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Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

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Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#521

Post by nothercastle »

sksksk wrote: post #255
cameldrv wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of hotels where you can get multiple rooms and a washing machine. When traveling with kids, one big advantage of hotels is predictability. The last thing I want to do when I'm pulling in after a long flight an hour past the kids' bedtime is to deal with potentially dealbreaking problems with the place. In a hotel, they generally have maintenance on staff and extra rooms to switch into in case of prob…

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.

Airbnb is always over 200 a night after fees

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#522

Post by nothercastle »

pests wrote: post #147
darkwizard42 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People said the same thing about Wag. Ultimately if the platform acts as good lead gen and offers other protections and benefits it will work out!

Didn't Homejoy fall victim to this? People would just contract directly with any cleaners cutting them out completely.

Yeah we do the same with Airbnb if the place is legit we book direct next time. The site offers no protection for the renter so they can suck it.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#523

Post by nothercastle »

blitzar wrote: post #238
hakfoo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had always heard what killed Groupon was the bad economics. The "loss leader" concept is Business 101, and Groupon was presented to customers as a gallery of loss leaders they can shop. Actually delivering a good loss leader is hard. Design the offer wrong, and people don't attach properly-- they either don't load up their cart with additional, higher-margin items, or they don't return for future full-price service…

They bringing a large pool of customers who will only ever pay "loss leading" prices. The ultimate problem with Groupon is their customers.

And the volume of people caused the good customers to get shitty service so it was basically impossible to make it work. Also it was a mega loss leader since Groupon took a huge cut

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#524

Post by CountGeek »

immibis wrote: post #446
bambax wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Germany it's apparently illegal to leave a bad review of a business. Even if their experience was bad. Even if you can prove in a court of law that they lied on their listing.

Leaving a negative review is not outright illegal, but it can lead to legal consequences if deemed defamatory or false. If a review contains unsubstantiated claims or personal attacks, the business can pursue legal action for defamation.

The nuances of these laws can vary, so context matters significantly in legal interpretations.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#525

Post by bsimpson »

nothercastle wrote: post #522
pests wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Homejoy fall victim to this? People would just contract directly with any cleaners cutting them out completely.

Yeah we do the same with Airbnb if the place is legit we book direct next time. The site offers no protection for the renter so they can suck it.

FWIW, I had a place in Vietnam that was gross. I complained to Airbnb: they cancelled the rest of my stay, and put me in a hotel.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#526

Post by [deleted] »

sksksk wrote: post #255
cameldrv wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of hotels where you can get multiple rooms and a washing machine. When traveling with kids, one big advantage of hotels is predictability. The last thing I want to do when I'm pulling in after a long flight an hour past the kids' bedtime is to deal with potentially dealbreaking problems with the place. In a hotel, they generally have maintenance on staff and extra rooms to switch into in case of prob…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#527

Post by dangus »

This is giving me Groupon vibes. Airbnb went from offering something of a unique product to having no real identity anymore.

Just like with Groupon where the idea was so novel for the time but quickly faded away as irrelevant, a diluted shell of its former self.

When you really think about it, Airbnb offers you nothing that a normal travel booking site by the giant incumbents like Expedia group offer, and unlike Airbnb, Expedia group sites can compare rentals by owner alongside real hotels, too.

So basically when you go to Airbnb you're going to a partial travel site and it's also a travel site without any extra travel functionality like rental cars, hotels, and other vacation packages.

I wonder if Airbnb's pivot toward local experiences is a much bigger mistake than using their momentum to make a real attempt at competing more directly with Expedia/Priceline. Why didn't Airbnb start working with hotels and other traditional travel industry players?

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#528

Post by ProllyInfamous »

margorczynski wrote: post #341
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For about seven years, I lived between two of Chattanooga's top tourist attractions / revenue generators. Although our city has banned new STRs, pre-existing properties are grandfathered (which conveys with deed). >It destroys the social fabric by injecting a rotation of strangers into the community. Absolutely this. Literally half on my former neighborhood was AirBNBs, mostly small-time couples (1 or 2 properties) b…

Yep, exactly what I meant. This is essentially privatizing profits, socializing costs. And it should be ended using the government. If you want to play hotel owner then build one without exploiting people that want to live normal lives with their families.

>And it should be ended using the government.

I was surprised by two things when Chattanooga banned new short-term rental applications:

First) that it even passed

& 2nd) that the grandfathering clause conveys with the deed on all future sales [†]

But still I consider this a small and necessary victory to prevent future homebuilds from unhousing. A year later (last year) our surrounding county also placed its own bespoke STR restrictions, mostly different from the city's (of course!).

[†] IMHO, these have ALWAYS been a violation of most SFH zonings (e.g. R-1), so I would like to see some sort of "phase out" or "non-conveyance" so that eventually everybody is following laws enacted of its constituencies —if not immediate/timed

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#529

Post by BiteCode_dev »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #482
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> ...the next time I book I'll pay cash directly with the host because it will be that much cheaper. This probably won't work for you. It specifically violates Airbnb's TOS to attempt this, and Airbnb scans all messages between you and the host to ensure that you are not attempting this. As for arranging it with a F2F conversation with the host, it's been years since I've rented an Airbnb and met a host F2F. That doe…

The next ones I'll do it and I know it will work because I've been doing it regularly for years. I always get the personal phone number of the host, AirBnB can't do jack about it.

In fact, it's not legal for AirBnB to prevent it in my country.

Re: Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode

#530

Post by wnc3141 »

SwtCyber wrote: post #287
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 get the ambition behind the "everything app," but if the core product gets diluted, none of the shiny extras will matter.

markets are, by and large, too competitive for the "everything" app to ever exist. Air BnB works because they have figured out managing search and and a network of "hotels". This may not translate to other services in a way that other platforms could not do better. 'Why doesn't Uber do hotels?' - type of thing.
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