Reading this article felt like reading an ad.
Really? Because it’s kind of mocking them the whole time
Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
171–180 of 573 posts
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#172Reading this article felt like reading an ad.
There's a critical element there. I'm very skeptical they can pull off being a luxury Groupon.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#173[deleted]
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#175Sorry, 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.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#176Airbnb 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…
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...
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
What city was this booking for?
This was in Manchester, UK
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#179Maybe 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 (fun…
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!
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#180Maybe 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 (fun…
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.