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Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

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Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#371

Post by electric_muse »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #164
levocardia wrote: post #139

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 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…

Perhaps the difference is that you’ve been fortunate enough to never need Airbnb support to help you on something serious.

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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#372

Post by snowwrestler »

ricardobeat wrote: post #311
isaacremuant wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 vi…

There is a massive difference between a bed-and-breakfast and what AirBnB offers. Old-style B&Bs are (family) businesses, open all year round, and registered with tourism entities, much like a hotel.

Vacation home rentals have been a thing for decades. As far back as the 1980s my family would book houses for vacation, usually in areas where lots of houses booked out that way.

In vacation destinations there are real estate companies that specialize in this. In the old days you would contact the local chamber of commerce for a referral, or look them up in the phone book. After that, there were websites like VRBO (still around, still works well). Now they put their stock onto AirBnB as well.

AirBnB did not invent short-term rentals. The parent is right that housing supply issues have a much deeper root cause than AirBnB.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#373

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Gigachad wrote: post #122
dreamcompiler wrote: post #93

Airbnb made the same mistake Google did: They screwed up their core service. I used to be a steady ABB customer but now hotels are almost always cheaper, offer better service, and are more predictable. 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.

Shouldn’t it expected that a hotel would be able to provide a better service considering they are doing it in bulk and specialise in it. Vs a bunch of individual untrained hosts. Seems more like Airbnb ran out of money to burn and hotels lifted their game.

No, AirBnB just became much more expensive. And it's disguised as processing fees, cleaning fees, etc.

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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#374

Post by hylaride »

digianarchist wrote: post #102

I lived next to an AirBnB in Toronto, guests partying until 4am on a Wednesday. 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.

Hilariously, I had the opposite experience; the Airbnb host was the one that partied when it wasn't booked.

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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#375

Post by firesteelrain »

piva00 wrote: post #351
firesteelrain wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m basing it on personal experience looking into renting a vacation rental and I have family who list on both. I am not going to google that because I know what is true

That's quite a broad assumption based on anecdotal evidence, you know what's true based on your few experiences renting and from a few listings your immediate family has, how can you even believe it's true based on this flimsy data? Quick edit: just searched on both VRBO and Airbnb for rentals in my city for the same date range, VRBO shows me 191 options, Airbnb shows 330 options.

That's very anecdotal to your city. VRBO could be renting more than Airbnb. I am not going to go to extreme's to overly analyze this. I made my point.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#376

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

xdfgh1112 wrote: post #152
lotsofpulp wrote: post #130

Earlier 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.

And better. It was all around a better experience, analogous to Uber vs taxi. But while Uber is still more convenient than taxi, I haven't even considered using AirBnB in years.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#377

Post by ghaff »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #164
levocardia wrote: post #139

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 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's a lot of truth in that.

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.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#378

Post by dijit »

ahartmetz wrote: post #344
dijit wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very mixed on the subject. I, like you, prefer the hotel offering. Messing around with hosts and their rules is not on my list of things I want to care about, the fact that there are hidden fees and stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Hotels, I know the rules. Don't destroy or steal, make life easier for the maid: done. With AirBNB, there's the cleaning fee, there's the self-replacement of items situation, ther…

IME, you can quite often get an iron and ironing board brought to your room (or to pick up somewhere) by asking for one at the reception. It's kinda standard in any hotel that gets business travelers, which is most of them.

That has been my experience also.

The ironing board is sometimes.. however..

Kinda small: https://www.amazon.com/Ironing-Tabletop-Foldable-Collars-Han...

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#379

Post by Xenoamorphous »

jajko wrote: post #297
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #242

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.

They’re supposedly regulated where I live, too, but the property has to meet certain criteria like having an independent entrance in the building, which most apartments can’t meet so they operate illegaly, and Airbnb happily allows them to be in their platform.

So now I have to put up with the apartment next door being an illegal Airbnb, with all the inconveniences that come with that.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#380

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

BLenkomo wrote: post #271
pembrook wrote: post #267

Airbnb is a giant example of what happens when you go too far into thinking you can solve real world issues with software UI. 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…

I don't think anyone at AirBnB wanted to solve a real world issue. 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…

> There is a reason why we have zoning laws: To protect housing for people.

Really? In practice it looks more like zoning laws exist so NIMBYs can increase their property value and keep black people away.

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