has become a minefield for travelers. Scam listings have exploded -- Airbnb admitted in 2023 that it removed nearly 60,000 fake ones, but that's only a fraction of what slips through. Investigations like one by VICE uncovered organized scams exploiting the platform for years, yet Airbnb has been slow to implement meaningful preventative measures. Meanwhile, pricing has grown increasingly deceptive: hosts tack on hefty cleaning and service fees, often doubling the advertised nightly rate. Although Airbnb recently added an option to show total prices up front, it's not the default, and hidden costs remain a major complaint.
Even more troubling are the widespread privacy violations. Thousands of guests have reported hidden cameras in their rentals -- some even found in bedrooms and bathrooms. Airbnb didn't ban indoor cameras until March 2024, after more than a decade of complaints and several high-profile criminal cases. Combined with fake photos, misleading descriptions, and little accountability for bad hosts, it's clear the trust that once defined the platform has eroded. Airbnb didn't just lose its shine -- it actively neglected the safety and transparency that made it appealing in the first place.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on...
Yep. A few bad experiences and never again. The idea is pretty nice, but it always adds a layer of stress with the unreasonable cleaning demands and all. Hotels are more consistent and I know what I'm going to get as long as I stick with one of the main brands. I don't have to clean the entire house either.
These common negative experiences have spawned memes mocking the company.
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1n...
Pretty much my exact experience before. I have another fun one.
One time the host kicked us out on the second day of a week-long stay to sell the house. She then put us up in a nicer house, but not in the area we wanted to be in. Our schedule was also completely screwed as we had to move our stuff over and the other family wasn't even out of the newer house yet. Everyone was confused and upset. Then there is a cleaning crew that typically doesn't speak English, so it's hard to communicate what is going on. You also don't want to leave your stuff there at the time as although they're just doing their jobs, they're also strangers and you don't know if they'll steal any of your stuff. So we had to end up waiting for awhile and burning up valuable vacation time. Never again.
> added an option to show total prices up front, it's not the default,
Pretty sure the only price you can see now is the total price.
I was looking a couple weeks ago and got annoyed that I couldn't find nightly price or how it breaks down
I am baffled that every time the Airbnb issues come up, there is a plethora of "just book hotels" comments. The use cases are, or can be, wildly different.
I am not a particular fan of Airbnb--nobody is a fan of real estate agents, they are intermediaries that provide a service, facilitate discovery, etc.--but I am currently staying in an apartment I booked on Airbnb, and I am spending $2k a month for it. Decent space, a kitchen I can use, space for my clothes, a washing machine, a big fridge. If I had to book a hotel room, I would spend at least $8k a month for it.
“Book a hotel room” sounds like when a former university instructor told a student to "just install Linux" when they had some authorization issues on their Windows computer. The use cases are different.
That... sounds like a regular rental to me?
I think Airbnb is net better than hotels, including places with agents that are basically condo hotels. Much more variety.. hotels are OTOH more predictable and reliable. If I don't need variety (a kitchen? A place very close to some obscure spot? Fancy? Cheap?) i'd pick a hotel. Or if I need weird checkin times and the airbnbs have in person check in.
Contrary to other comments I wish they'd actually focus on both the agent and the random host scenarios...
But personally my favorite things are weird places that are a bedroom in a house.
The mild form is when they have a dog you get to pet/play with. The less mild is staying with people who are weird in a non dangerous way.
My only bad experience was also with dogs, a place where when you step out to the bathroom at night two formerly friendly large dogs shadow you, growling cause, a rando walking around at night! Really helps the bowel movement.
And the weirdest experience I had was 2 girls roommates who advertised their open floor plan living room as a "separate bedroom" (it was not instant book and I'm very obviously a dude). With a cat that slept at my feet, and a dog that woke me up in the morning (they did offer to lock up both). Then when I was talking to one of them in the kitchen she told me without any context that they were not lesbians. I am in a relationship and it was pretty awkward so I didn't develop the subject further, but I am still wondering.
I lived next to an AirBnB in Toronto, guests partying until 4am on a Wednesday.
Owner of the unit did nothing and as did AirBnB.
Luckily it was only a few nights a year - there's no mechanism to eject a guest like this. They create new accounts if they are banned from the platform.
Hilariously, I had the opposite experience; the Airbnb host was the one that partied when it wasn't booked.
Either way our condo started enforcing a rule that was long on the books that owners couldn't rent out their unites for less than 3 months. It was the bedbugs that did it.
The mechanism is calling the cops, and letting the cops know it's an Airbnb. Then contacting Airbnb letting them know you've filed a police report.
Airbnb doesn't give a shit about you (and frankly, neither do the cops), but the cops and Airbnb don't want to tussle with one another.
TPD don't respond to noise complaints.
It sounds like that is the true issue here (which the unit being an Airbnb is exacerbating to be sure). If it was a normal home, and it happened to have owners who were assholes and didn't care about the neighborhood disturbance, you would be in just as bad of a situation (probably worse tbh). The fact that it is being turned over for lots of short term rentals makes it more likely that you'll get asshole tenants there at some point, but ultimately to fix this the people of Toronto would have to pass noise ordinances and make the police enforce them.
I don't think I claimed they did. The cops don't give a shit. But AirBNB cares that the police get called on a property over and over. They'll eventually cut off the owner.
"suspicion" of underage drinking or whatever then
I don't think I should have to lie to the police in order to have peace on a workday but interesting strategy nonetheless.
Then why should airbnb?
[dead]
This is giving me Groupon vibes. Airbnb went from offering something of a unique product to having no real identity anymore.
Just like with Groupon where the idea was so novel for the time but quickly faded away as irrelevant, a diluted shell of its former self.
When you really think about it, Airbnb offers you nothing that a normal travel booking site by the giant incumbents like Expedia group offer, and unlike Airbnb, Expedia group sites can compare rentals by owner alongside real hotels, too.
So basically when you go to Airbnb you're going to a partial travel site and it's also a travel site without any extra travel functionality like rental cars, hotels, and other vacation packages.
I wonder if Airbnb's pivot toward local experiences is a much bigger mistake than using their momentum to make a real attempt at competing more directly with Expedia/Priceline. Why didn't Airbnb start working with hotels and other traditional travel industry players?
Airbnb is brilliant in concept. It's finding value where there used to be essentially waste.
BUT then came the growing pains caused by investors and speculators. Both of which clashed with governments who were manipulating their housing markets.
This isnt a place you want your business competing; the governments will come take you out.
Toronto for example, airbnbs can only be your principal residence. You have to register and license. there's a 4% airbnb tax.
This wipes out the investors and speculators. toronto's housing pricing is down 5% across the board. There's now people selling and losing ~$400,000. We're at record highs for number of units unsold. # of Sales are down 20%
There has to be a correction, but how that doesnt pop the housing bubbles, i dunno. doesnt help that toronto's unemployment is at 10% which is worse than the financial crisis. Toronto's also losing their film industry shortly. Auto industry is suspended if not moving.
Unlike others, I have only had good experiences with Airbnb, both as a host and as a guest. The platform has improved a lot in the past couple of years -- many small quality-of-life improvements for non-professional hosts to make things easier to manage, such as automatic pricing, automatic blocking of days to avoid back-to-back bookings (if you need it), instant booking but only for guests that match your criteria, templated instruction messages to guests, etc. etc. Customer support has been decent too, though I have also heard the horror stories. It's too bad they feel the need to turn it into an everything app, I can only imagine how great the platform could be if they just decided to be the very best short rental platform. For one, they could ditch Jony Ive's reworking of the review process in favor of something that actually solves the issue with rating inflation and differences in how people rate.
> instant booking but only for guests that match your criteria
What criteria? What do the hosts know about the guests?
You can select on minimum guest rating, and anyone with special requests (eg an extra guest, an infant) also cannot instant book. Not age or race if that’s what you were thinking :-)
Ok ye well evaluating special request seems fair to do before approving the requests.
Do you see the names and home towns etc?
I wish cancellation policies were more reasonable or they offered some kind of inexpensive cancellation insurance. It’s hard to always know where you’ll be months in advance.
Also do they let your search by final price now or do they still hide a bunch of fees?
Why even allow fees? Make the owners set a price that includes what they need for cleaning, etc.
Sorry, but what in gods name is this passage:
> Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did
As opposed to all the people that did actually met him, or worked for him?
This is such a painfully gushing puff piece and this sentence is peak cringe that just makes the man sound mentally ill.
I see this sentiment a lot these days. People who were around a person all day, everyday, for several years can say "this was the worst person I've ever known and they were completely incompetent"/"this person was an absolute saint and I was blessed to spend time alongside them", and some person who never met them will be like "your experiences are wrong and I know them better."
It's always weird and I have no clue why people get that mindset.
Reminds me of his “diary of a CEO” interview where he spends half of it reading out his own inspirational emails to the team.
omg I have to find this, do you know which one it is? I'm sure the office writers are kicking themselves they didn't think of this.
Here is how it should work. When people go on vacation they want an Apple like experience where it all just works. That is what AirBnB needs to sell. The only other person who probably understands this is Richard Branson (and Disney)... call it AirBnB Concierge (or even AirBnB vacations) to blend in the AmEx style angle. It's easy peasy Chesky, make it happen.
That's exactly where Airbnb's business model collapses. They don't own or run the properties. They'll never be able to offer "it all just works" at any meaningful scale.
I think they can. It is pretty easy to start simply and experiment: AirBnB San Francisco. AirBnb Paris. AirBnB London. I'll give you an example. My wife is going to France with friends and we can pay money for a good experience but they are going 5-star and we can only afford 3-4 star which is where an AirBnB is also competitive. This sub-luxe market is wide open. If AirBnB isn't interested this is a YC startup for anyone who is.
You've not really addressed the core problem: they don't own the stuff. They are facilitating a transaction between you and the owner of the listing. It's very difficult to ensure any level of experience, especially without adding a ton of cost.
> they don't own the stuff. They are facilitating a transaction between you and the owner of the listing.
Hey, that sounds like AmEx Concierge.
People want a hotel like experience where it all just works.
Airbnb had novelty, inventory, and savings as its special sauce.
Nowadays we all know what a sub-par, overpriced Airbnb is like and it’s worse than a hotel because it’s usually far more inconvenient.
So we’re back to a hotel like experienced as the desire: convenience, available, and competitively priced.
FWIW I’ve probably stayed in 30+ airbnbs over more than a decade and the experience has been almost universally superior to hotels. Not denying others have had different experience, but always find these threads surprising.
I’ve had great experiences renting houses when that is what the situation calls for, but the most of my travel is to cities. In cities the main challenge is inventory and price and today I’m quite willing to spend a little more for staff and a free breakfast, after countless hassles trying to spend a little less on Airbnbs. That said I’ve recently stayed in nice hotels in NYC for $150/night which you can’t touch on Airbnb.
AirBnB allows you to find a temporary dwelling in places where hotels are few, or absent.
AirBnB also provides extra capacity when a city or town gets overcrowded due to an event (matches, concerts, convents, etc). Building a proper hotel is much more capital intensive than converting a house or an apartment into an AirBnB place, and back into a normal long-term rent unit, or your own abode, when needed.
I would like a pony and a million dollars, but the real world is full of tradeoffs.
Vacation rental fulfil a niche that hotels do not, and I don't understand people who view them as substitutes. The fewer people use them the better. More for me and at better prices.
That said, Im probably not the median consumer. When I vacation, hotels cover almost none of my needs.
Im looking for a private beachfront Jacuzzi, hobbit hut in the forest, or someplace to party with family and kids.
I cant imagine using one as a hotel substitute.
I think https://www.wander.com beat them to it! Wander is what I think AirBnB should've become.
USA only?
To me this transition seems much more obvious for something like Uber:
Manage rides -> manage deliveries -> manage booking with places that are already in network -> expand bookings from restaurants to other services -> expand bookings to hotels -> vacation homes.
But honestly going the other way around isn’t that crazy.
Uber also had the good sense to not bake a narrow service category into its brand.
It amazes me that companies like AirBnB get huge valuations and user bases when the fundamental feature of searching for listings is phenomenally atrocious.
- Paginated results that reset and call an API for new results when the map is moved (even to a subset of the initial call such as in a zoom).
- Inability to change pagination size.
- Inability to hide listings you aren't interested in.
- Map only displaying listings on the current page, which change dramatically per page.
- Page changes (the thing you do more of than comparing options), take way too long.
Maybe it's a real-estate website related issue as the two main property sites in Australia (Domain and RealEstate) as also garbage. I have a feeling it's also designed this way to prevent scraping.
Can someone at AirBnB please sort these basic QoL things out.
Did you notice that the search at Amazon is not that precise? It's not because they could not make it more precise. Equally, did you notice how milk and bread are in the opposite end of the grocery store? It's not because they could not put them next to the entrance. I suspect that a similar factor can be in play here.
As of slowness, I suspect they don't have a DC an Australia, so your packets need to travel across Pacific and back.
I also suspect that their web site already brings enough customers, and a serious rework to make it more usable won't bring in many more customers, and any more money. Investing in that is likely a poor business decision. I bet their resources mostly go to protection from fraud, legal battles, and other non-engineering concerns.
I understand your point, nobody is claiming that separating the bread and milk is a particularly good experience either and while it probably makes more money in a physical store where you want to buy multiple options at once, this doesn't apply to AirBnB with a single item checkout. The search at Amazon almost always gets me what I want on the first page, which is the desired behaviour almost everywhere to reduce friction to checkout. Why would I want to increase user frustration and bounce rate on a single product checkout?
I imagine significantly reducing database calls and blob downloads due to short-sighted pagination behaviour would result in significant cost saving, reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.
There are even more search issues that sometimes make it unusable:
- Impossible to filter / search by rating, which is a must-have if I am going to travel, no way I am risking staying at a first-time host, a lot of horror stories from forgetting bedsheets to outright scams.
- There is no way to see the precise location, which is understandable for safety in some places (mostly listings in areas with "single-family" similar neighborhoods, like Orlando suburbs, you don't want to advertise your home as "available"). But, in some cities, for example, in Rio, a large radius can make you uncertain if the apartment listing is beachside or in the favela's entrance.
As somebody traveling with small children, what's even more frustrating is that AirBnB seems to have a tag "Well reviewed by families", but refuses to allow you to search for it. Which means using more indirect filters (like "has a baby bed") and clicking through dozens of listings to find one with that tag. I get why they do it (looking at more listing is great for them), but I feel like they're wasting my time and it sucks, researching holidays is a frustrating timesink as it is, and they make it worse.
Nobody is incentivized to fix those things, so they don't get fixed. Nobody ever got promoted for making small UI tweaks.
Much better to spend years on an expensive redesign that somehow makes the user experience worse. Now that's how you get ahead.
Uninstalled my AirBNB because of 2 resolution issues with hosts that were not in my favor despite me providing all documentation and (damning) evidence.
The reason I should have uninstalled it much longer is because it's toxic for rent prices. I now pay more for hotels and sleep well.
I got rid of Uber for the same reason.
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
The path to success is made by many failures; and when you get to success, you can't take the success, you can't be 'done', you need more success. It's a long form of chasing the next dopamine rush.
He probably hasn't felt more alive than the week he threw everything in the blender. It's a mix of issues that starts with childhood and leads to a life of addiction for more.
On the cover of a magazine, it's an inspiring story, but deep down it's a sad human trait.
All power to him though, it sure makes for interesting stories.
> “I’m 43 and at a crossroads, where I can either be almost done or just getting started,” he tells me. “There's a scenario where I'm basically done. Airbnb is very profitable. We've kind of, mostly, nailed vacation rentals. But we can do more.”
The irony is that they haven't even nailed vacation rentals. It's probably different in US, but in the rest of the world, wherever I've traveled in the rest of the world I got better deals by using a combination of Google Maps, Booking, Agoda, etc...
AirBNB from 10 years ago "nailed" it in a better way than AirBnB of 2025, but that's the customer's perspective. From the business perspective, they probably "nailed it" in a sense of squeezing as much juice out of the unwitting guest...
Because the writing is sort of on the wall for airbnb's current business model. Local regulations are finally catching up to them, limiting new listings or applying the same taxes and fees applied to regular hotels. And airbnb's are not cheaper anymore, and many times not any more convenient than a hotel, due crappy hosts and their excessive fees and regulations.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
AirBNB forced hotels to MASSIVELY upgrade.
There used to be very few hotels with kitchenettes, any space really beside just a bed.
There's way more suite and kitchenette options.
Lots of people travel for longer than just a night or two, or to travel beyond just business, where you might want to be able to actually enjoy being in your private space.
Hotels weren't really designed for this.
They wanted you to never be in your room, and instead upselling you at the bar.
Now, you can pretty easily find relatively affordable hotels that have many different types of rooms layouts for all different purposes.
Now, that defeats a lot of the point in having an AirBNB.
As you said, AirBNB is really only good if you're traveling somewhere with lousy hotel options, you're going to be staying somewhere for a long time, or traveling in a huge group, or you want to host a rager party or something...
> AirBNB forced hotels to MASSIVELY upgrade.
Any data to back it up, please?
My experiences in travel has been the same. Airbnb competition has been awesome just like Uber has been awesome for taxis in many places.
The narrative is always that "it's worse and making things worse" and gets blamed for everything such as the housing crisis which is insane but it's been an awesome asset to humanity. Not just Airbnb but other similar search lodging offerings.
Maybe I'm just not in the right cities but people say 2 things: Airbnbs are just as expensive as hotels and hotels have upgraded and I never see these two things as true. Airbnbs are typically cheaper than hotels and hotels, at least where I travel are still just a bed and a bath. Extended stay hotels have kitchenettes but extended stay hotels have always had kitchenettes and they were always the most expensive options because they are typically purchased by businessmen who have high budgets.
Hotels seem cheaper in some cities and if you’re solo or with only people who are ok sleeping in one small room with max 2 beds.
As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.
It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.
Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
> AirBNB forced hotels to MASSIVELY upgrade.
And Uber did the same thing for taxis. Now Uber's ridiculously expensive and taxis are often a better option.
This depends on where you live. Not every country is like this and you sure can't call a taxi or have the same level of drivers (and add other ride share apps).
There's an incentive by many to just trash these competition apps and services but they've been a net good.
I just wish hotels did a load of laundry for me. I’d pay 30 bucks but not 250.
Interestingly in Asia there are services that drive by hotels and pick up laundry bags and bring them back the next day washed and folded.
Perhaps someone here on HN will read this here, make an app out of it, get funding and set up such a thing in the US.
It happens not because of AirBnb. I know some people who run hotel business and they said that covid was that stimulus
What? Appartment hotels have been a thing for as long I have been alive.
I will always love AirBnB for driving down prices by breaking the hotel cartels in major cities.
Over 10 years ago I rented a folding couch right off of Pearl ST. Boulder, CO.
I stayed in the living room of someones 1 bedroom apartment for $300 a night instead of 1k+ a night for the equivalent at what amounted to a travel lodge motel. The prices there were out of control, no inventory, just awful.
There are "plausible deniability" cartels everywhere, it's and it's always nice to see their grip on a region drop.
You paid $300 to stay on a fold out couch in a strangers living room. $1000 sounds like market price for a hotel room then.
This is fair. But the market of barebones $300/night sleeping spots was underserved by hotels, and likely even hostels.
Couldn't you stay in a nice $300/night hotel and just close your eyes when you walked by the pool?
Was there an event? I stayed at the historic Boulderado hotel for 350/night 13 years ago when Airbnb was getting started.
What you described is an experience I would expect using couchsurfing.com which was around long before airbnb.
Source: Have hosted couchsurfers very long ago
I find this hard to believe unless some major event was occurring while you were staying in Boulder and you purchased at the last minute.
You could have saved yourself $300 and slept on a bench in the central bus station for approximately the same level of accommodation.
Can you actually? Every major city I've been to in the past five years is pretty harsh on that sort of thing. I'd happily pay $300 to avoid the risks of arrest and having all my stuff stolen.
If you don't look poor it is considered normal to sleep on public coaches in terminals. You might need to sit up though.
Funny but couches can be pretty comfortable, and in the days of Airbnb being a monetized couchsurf, you'd at least wake up to fresh coffee
Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door
> there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now
Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
> Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.
DC Union station charged me I think 10usd per bag per 24hr , no smaller unit accommodated, but I decided $30 was worth it to enjoy my Amtrak layover for 3 hours and walked to the botanic garden unencumbered
Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.
All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)
Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.
Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"
And have someone take your luggage wholesale and later clip the locks? What a steal!
I don't get airbnbs because they're cheaper, I get them because I want to rent something other than a hotel room. If best western had in-laws or 1br quadplexes I'd be happy to stay there, but most hotels I've stayed at are bad rooms in bad locations that almost always include at least one negative surprise every trip, and as you move up to more expensive ones they somehow get fancier but worse.
> Local regulations are finally catching up to them
Dodging regulation and taxes was Airbnb's biggest competitive advantage.
Regulatory entrepreneurship only works long-term if you can continue to dodge, or change, the law (either statutes or case law.)
We will see what happens with all of the AI companies who claim fair use.
For travel it’s just an option and always will be. Thats okay because the travel use case only hits most people once or twice a year. The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home. The app update and launch into these lifestyle categories are the starting point of this.
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
> The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home.
The future of Airbnb was and always will be a place to book stays in someone's home. These other things they are doing are a bad joke that will at best waste money for no gain, and at worst will cause their actual business to suffer. Trying to be all things to all people is idiocy, stick to what you're good at.
a bad joke is a little harsh. It's worth trying to do a few new things. Having stayed in many airbnbs, I have wondered why they don't start adding a menu of things I can do once I am there. It feels like a space they could deploy some offerings and have the attention of their customer. There are bad jokes that cost a lot more money. Look at Apple Vision Pro. I think this is relatively cheap vs. their cash flow.
You can get the same experience with VRBO. People list in both usually. AirBNB hasn’t cornered the market. Plus, VRBO or sites like VacationRentals pre dated AirBNB
They actually don't list on both usually. Go lookup the data before you start making statements like that. In fact just go punch this into Google: "how much of airbnb inventory is unique?"
I’m basing it on personal experience looking into renting a vacation rental and I have family who list on both. I am not going to google that because I know what is true
That's quite a broad assumption based on anecdotal evidence, you know what's true based on your few experiences renting and from a few listings your immediate family has, how can you even believe it's true based on this flimsy data?
Quick edit: just searched on both VRBO and Airbnb for rentals in my city for the same date range, VRBO shows me 191 options, Airbnb shows 330 options.
That's very anecdotal to your city. VRBO could be renting more than Airbnb. I am not going to go to extreme's to overly analyze this. I made my point.
My point already shows that your whole assumption is flawed, which was entirely my point... You don't need to argue but it'd be in good faith to at least acknowledge that your point has no basis at all, it's just your feeling, not a point.
By the way, I live in a capital city in Europe so the discrepancies between listings would probably translate to many other places...
I already said what you claim I did not say. I will give you the last word but not here to argue about it.
> I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Greed. Founders and employees who cannot understand the value of a sustainable business that does one thing well and keeps people employed. We shouldn't seek to grow indefinitely, we should seek to reach comfortable levels of success and then focus our efforts on rewarding the people who are clients and employees maximally.
Yeah, I spent the whole time reading this article wondering "has this man lost his mind?". Airbnb works great for what it is. But nobody wants it to be an "everything" platform, and all that the CEO is accomplishing is wasting money chasing ventures that have no real chance of success. And that's if those ventures don't cause their actual business to suffer because resources are being spent elsewhere.
TLDR
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
“ Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company”
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
How? The reviews aren’t visible until after the window of time to review is closed or the review has already been submitted. AFAIK there’s no way to retaliate.
There is no threat of retaliation for reviews because hosts and guests can't see each other's reviews until the review period is expired or they have already left their own review.
The Airbnb review process is so weird I can only assume it’s actually broken.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
Luma is on it's way to being the new meetup
Compression of their enterprise value and share price, governed by TAM. The transition from growth company to boring incumbent.
I think paypal is probably an example of why this is probably imposible for a publicly traded company.
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
So they look for growth else where
"Duty to the shareholders": if you aren't the CEO growing revenue quarter over quarter, then your mostly stock compensation is worthless and the board is interviewing replacements.
Their core business isn’t profitable long term.
Because when companies stick to their core values, you end up with Yelp
Growf
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Airbnb host here. A couple months ago we found a bug where Airbnb allowed two different guests to book the same night. Absolute madness ensued.
The worst part is we had their support on the line for hours. And he told that they didn't even have a way to escalate technical issues. His job was to stall on the phone and be yelled at until hosts gave up.
Unfortunately it's just the latest example of awful experiences with the company. As a host you are liable for everything. The only way to get them to hold up their end of the bargain is small claims court. They collect their fees for doing nearly nothing for either party.
You will not find a way to contact any individual at Airbnb. It's an impressively seamless anti-human design. They have built a wall and kicked down the ladder.
Reminds me of a phrase that I heard when Uber was going hard on self-driving vehicles for some reason.
Not even Uber wants to be the Uber of Whatever anymore
For an actual thought… I absolutely love that the era of free money is on pause!
There are two ways of looking at Airbnb, as a hotel substitute or as a resort substitute. It has a very hard time competing with hotels, as others have stated there are advantages but overall an airbnb is going to be worse and/or more expensive. BUT the resort substitute is where it is a lot more competitive, and this whole experience thing seems like a good way to lean into that element.
Are we talking about the same Airbnb? When I think of resorts, I think of staff, bars, restaurants, activities, often all inclusive, and often catered to my desired demographic (adults only, family friendly, etc.)
When I think of Airbnb, I think of an apartment with a pool in the Caribbean, where I have to hunt around to figure out the best places to eat, or cook myself.
Some people genuinely prefer it that way. Or they cannot afford a "true" all-inclusive resort experience but still want to go on vacation in a nice location.
In some countries at least the latter is a well-established tradition that long predates Airbnb. Like, you'd literally just drive or take a train to some coastal town and then look around for signs that say "vacancy".
Airbnb has been trying to push their "experiences" and they are mostly bad. The ones that were recommended to me were either far out of my target city or very nondescript. I hope more cities start to regulate Airbnb out of existence. I was comparing hotels and Airbnbs for a recent trip and found 25 houses that were Airbnbs owned by the same person. Completely absurd.
High service and cleaning fees while being a significant source of Airbnb's revenue, helping to drive topline growth are also the biggest source of frustration for many users. Throw in privacy issues and the fact that hotels are stepping up their game and the midlife crisis sounds about right.
I have used airbnb before across many countries, but now its more of uncertainties. Cleanliness, having urself to take trash etc etc. High cleaning fees, collecting key from a lockbox etc. Especially when traveling with kids.
booking.com also offers apartments too, and has far better pay upon arrival and pay nothing right now features.
Please only book with owner OCCUPIED AirBnBs otherwise your contributing to local housing problems.
Airbnb is generally fine but I would never probably use it again if I could. They have very high fees and zero support when something goes wrong. I now pretty much prefer hotels, the price is the sane but the service is not comparable. At least for shorter stays
They charge a lot in cleaning & maintenance fees. Sometimes the place doesn't match the description/photos. Had some good & bad experiences
I love Airbnb and have had nothing but excellent experiences. At least where I have stayed at them the quality and amenities seem to be far better than a hotel for the money.
The article repeatedly cites “2 billion users” of Airbnb. That isn’t true, right? From casual Googling, I’ve seen is 5 million hosts and 1.5b stays—which is nowhere near 2b users (alltime, MAU, or otherwise).
its about consistency to me. if you have a lot of time to kill on potential issues then sure. stopped using abnb when i traveled once and the AC was broken/leaking b/c the host thought i wouldn't mind it, then asked if i would be fine waiting 1-2 days while a repair guy came to fix it. thankfully the host was apologetic and worked with me and airbnb to get the refund, but i still had to book a hotel elsewhere.
with some chain hotel at least i know what to relatively expect in terms of service and amenities and have someone to complain to to make it right.
Basic problem with Airbnb is that you’re dealing with small proprietors and the quality and value can be pretty inconsistent. Airbnb has relied on reviews to enforce this but what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
Additionally there’s a creep factor in the number of cameras on the property. Hotels have lots of cameras but you don’t get the same sense that you’re being policed. I realize some of this is necessary but it can still be off-putting; usually everyone in the rental comments on the cameras.
Airbnb could normalize the value by enforcing standards and capping certain unreasonable charges in particular cleaning fees. A uniform cancellation policy would also help.
Additionally there are no rewards for booking Airbnb and no perks at all for repeat customers.
I’ve moved from Airbnb to Marriot and I get 4pm late check out, upgrades to suites, free breakfast, priority booking etc… and I don’t have to take the garbage out, bundle up sheets, do the dishes, etc…
> I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review.
Oh, I thought they did a double unlock. I.e. waiting for both reviews to be finished before publishing either.
As an occasional host we always wait until the guest writes a review. Our goal is to basically never have a guest write a review so we don't write them hoping they just forget. If we write one they get an email telling them that we did and really pushing them to review.
Our place is all five star reviews and there is very little benefit for further five star reviews. So it's kind of all risk for us at this point when someone does review.
Yeah well, the main talent required for being a host on Airbnb isn't to host well, it's to manage reviews well.
Reviews should have an expiration date, because places age and wear out; I'm not interested in learning about the experience of someone from five years ago, I'd like to know how it was last week.
Maybe they do now. I have only left 2 mixed reviews. One when the place they rented was not the one showed in photos. The people weren’t allowed to rent in their building and this was not something that was advertised. This meant none of the building’s amenities were available to us despite being advertised. I ended up getting dinged somehow. I thought maybe they could see the review by a 2nd account or something. Could be wrong.
its always been double unlock
that is exactly what they do
so if i don't review my host, my host's review of me gets stuck in a limbo?
i don't think so. I've seen reviews from hosts that i haven't reviewed.
there's a two week window in which reviews are accepted, after which the reviews are released.
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/13
If only this were documented somewhere. Welp, better disbelieve it outright.
jackass
As someone who doesn't have whatever lead poisoning makes people post reviews on yelp the review system is worse than useless.
I'm not gonna leave a mixed or negative review because snitches get stitches and I can't imagine anyone else reviewing has any less pathological incentives.
There are actually some really interesting problems to solve there:
It's now widely understood that online reviews can have a large impact on the success of a small business.
- What rating do you leave if you have a disappointing service from a really kind proprietor (like if the best humans make you the worst food)?
- Are we entering a world where there will be ramifications for the reviews you give? Will a restaurant be less likely to seat you if you left a middling review? As more places require you to identify with a phone number before you can be seated, will you receive worse service if you left a disappointing review or tip? It feels like reputation is about to flow in both directions.
- How do you avoid rating inflation when people who have bad experiences are reluctant to write about them?
And there are a bunch of little bugs in the current rating ecosystem:
- Culture impacts a rating. Americans are conditioned to start from 5 and deduct stars, which makes it harder to identify truly great places. Contrast this with Japan, where 3.5 stars is a really good rating, because Japanese people start from the median.
- If a place has thousands of reviews and a really high score, they're probably bribing people to rate them.
- How do you protect against spam? That includes reviews being bought from call centers, but also shitposts from people who don't like that something exists, or the way its staff behaves outside work.
- If people who eat fast food like a fast food place, it could have a better rating than an objectively better place that caters to more discerning clientele. How do you communicate that the people leaving reviews are/aren't representative of your tastes?
And as you alluded to, writing reviews (and HN comments) takes time that would often be better spent doing other things. What incentives do people have to take the time to leave a useful review? Can we find a way to make the process less burdensome?
Some of us genuinely want to make the world a better place, and want to reward good hosts and publicly call out bad ones.
Sure, but I'm gonna assume you're outnumbered by the absolutely deranged like 10:1
Source: look at online reviews of literally anything
Hopefully the person flipping through reviews knows how to filter out illegitimate ones. Maybe my legitimate review tips the scale and they have a good time or avoid a bad time. Anyway, my point is that we don't all harbor such pathological perspectives regarding community contributions.
> snitches get stitches
i think on Google Maps they can't rate you back (maybe on Booking too?), so depends on the service. I don't review much anyway, but about a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place that I can't help but compliment, and once in a blue moon a really crappy place that really upsets me so I feel like sharing that too. I see absolutely nothing pathological about that.
> a couple of times a year I run into a pretty amazing place
When I do I shut my mouth, lest it be overrun by influencers, content creators or other undesirables.
In the 2 mixed reviews the hosts substantially misrepresented the property and the legality of their listing impacting the quality of our stay and the value we were receiving.
As someone that has a backbone and isn’t afraid of the consequences of reporting when I get ripped off, I find mixed reviews to be valuable.
> what I’ve found is that “hosts” usually wait to file a review of me as a guest until I file my review. So there’s a disincentive to leave a mixed review.
yea i usually refrain from bad reviews because i might want to go stay with them in future.
Official post: https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-2025-summer-release/
Turning Airbnb into an "everything app" feels... conflicted. The platform's core strength was always about trusting strangers in a very specific context
Hotels are the tourist experience. Loud. If Airbnb goes down I will be an unhappy nomad.
I seriously don't understand why anyone would use Airbnbs when serviced apartments exist
Only time it makes sense is if you're traveling with a large group of people
Airbnb is such a net-negative on society. it'd be great if they came out the other side dissolving.
Gotta say I was super impressed by their stylish launch and I love the design of this and hope it works out!
Recently scammed out of $800 in fake maintenance claims by a first time host. Support was beyond useless.
I find that the Airbnb fees are too high for what you get, which often boils down to the contact information of the renter. For some regions in Europe, I actually prefer again local vacation rental agencies, which have similar fees but much more service. Of course, their websites are often not great, but describing your requirements via phone or email gives great options.
I'm a digital nomad.
One luggage, no permanent home, been fifteen years.
I used to use AirBnB all the time.
They gradually become more and more, well, "large company".
I used to still look at AirBnB (until very recently, when one of the founders joined DOGE), but I saw that their fee continually rose over time, and became like 10% or 15%, and there's in many places (Paris, Amsterdam, New York, London...) no meaningful listings (which is due to State bans).
I was in Paris last couple of months. There was nothing viable on AirBnB, unless you wanted to pay several thousand a month. There was a set of listings which I concluded was a scam, the same very dodgy letting agency, who had lots of apartments, all with no ratings, but very bad reviews on-line elsewhere. I think they were continually deleting and remaking their lets on AirBnB, to get rid of negative reviews.
AirBnB itself (and here we see "large company") became unreliable as a service, in that I never knew, when I came to us it, if log-in would still work.
I recall the first time log-in failed for no obvious reason, and the and the only option was "email support and we'll contact you in a few days" - and I was looking to move in about two weeks time, and had of course no reason to have confidence in the boilerplate estimate of "few days".
After that, I put up my own HTTPS proxy, which I now use whenever I use AirBnB, to avoid AirBnB when I log in suspending my account, which I then have to have support fix, which of course means the account cannot be used until support get back to me, and assuming they actually do unblock the account, and given how variable support is, this is not a given.
I also recall one episode about ten years ago where I had to phone support. It was a three hour long screaming nightmare of hell and madness, which was eventually resolved by dint of the new process AirBnB had imposed on users (something about ID and account photos, IIRC) actually not working properly, so in the end it turned out Support (some poor Indian woman working from home) and I were able to circumvent the problem.
I've also been reading people write about AirBnB blocking their valid negative reviews on spurious grounds. That undermines all reviews on all properties; you're looking at reviews wondering if there were valid bad reviews you're not seeing because AirBnB has been blocking them.
To summarize, fees are now rather high, when it comes to Support my response is Jesus please God anything but Support, I had to backdoor my own HTTPS traffic to use the service, I'm now uncertain about the veracity of reviews, and no viable apartments in quite a lot of locations.
So, for me, AirBnB was great, but now it's really not.
Then, recently, one of the founders (his role now is only on the board) came out as pro-MAGA and joined DOGE, and that was the end of AirBnB for me.
The one and critical thing AirBnB got right was building into their platform the expectation owners would offer discounts for stays over a week, or over a month.
I don't see this on other platforms, and it makes pricing on other platforms crazy. If I come and stay for three months, I expect a discount for giving full occupancy over that time. If you don't offer that, you're off the menu.
What do you use instead?
A mixture of approaches.
Sometimes, places I've been to before, where the owners and I know each other.
Another approach is to look on AirBnB and if there is anything, use the images n reverse image search to find the listing on other sites - and often places are on other sites.
Other times, a more general search for the location of interest and see what's there which is simply not on AirBnB, and negotiate discount for long stay.
For the now considerable number of cities where AirBnB has been or has effectively been banned by State, you have to use these approaches anyway - that's how I got into Paris.
Booking?
Why is Wired so pessimistic
Explains why ABB recruiters have been filling my inbox with invites to interview.
Note they have a fucking ridiculous interview process of at least _6 rounds_. Absolutely bonkers.
I was tempted to go for it but fortunately have many other companies in my pipeline with much saner interview processes.
Good luck to whoever gets those positions. Seems they pay quite well, but the question is whether ABB push to expand will pay off and become self sustaining.
It looks like senior roles top out at $220k and staff at $250k, with another $10k or so in indirect financial benefits (401k matching, ESPP, etc). The pay is certainly enough to be well-off, but it's on par with what any random startup offers, so for the sort of person likely to qualify for an ABB position I'm not sure cash would be the motivating factor for choosing them over the other options.
where are you getting that info? ABB total comp per levels.fyi 449K for senior and 626 for staff. Their compensation is pretty competitive. I don't know any startup that offers that much that is also liquid comp.
I was going off the posted salary ranges on their website and ignoring stuff everyone has like decent healthcare and vacation. Do they have a bonus program or stock beyond the ESPP to make up the difference?
yeah, they have bonus program and RSUs that amounts to $200-400k a year. Same pay structure as all big tech companies.
This article reads like pure marketing drivel to me; comparing Airbnb founder to Steve Jobs and side selling Altmans new projects…
This app based disruption shit that was fed by zero interest rate policies can go somewhere very far away as far as I’m concerned. Like Mars.
I've never really liked AirBnB, and my experience this year has confirmed my feelings.
On two separate occasions this year I've had issues with them.
First, my wife had booked a lodge in the lakes with lots of outdoor space for us to go with the kids and hopefully see the stars, and give them room to roam outdoors; for months our children had been looking forward to it, and a mere 4 days before, the host contacted us saying they'd have to cancel because the power was out; clearly bullshit, no apology, they'd obviously gotten a better price elsewhere because it just happened the weather was looking better than expected that weekend; and I don't see how it would take 4 days to get the power back on; it wasn't remote.
On a separate occasion, 2 friends and I had booked an AirBnB in Wales to attend a wedding together in the area, the host cancelled days later because they'd accidentally double booked; we booked another, they cancelled, no excuse; half a dozen cancellations later, we currently have a booking, and we'll find out in a couple of weeks how that goes.
I don't have the time or the patience for this kind of game-playing bullshit from hosts, and I certainly don't like disappointing my children; I would choose a hotel at a higher cost but they're not always able to provide the experience you're aiming for; it's not always just a room to stay in.
We've used AirBnB in other parts of the world without issues, but we'd usually book those for a few days into a trip, and start with a hotel, so you're not arriving somewhere and immediately have problems when something goes wrong.
One country in particular; my wife and I travelled with two friends who were travelling to arrange their wedding in said (European) country, booked two double rooms, we arrive and we knock at the address we're given, since we've been given no further details; the "host" says to come with him; first tries to put us all up in a box room in some lady's house, with two bunk beds with an adjacent toilet that was flooded and pouring in to the room; when we decline, he takes us to another place where an old man was looking to rent a room, he seemed like a nice man, but my wife was uncomfortable because his living area had a window into the shared shower room, no thanks; the old man was quite upset that we'd declined, he probably needed the money and we felt a little guilty about that; after a couple more examples of this wandering around the town with this guy, it had become apparent, he was taking bookings for rooms that didn't exist and trying to put people up in random peoples homes; I suspect he also wasn't paying them near what he was taking for these bookings.
It was a disgrace, and when we became irritated after so much time wondering around with our cases in the heat we suggested we'll book rooms at the Hilton we had passed while wandering and deal with AirBnB after our break, he managed to find us something suitable; both "almost" to the standard we had booked, and both places he had the keys to in his pocket.
We reported it to AirBnB, but they of course did nothing.
Goodbye Airbnb. You will be missed.
Dude if you want to find a nice spot in the woods on the river, secluded, in the middle of no where Airbnb, hipcamp, or camping are your only options.
Agree, Airbnb blows in crowded areas but it's nice in small towns
As bad as they are I'd still want to have them around to keep hotel prices in check
No, I don't care about hotels or hotel prices. People need places to live. You can deal with Hotel prices a bit high. There are millions of people in rich countries right now having hard time paying rent or finding any.
Zoning laws are a way bigger restriction on housing than anything else, Airbnb is a symptom and arguably a scapegoat compared to the dampening of the demand of building new housing supply.
Maybe in America. Outside the US, that's really not the problem. It's people buying up loads of houses and apartments in town centers and pushing everyone else out. Then landlords realize they can jack up rent because they can make more money in one weekend with some foreign tourists through Airbnb than they would from a local living there.
You can build new houses. But if locals are pushed miles away from town, the town dies. A new town is formed. And if that new town gets the slightest bit of popularity on social media, Airbnb swoops in to suck the blood out of it.
It's absolutely killing communities with incomes below the US average.
And those countries have tried literally everything except making it legal to build more housing.
I think the issue is locals who are already property owners and long time local tax payers will have a greater say than newcomers on new developments in that area.
FWIW I'm fully behind you on more housing and an especially aggressive tax on entities owning multiple properties as investments.
This is wholesale resolved by building more housing (which Airbnbs or short term rentals do not make a meaningful dent in anyway).
There’s many places with a lot of Airbnb’s per resident, just look outside of major cities where people still want to visit.
Things have mostly settled down, but suddenly taking a lot of housing off the market meant real supply shocks even if there was plenty of land available for development.
Even in very popular cities AirBnBs are less than 0.1% of the residential dwellings. AirBnBs have negligible effect on a rent.
Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.
As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock.
And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect on price. Plus, for people that rent out a room, in can essentially have the effect of increasing the amount they are willing to pay ("I could normally not afford this apartment, but I could if I rent out a room on AirBnB"), which also increases prices.
More importantly, though, people have actually done studies on the effect of AirBnBs on prices, and found they have a positive (i.e. housing gets more expensive) effect on rents and home prices. One example: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/...
> Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.
Quite the opposite. See for Montreal a recent article https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7445844 Officials estimate 4k airbnbs which gives 0.2% of all residential dwellings.
In Sedona AZ 16% of houses are AirBnBs, and thats just the ones who complied & legally registered as short term rentals
https://www.redrocknews.com/2025/02/28/interactive-map-of-se...
Is Sedona a resort town? Resort towns were like that in the 80s already.
I don't think this is true. The proportion of short term rental places in some districts in European cities are as high as 8-10% and it's growing.
IMO it's meaningless to cite this 0.1% non-sense, because nobody will rent an AirBnB on the outskirts of huge cities far from tourist hotspots, so whoever comes up with these numbers, they probably try smearing the data by selecting an unreasonably wide area for comparison
What percentage are they of available residential rentals? That seems like the more relevant statistic.
2/3 of housing is owner occupied, so 0.3%
The world is more than just cities.
I am not a chronic traveler but never understood the appeal of airbnb. Most low-mid to midrange chain hotels offer reasonably clean rooms for equivalent (or sometimes cheaper) price than airbnb after fees and I don’t need to play housekeeper either, or worry about weird owners, which seems to me like the whole nice thing about renting a short term place to sleep.
I'm not a huge fan of Airbnb but having a spot where 8 people can all hang out together without having to walk across a hotel can be nice.
I like hotels but I love renting someplace unique and pretending that I live in that city or place for a week or two.
I understand your point if all you're looking for is somewhere to sleep that's clean and comfy.
I have a 17 month old and she needs a dedicated space to nap; this is price prohibitive in hotels (suites, etc). So while I typically hate Airbnb, it’s the only solution for us right now.
Same here, plus if you’re traveling with extended family (like siblings’ families) the total price can become insane in a hotel. And feeding all of those people is cheaper if you have a normal sized kitchen.
I just wish more Airbnbs had really dark rooms with blackout curtains. Hotels normally have that covered
Might try Embassy Suites. Front room can be closed off
It has a kitchen, which comes in very handy when you want to save money and cook.
All these years of airbnb and vacation rentals being popular and hotels still seem to not try to accommodate these needs
I've rented plenty of rooms with a kitchen, or at least a kitchenette.
This is my number 1 reason. Eating out is expensive, and it is very hard to do so healthy.
I also don’t feel great after eating out for 3 meals per day. That’s the mean reason we use AirBNB.
Airbnbs with kitchens are especially useful in the US due to the cost of eating out, with tax and tip etc. In other countries I use them more for getting luxury places at a lower cost, such as in parts of Asia, where eating out is much cheaper.
VRBO was around before AirBNB and it’s much better
Yeah it's pretty good as well, I found it to be more expensive with less selection though.
I love ABNB, but I dont see it anywhere near the same market as a hotel. I wouldnt use it on a work trip, but travel with my wife and friends.
Perks of ABNB- Private jacuzzi, functional kitchen for large group meals. Stay with friends and their kids under the same roof.
I can't gut a fish or leave gear on the porch at a hotel.
Beyond that, I value beauty and character, and find hotels devoid of both.
It’s just the standard investor grift where initially Airbnb was cheaper and had higher quality options, then once they established a dominant market position they enshitified
Hotels have been disgusting for years. They weren’t great before Covid. After Covid hotel owners stopped cleaning during your stay. Trash piles up in my room, with guests leaving trash in the halls. Carpets quickly get nasty. Nobody cleaning up the common hallways.
An Airbnb isn’t cleaned during my stay either, but at least the trash can can hold a day’s worth of trash, and there’s a proper kitchen and more space.
If hotels brought back proper service I would prefer them.
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TLDR: AirBnb is spending “hundreds of millions” to become the new Craigslist.
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Can't blame people for having an existential dread about stacking all those W's for exactly no more cultural impact than a perfectly designed recycling bin.
I'm looking forward to the book (or movie) at least, I dunno about the rest
Enshittification of Airbnb started long ago. The time seems ripe for more focused alternatives.