Virginia Airbnb guests found spy camera in shower

I think we all underestimate where USA taxi companies are with their technology if we think Uber/Lyft are the only ones who know where the cars are.

My major gripe is that if I want to stay somewhere that has a high number of reviews and a superhost the cost per night from my experience is comparable to a mid-low end hotel (e.g Holiday Inn Express). Otherwise I'm stuck rolling the dice on a newly listed property with very little assurances of safety and cleanliness.

I also feel like in someone else's home I have an obligation to walk on egg shells and treat their home much better than I would a hotel. I've spilled wine in a hotel or created other damage and I've never been fined for it. At an AirBNB this would be an issue I would fret over.

For me there's an easy way to avoid that:

Rent a room in a hotel. You get a few advantages in the process:

You don't really have to search for cameras in your room (and to the whataboutists that cram out some old story about the dodgy motel keeper who had cameras installed in guest rooms: How often did that happen compared to the shit that hosts pull off in Airbnb appartments?)

You don't have to tiptoe around other residents who understandibly hate your guts, because they don't appreciate an illegal hotel in their place of residence and all the shit that comes with it

Chances that you get ripped off by some less than honest host, or a whole ring of hosts working in concert, are much, much smaller

You don't get sudden cancelations on short notice

In better hotels you have a front desk, housekeeping and maintenance staff on call if things do go wrong

You're not breaking the law

You have, at least with larger chains, customer representatives, who actually deal with justified complaints and won't run into a "Eat shit, that's our final decision and we won't correspond with you about this issue anymore and if you insist we'll ban you from the platform" response (except when your issue blows up on social media and you get the usual pr lies from Airbnb and their ilk)

Oh, and prices for - if you're lucky - generically and cheaply decorated cookie cutter appartments managed by some faceless management company are really not that much cheaper, if at all, than the one for comparable hotel rooms. Espically in desirable locations.

Airbnb may have made sense in 2013. Nowadays I can just shake my head.