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Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

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Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#411

Post by vel0city »

rafram wrote: post #334
lifestyleguru wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had some random folks in hostel reception taking full photo with their private smartphone of my id document "for the police", despite I clearly said I do not consent to have a copy of my document taken. Spanish hosts are absolutely shady and sloppy privacy wise. EDIT. Spaniards don't take it personally. There is a war at the EU borders and there are waves of scams and various predatory behaviours, plus usual organi…

They were probably telling the truth. It’s pretty common to have to register hotel/hostel stays with the authorities, and it’s increasingly uncommon to own a flatbed scanner - so what did you expect them to do, pull out a DSLR?

I'd expect them to get the right equipment for them to operate their business instead of having people use their private cell phones to save my photo id to their personal iCloud account and God knows where else.

It's like you're arguing banks should be absolved of using tls because it's just so tricky.

If your business requires you to handle PII I expect you to have the right equipment and processes to handle it.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#412

Post by sureIy »

rightbyte wrote: post #318
BLenkomo wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Took my city munich / germany years in curt to get the data from AirBnB. This is so strange. Why can't the beurocrats just read the listings as everyone else? Is it too cumbersome to prove an apartment is sublet?

You can't link a web page to the person behind it. Maybe Airbnb is in the right to offer the service in the country, it's just nobody could verify/enforce the ability to rent short term.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#413

Post by kidsfingsuck »

calsy wrote: post #346
dspillett wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aren't traveling with kids Just as much as many parents think having had kids is one of the proudest decisions (or happiest accidents) they have made, I think not having them is one of my best decisions, travelling is one of my many reasons for that, and I find the assumption from some parents that we should bend around their choice is a little presumptuous. Furthermore, ignoring various other definitions of better…

People had to tolerate your existence when your parents decided to bring you into this world. Why not show the same courtesy?

[flagged]

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#414

Post by sureIy »

ricardobeat wrote: post #305

> 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.

You'd be surprised by how many rich people there are. Airbnb doesn't need to sell millions of these services to make millions off them. If an "experience" costs $150, that's just as good as a night in their rooms, if not more profitable.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#415

Post by Kneecaps07 »

standardUser wrote: post #191

I used to be a big defender of AirBnB due to the many amazing experiences I've had with them over the years. But since then I've had several experiences that matched the negative feedback I had been hearing from other people, especially with US-based rentals, and now I'm a skeptic at best. The CEO knows exactly what the problem is because he spells it out in the article... > Chesky explains that historically, people…

The hotel is at least a known quantity. You have a pretty good idea of what you're getting into, the expectations are clear between all parties, and you're having a fairly consistent experience between different hotels. With Airbnb you have no idea who or what you're dealing with.

With a hotel, I don't have to worry about a doorman asking me who I am and then having to lie, per the host's instructions (yes, this happened to me). I probably don't have to worry about the pictures being of an entirely different unit and having an entire day of my vacation ruined trying to find somewhere else to stay (yes, this happened to me). I know exactly where the hotel is before I hand over hundreds of dollars.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#416

Post by WorldMaker »

paradox242 wrote: post #357
sksksk wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A trick is to know which brands you need. Marriott's Residence Inn is a big reliable one (for multiple "rooms" and kitchen/laundry) that exists almost everywhere in the US. It's a part of the whole Marriott system and often in tourism lulls in various cities has deals that keep it comparatively well priced with other Marriotts in that city and will let you use Marriott points to further defray costs.

Hilton and IHG both have similar brands, but their exact names escape me at the moments. The search keywords are "extended stay" and "apartment hotels".

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#417

Post by cryptonym »

bambax wrote: post #218
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 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…

I booked one with swimming pool, advertising enough room for 6 person.

View was amazing, as advertised. The bed in the living room was inflatable and deflated over night. Only three forks in kitchen drawer. Convoluted scheme to enter the building and room cause they want to hide the fact it's an Airbnb as it's not really allowed in that building. Swimming pool was on maintenance since 2 months.

Airbnb couldn't care less, basically I was being annoying to them. They didn't publish my honest review.

Sure having a kitchen and a comfy place to rest is nice, since that experience I'm very reluctant to take again that risk, especially with kids.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#418

Post by some_random »

There are two ways of looking at Airbnb, as a hotel substitute or as a resort substitute. It has a very hard time competing with hotels, as others have stated there are advantages but overall an airbnb is going to be worse and/or more expensive. BUT the resort substitute is where it is a lot more competitive, and this whole experience thing seems like a good way to lean into that element.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#419

Post by ghaff »

jrowen wrote: post #157
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 core value prop of Airbnb is (or should be) to provide a different experience than a hotel. It may have been "cheaper than a hotel" at one point and idk what the numbers are on how people are using it but in my experience it excels for larger groups or for people just looking for a more house-like experience than a hotel. Being able to stay in a nice house with a bunch of friends in any city is an amazing…

Which has been VRBO to a large degree. Not sure how common that is for Airbnb as a use case. A lot of what I see is looking for a cheaper room.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#420

Post by ses1984 »

electric_muse wrote: post #371
freddie_mercury wrote: post #164

Earlier 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…

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…

Not every hotel cares.

The hotel I’m staying at right now is dirty as fuck.

The valve for the shower does not operate properly, the water pressure is extremely low and it barely gets above 90F. Other rooms in the same hotel have a different valve and the showers work fine.

“We will send a maintenance person right away” it’s been a week.

There is old food under and behind my bed.

They empty trash in the hall once a week, it fills up in two days.

They advertise laundry but the driers are all out of order. Apparently the only reason is the change collection bucket is full, the owner doesn’t trust anyone but himself to empty it, but he’s two states away.

I can hear everything through all the walls around me. I can hear people fart.

This hotel has 4.5 stars with >2000 reviews.

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