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.
Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
251–260 of 573 posts
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#252> 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 so…
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.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#253I 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
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#254Maybe 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…
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…
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.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 me…
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 prob…
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.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#256It 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 list…
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" s…
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.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#257Enshittification of Airbnb started long ago. The time seems ripe for more focused alternatives.
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#258I 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 f…
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...
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#259Maybe 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 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" op…
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
Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode
#260To 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.