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Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

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511–520 of 573 posts

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#511

Reading this article felt like reading an ad.

Really? Because it’s kind of mocking them the whole time

The irony is the CEO probably can't tell it's mocking him.

What's the first sign of a midlife crisis?

That someone thinks a new car will turn them into a not-asshole.

> He wanted to bust the company he’d cofounded out of its pigeonhole of short-term home rentals. Amazon, he was fond of pointing out, was first an online bookstore before it became the everything store.

> “I was basically going from room to room just pouring out this stream-of-consciousness manifesto, like Jack Kerouac writing On the Road,” he says

> Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.

> “Brian’s been badly underrated as a tech CEO,” Altman says of his friend. “He's not usually mentioned in the same breath as Larry Page or Bill Gates, but I think he is on a path to build as big of a company.”

> “Steve Jobs, to me, is like Michelangelo or da Vinci,” he says. Despite never meeting Jobs, “I feel like I know him deeply, professionally, in a way that few people ever did, in a way that you only possibly could by starting a tech company as a creative person and going on a rocket ship,”

> “[AirBnB experiences] was like our Newton,” says Chesky, referring to Apple’s handheld device that predated the iPhone.

Yeah... somehow I don't think that guy understands subtlety or nuance. What a douche.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I follow the implication here, but: my point was that “camping” is generated seen as a fairly healthy vacationing option, so it seems weird to use it as the lower-bound on a spectrum that contains moldy Airbnbs and hotels.

Well, there's a reason people build homes and apartments to live in, and a reason that societies with homes and apartments are healthier than societies that sleep in tents and shacks. Dirt is... dirty. And yes, the point being advanced in the thread is that compared to camping - which is generally healthy and not something to freak out about! - homes are going to be cleaner, occasional mold issues aside. So it's sill…

People build houses to protect ourselves and our stuff from the elements (and other climate control reasons), for privacy, for security, that sort of stuff. They are necessary for high-density living (plumbing helps to keep poop away).

Generally though, I would expect camping to be healthier than a hotel room. Hotel rooms and airbnbs are places that many humans go through, and humans are generally the main carriers of human pathogens. The only germs on your camping gear are your own ones.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#513
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in very popular cities AirBnBs are less than 0.1% of the residential dwellings. AirBnBs have negligible effect on a rent.

Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence. As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock. And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect o…

> Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.

Quite the opposite. See for Montreal a recent article https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7445844 Officials estimate 4k airbnbs which gives 0.2% of all residential dwellings.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#514
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in very popular cities AirBnBs are less than 0.1% of the residential dwellings. AirBnBs have negligible effect on a rent.

In Sedona AZ 16% of houses are AirBnBs, and thats just the ones who complied & legally registered as short term rentals https://www.redrocknews.com/2025/02/28/interactive-map-of-se...

Is Sedona a resort town? Resort towns were like that in the 80s already.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#515
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How widespread those are depends very much on the country. There are some in which most people haven't seen a laundromat in their life outside of American movies.

Laundromats are commonplace in every country I have visited, none of which are in America.

I didn't say that they are unique to America. And yes, many countries do have them in abundance. Many others do not, or they are rare enough that you might not have one nearby.

I'm from Russia originally and the first time I have ever seen one outside of a movie was when I moved to Canada. Russia does have them, but, generally speaking, only in large cities.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#516
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. OP is weird. Google tells me: > Airbnb prohibits indoor security cameras and recording devices, including audio, in most listings globally. It should not be difficult to find a security camera. (Microphone is a different matter.) If you find one, you can report to AirBnB, and I am sure the renter will be immediately delisted. And, it is probably just plan illegal in many jurisdictions.

Security cameras (like Google Nest) are not the concern people have: hidden cameras are. It is possible to rig an entire property without any chance of guests finding the cameras. The scale at which it happens is a question (and varies based on country) but the illegality isn't the issue. The dissemination of videos and photos secretly recorded of guests and their children is the issue. There are people in prison for…

> The scale at which it happens is a question

and my point is that there is no reason to think this is enough of a problem that any well-adjusted person should factor it into the "should I use Airbnb?" calculation. If someone thinks that is an issue then I would assume they never use public bathrooms.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#517
post #157

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…

I think it gets complicated when there's a long, long list of chores you have to do when you leave.

At the you're paying more than a hotel and you have to spend 2 hours deep cleaning the place... That's when you start to really reconsider.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#520

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…

> Hotels generally seem to care when something goes wrong.

Not really. When was the last time you stayed at a non-chain 2-star hotel in Asia?

Hotel chains care because they care about their brand. Not that's a result of being a chain, not of being a hotel.

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