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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At hotels you also don’t have to worry about spy cameras, upset neighbors and questionable legality.
I did use AirBnB years ago with my family and it was great. However the quality tends to reflect the country. I have had wonderful experiences in Northern Europe and the worst in San Francisco.
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.
- 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 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.
And this is after I explained it’s my wedding!!
Never again.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
In this case also, it appears that the customer has no recourse (bad reviews are taken down.)
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?
Hotels.com also cancelled a brilliant loyalty programme of buy 9 nights get the 10th free which was another motivation to look elsewhere.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/hotel-safety-hacks-t...
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).
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.
I stopped using them. will not got back
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.
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.
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'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.
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
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.
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.
That way was to skirt laws around obtaining hotel permits and zoning and paying all the relevant hotel taxes and business insurance.
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/
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
Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wouldn't go back anyway.
Hopefully goes without saying that all communications should happen in the app.
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.
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...
I never said that! He was not.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So apparently you have found the ~10% or so of craigslist short term rental listings that aren't outright scams?
Everything was handled by local realtors and felt substantially more legitimate than AirBNB. You're really only going to find overpriced garbage on there. The places I have been renting are booked >2 years in advance. We often encounter other families on the beaches/lakes that have been booking the same month for a decade+!
You rent vacation rentals on Craigslist? That's the first I have heard of this even being a thing.
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.
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...
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.
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?
Really? In practice it looks more like zoning laws exist so NIMBYs can increase their property value and keep black people away.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I find it hard to believe those places paid any penalty and if they did it’s not enough.
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.
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...
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.
>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).
If you want to play hotel owner then build one without exploiting people that want to live normal lives with their families.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
And also did you have a problem with AirBnB based on skin color?
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.
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.
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.
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?
Oh, the disconnect. Your average person rarely hires services like this, maybe a handful of times over a lifetime.
Can AirBnB find a second niche they can start to take over?
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.
In many top places hotels would not be able to accommodate all visitors coming, meaning only the richest would get them.
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...
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
Are they abandoning NYC as a market since rentals are restricted there, or did they just not put enough effort into recruiting before launch?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
It's always weird and I have no clue why people get that mindset.
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.
What criteria? What do the hosts know about the guests?
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
Much better to spend years on an expensive redesign that somehow makes the user experience worse. Now that's how you get ahead.
reinvention of Airbnb
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
booking.com also offers apartments too, and has far better pay upon arrival and pay nothing right now features.
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…
Oh, I thought they did a double unlock. I.e. waiting for both reviews to be finished before publishing either.
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.
yea i usually refrain from bad reviews because i might want to go stay with them in future.
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.
Only time it makes sense is if you're traveling with a large group of people
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.
A disappointing and soulless comparison.
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.
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.
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.
I understand your point if all you're looking for is somewhere to sleep that's clean and comfy.
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.
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.