401–410 of 573 posts
> but whenever they needed to find a portrait photographer, a personal trainer, or someone to cook their meals Oh, the disconnect. Your average person rarely hires services like this, maybe a handful of times over a lifetime.
Good people are hard to find these days.
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Uber is a lot better than AirBnb. I use an app and the person picks me up and drops me off. If the driver cancels I automatically get another one scheduled, they don’t check my ratings or care if I have never used an Uber before, don’t have to worry about the Uber not picking me up because of the color of my skin. The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the a…
I’m curious, what has made Uber feel safe for you in terms of racism? And also did you have a problem with AirBnB based on skin color?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/tech/airbnb-project-lighthous...
I spent over $10K on Uber over a year a couple of years ago.
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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 inc…
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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…
I have three kids. We prefer to stay in hotels with suites where the kids can sleep in a separate room. I prefer the fact that they have on-site staff. All hotels that we've stayed in for the past few years include a breakfast buffet. The kids generally prefer hotels because they have pools. We've found plenty of professionally run "resorts" where the space is like a small apartment, with a full kitchen and multiple…
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I haven’t seen one on each floor, either, but that’s still not as convenient as one in the room that’s yours so you can run it while you’re out to dinner or overnight while you sleep. It’s shared so you have to plan around it.
I have stayed at many hotels of varying degrees of quality all over the U.S., and I have never, not once, seen the laundry being used. It’s always been available.
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Yes, I had a similar experience. Reviews on Airbnb can't be trusted because most hosts are experts at having bad reviews removed. But if reviews can't be trusted then the whole thing is worthless.
I've become a lot more jaded about online reviews over the years. I had an Amazon review removed because apparently mentioning that a competing product is more effective goes against their TOS. I had a WordPress plugin review removed because apparently a critical vulnerability that got our site hacked isn't a valid reason to give it one star. I had a local BBQ chain offer to give me a free bottle of sauce if I let th…
- leave unemotional matter-of-fact reviews so they can't complain for slander
- leave them days later so they can't link them to you
- leave them for businesses that provide incentives for 5-star reviews
- leave them when multiple reviews already complain about unethical actions taken by the owner
A 4-star HIG hotel in Bangkok once proposed I leave a good review to fix one of their mistakes. I firmly said I wouldn't and then mentioned the request in my 2-star review. The mistake was assigning "free breakfast" to the wrong room in a 2-room booking. Had to fight 3 days to get it fixed.
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…
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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.
This is the same everywhere I have been in the US.
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I think we're just the silent majority. I've been a digital nomad for the last 9 years. Airbnb is a huge reason why my experience has been so great. How else can I show up in a city in a new country , spend 5 minutes the day before I arrive, and end up with a nice furnished apartment in a great location for a week's stay?
Oh, how lovely it is so convenient for you, e.g. the "silent majority" while the residents of those cities foot the direct and indirect bill from reduced availability of the real-estate and the ever-increasing costs.
As someone who spends time being digital nomad myself, it isn't my fault when I stay in an AirBNB that is available somewhere since I'm just consuming the available supply that is permitted by the local government and I'm all for residents having priority. Often time its a local resident who owns and rents out the place in the first place, blame them for not renting to locals if you want. Its the local regulations and governments responsibility to regulate this.