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Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

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291–300 of 573 posts

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#291
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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#292
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

> “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...

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#293
post #248

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 f…

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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#294
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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If only this were documented somewhere. Welp, better disbelieve it outright.

jackass

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#296
post #249

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,…

it use to say something along the lines of "host canceled reservation less then xx time" in the reviews. did they remove that?

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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#297

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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#298
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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#300
post #218

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 (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…

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.

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